New year, new me? I’ll pass. I figured I’d continue with reviewing books I was required to read throughout high school. Anyway, this week’s blog is about Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. The author wrote this book as a frame narrative by writing the book from the perspective of an unnamed sailor listening to a story told by Marlow, another sailor describing how he traveled along the Congo River to meet a legendary man by the name of Kurtz.
This novel explores the journey taken by Marlow as he travels to Africa with what is referred to as “the Company” to acquire ivory, and they experience a culture shock the deeper they journey into the territory. While Marlow is stuck in the jungle because his steamship experiences damage, he notices how the individuals of the Company who work above him in the chain of command refer to a man named Kurtz with fear yet also respect. Marlow grows curious about Kurtz because nobody has heard from him in a while, so he makes it his goal to find the mysterious man by travelling deeper into African territory.
I had to read this book for my AP English Literature and Composition course. If I’m being honest, this book was miserable for me to get through.
I was not a fan of the content of the story because I generally find subjects that are more history-related to be uninteresting. At many parts, like in one scene where Marlow notices cannibals on the steamship, I was thoroughly confused by what the book was trying to get across. Maybe I should have delved deeper into thought about these portions of the material, but I was only reading the book because I had to.
However, what did intrigue me was the discussion that this book provoked in class.
In my AP Lit course, my teacher held seminars almost every day for us students to share our thoughts about the reading. One class period, the teacher facilitated the discussion about a controversial portion of the book that caused many critics to label Conrad as a racist.
To explain the background of this controversy, readers noted the contrast in how Africa was presented relative to Europe after Heart of Darkness was published. While the whiteness of Europeans represented civilization, the darkness of Africa was painted to represent savagery.
Critics of this novel were outraged by how Africans were not written to be viewed as human beings; instead, African culture was portrayed as nothing more than barbaric. Defenders of Conrad justify his writing by saying that the book was written to describe the European perspective when they first began trying to colonize regions that harbored a culture completely different from their own.
My AP Lit class consisted of twelve students, and we found ourselves divided in regards to how we felt about this topic. Out of the entire year, this was probably the most stimulating discussion the class ever had.
Personally, I normally like to remain relatively quiet during class discussions, but I felt compelled to put in my opinions about Conrad. From my perspective, to actively generalize a group of people of a different race and label them as “devils” without making any attempt to understand the culture is racist by definition, regardless of whether or not the person speaking was simply “surprised” by how different the lifestyle is.
A friend and I noted an interesting observation about the class debate: all of the students of non-European ethnic backgrounds found Conrad to be racist, whereas the group of students who defended him only consisted of white individuals, which definitely impacted the way we viewed the controversy.
Conrad wrote this novel based on his experiences when he travelled to the Congo, and he was seeking to convey to the readers that everyone possesses evil in their hearts. Overall, I was not a fan of Heart of Darkness. The novel bored me, and anything that did grab my attention only disgusted me. I would probably rate the work as a 3/10 since I was so unimpressed.
However, I will admit that the book did indeed provoke interesting discussion despite the tense vibe in the room as everyone in the class held beliefs that were strongly supportive of either the critics or the defenders of Conrad’s work. While I did not enjoy the process of actually reading the book, the book did prove to be useful for classroom purposes that encourage discussion and debate among students.
This book was definitely miserable, and I haven’t read many darker stories. It was by no means fun to read, and the entire African culture was definitely portrayed in a racist way. However, I still thought Heart of Darkness was an amazing work, once our AP Literature teacher revealed the deeper meaning behind the book.
I feel like all the “savagery” was there not to serve the purpose of racism, but to make the reader realize that the real beast was not the African people, but Kurtz himself. Kurtz danced around the fire. Kurtz mounted heads on sticks. Kurtz, in the process of trying to “civilize” the native people, unleashed the savage beast in himself.
The purpose of the book is to paint the image of a moral-less universe and to refute the idea of a world where immoral acts are punished by a higher power. Kurtz falls into the dark places of the Earth and of his soul, where he discovers the nature of this universe. Marlow thinks Kurtz is a remarkable man because despite having been a beast, despite there being no God or law to administer justice and punish him, he was still consumed by his wrongdoings by the end of the book, which is why he exclaims, “The horror! The horror!” as a “final burst of sincerity.” This, to me, is a little bit like cheating on an exam and not getting caught, but still giving up your soul to the teacher and apologizing for the wrongdoing.