Conrad's Heart of Darkness

And Evil in Human Nature

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is neither an outright condemnation of imperialism nor a racist slur against native populations as critics such as Chinua Achebe would have it, but rather an exploration of the tendency towards evil that is present within all human hearts. Conrad’s novella is known for its ambiguity and contradiction, and to attach either a “racist” label or an “anti-imperialist” label is to oversimplify the work. From a structuralist perspective, Conrad’s work makes perpetual use of the darkness and light binary, and it is necessary to view these for what they are: not the glorification of either European or African society, but a depiction of the war between good and evil that exists within human nature itself. In his essay “Heart of Darkness, Source of Light,” John Batchelor writes, “Michael Levenson [argues] that the novella started as an aggressively anti-imperial story, with the manager as its central figure—an embodiment of all that was to be hated in imperialism—and that in Parts I and III Conrad became more interested in moral equivocation, focusing on the figure of Kurtz” (237). Indeed, I would argue that this idea of moral equivocation and degeneration is the real theme of the book. The threads of imperialism, racism, and barbarianism are simply tools for the exploration of this theme—each one is another face of the same aspect of weakness in the human character. In order to see why Heart of Darkness is neither strictly anti-imperialist nor strictly racist, it is necessary to take a historical look at the real state of the African Congo at the time. I will endeavor to demonstrate that both the colonizers and the natives engaged in brutal practices.

King Leopold’s colonizers severely abused the natives in many instances during the exploitation of the Congo, as is well-documented. We have, for example, the testimony of Roger Casement from 1904 in which he describes the disruption of the natives’ systems of trade, as well as their mutilation by government soldiers. “Two cases (of mutilation) came to my actual notice while I was in the lake district. One, a young man, both of whose hands had been beaten off with the butt ends of rifles against a tree; the other, a young lad of 11 or 12 years of age, whose right hand was cut off at the wrist” (115). Patrick Brantlinger’s essay “Heart of Darkness: Anti-Imperialism, Racism, or Impressionism?” also includes material from primary sources on brutal imperialist practices, most of which were punishments for noncompliance or attempted proof of death. Natives who did not meet quotas of rubber collection, for example, were killed or mutilated (Brantlinger 309). The journalist E.D. Morel writes at that time

The crowds in one village were fired into promiscuously…The heads were cut off and brought to the officer in charge, who then sent men to cut off the hands also….The town…was burnt, and what they could not carry off was destroyed…I shall not soon forget the sickening sight of deep baskets of human heads.” (Morel, Rubber qtd. in Brantlinger 315-16)

Conrad’s Marlow himself witnesses the mistreatment of natives, though not to such an extreme degree. Marlow sees natives chained together carrying dirt from a pointless excavation in Part I of Heart of Darkness (30). Later, he encounters natives lying in the shade of some trees, in “attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair” (31). Thus we see that Conrad is very much aware of the excesses of colonialism, and especially its futility and purposelessness. We see this with the warship that is blasting the shore for no reason as Marlow arrives, as well as the excavators who are blasting the cliff even though it is not in the way of the railroad they are building (28, 30). Later, Marlow observes that “There was an air of plotting about that station, but nothing came of it, of course. It was as unreal as everything else—as the philanthropic pretence of the whole concern, as their talk, as their government, as their show of work” (39). And then there is that overarching condemnation of the whole endeavor that Marlow utters, in which he characterizes it as “a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly” (31). Conrad is clearly well aware of the evil infesting the imperialist project in the Congo Free State. In that sense, Heart of Darkness is anti-imperialist. But that is not the entirety of the work.

The crimes of the colonialist society are clear, and receive a good deal of attention in most post-colonial modern analyses that understandably seek to point out the oppressive realities of imperialism. But—and as Conrad probably would have been aware—the state of many African tribes before the coming of the Europeans was far from idyllic. The “heart of darkness” existed there too. There was a certain uncivilized barbarism among some native peoples as compared to the “civilized” barbarism of the Europeans: evidence exists of African peoples terribly mistreating one another. Batchelor summarizes Alan Boisragon’s 1897 and F.N. Roth’s 1903 testimonies concerning Benin, in South Nigeria.

Benin was a theocracy whose authority was sustained by ritual sacrifice of its inhabitants. The massacre was followed by a punitive expedition, of which Roth was a member. He described Benin city like this: ‘All about the houses and streets are dead natives, some crucified and sacrificed on trees, others on stage erections, some on the ground, some in pits, and amongst the latter found several half-dead ones’…and the main thoroughfare to the king’s palace was ‘strewn with dead, crucified and beheaded bodies in all states of decomposition’. (236)

Clearly, this native culture was oppressing its own people. With this historical understanding, it becomes easier to see how the average British citizen must have viewed Africa and the work of imperialism. Batchelor comments, “Boisragon, who was a very brave man, lives entirely by the standards of the day, and displays no misgivings at all about what he is doing in Africa. His diction is confident: he is engaged in ‘the glorious work of rescuing the native races in West Africa from the horrors of human sacrifice’ ” (236).

In addition to Benin, Boisragon may be referring to the Asante Empire, which also practiced human sacrifice. Of course these countries were likely the exception, not the rule, and the work of liberating the Africans from barbarism quickly devolved into barbarism of its own, but the example nonetheless helps us to see more clearly the European perspective, as well as what Conrad was driving at: the “heart of darkness” resides not specifically in the chests of Europeans nor specifically in the chests of Africans, but rather in fallen human nature in general. Conrad is aware of the darkness surrounding the native Africans, as we see in his inclusion of the cannibals and presentation of the darker ritualistic side of tribal society. According to Brantlinger, cannibalism in the Congo was not merely an invention of Conrad’s. For example, in the war between Leopold and the Arab slave traders, both sides had cannibals in their train (308). Incidentally, the war, which Leopold justified as a means of fighting slavery, turned out to be nothing of the sort. It was merely a method of getting rid of slave trader competition. Regardless, cannibalism was a reality during this period, according to the report of journalist E.J. Glave. “Sometimes the natives are so persecuted that they [take revenge] by killing and eating their tormentors” (Glave qtd. in Brantlinger 309). These historical perspectives complicate our understanding of Heart of Darkness.

I have dwelt here on the darker aspects of the European and African societies, but of course it is important to note that both groups of people have their strengths as well as their weaknesses in Conrad’s book as they did in history. Marlow himself seems disgusted by the treatment of the natives, and may perhaps represent those among European society who at least had good intentions regarding Africa, even if they were overruled by the more greedy and exploitive (Batchelor 241). The cannibals in the narrative show amazing restraint, never attempting to harm other characters. As we might expect from the title, Heart of Darkness makes constant use of and contrast between light and dark, and these embody this interplay and equivocation between good and evil. We must understand that Conrad does not paint either the colonizers or the colonized as strictly light or strictly dark, and indeed this is an accurate representation of the real African situation. Conrad knew that human nature is far too complex to be portrayed as either wholly good or wholly bad, wholly light or wholly dark. Certainly for those who would argue that Conrad is presenting Africa and her people as solely dark and evil, we can point to the heavy gloom that rests over Marlow and his auditors in their European setting (18). In fact, the final image of the story is not of the dark African river but rather of the dark European river: “The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky—seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness” (94). Conrad utilizes the darkness vs. light pattern of imagery throughout the text, but in varied settings and with varied subjects, preventing us from attributing the quality of goodness to light or evil to dark or either one to either civilization. We have “the sepulchral city” in Europe (39), the “gloom brooding over a crowd of men,” (18) in the boat and at the same time the initial “immensity of unstained light” over the Thames (18), then in Africa we have the “black creek,” and a “thin layer of silver” over everything (41) and then the “lightless region” (74) of Kurtz’s domain, who is the figure lost between European and African society, it seems. Finally, darkness falls on Marlow’s interview with the Intended back in Europe (90-93), and of course “the heart of darkness” of the title itself. All of this light and darkness is somewhat muddled and mixed. In the end, Marlow attributes the darkness and tragedy to both the Africans and the Europeans when he compares the two women who are placed alongside Kurtz: The Intended and the tribal woman: “I shall see her too, a tragic and familiar Shade, resembling in this gesture another one, tragic also, and bedecked with powerless charms, stretching bare brown arms over the glitter of the infernal stream, the stream of darkness” (92-93). Thus we see that the heart of darkness is neither racism and imperialism nor savagery and barbarism in themselves, but rather all of these things. It is the tendency toward evil present in both civilizations.

We have seen Conrad’s examination of the brutality and barbarism apparent in both the colonizers and the colonized. We have also seen historical testimony concerning these realities, which provide a somewhat clearer perspective on Heart of Darkness. But Conrad’s final pronouncement is uncertain. That Marlow and Conrad see darkness all around them, indiscriminately located among members of different civilizations and races, seems viable. But their reaction is perhaps the true enigma. At the beginning of the novella the anonymous narrator says that he knew he was fated “to hear about one of Marlow’s inconclusive experiences” (21). That is just it: the work admits the darkness, but its response to the darkness is inconclusive. “The horror! The horror!” (85) Kurtz cries, and we might suspect that the sentiment is echoed in Marlow’s heart when he is confronted with darkness. But there is nothing more that he says. Perhaps the deepest darkness within the story is its inability to clearly define or respond to the evil to which it bears witness.

Works Cited

Batchelor, John. “Heart of Darkness, Source of Light.” The Review of English Studies, vol. 34, no. 170, 1992, pp. 227-242.

Brantlinger, Patrick. “Heart of Darkness: Anti-Imperialism, Racism, or Impressionism?”

Heart of Darkness: Complete, Authoritative Text with Biographical, Historical, and Cultural Context, Critical History, and Essays from Contemporary Critical Perspectives, edited by Ross Murfin, 3rd ed., Bedford St. Martin’s, 2011, pp. 303-324.

Casement, Roger. “Report of the British Consul, Roger c, on the Administration of the Congo

Free State.” Heart of Darkness: Complete, Authoritative Text with Biographical, Historical, and Cultural Context, Critical History, and Essays from Contemporary Critical Perspectives, edited by Ross Murfin, 3rd ed., Bedford St. Martin’s, 2011, pp. 113-115.

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. Edited by Ross Murfin, 3rd ed., Bedford St. Martin’s, 2011.