Examine the ways in which Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ and Golding’s ‘Lord of the Flies’ address the darkness of the human heart

In doing this I will explore some of the key points in both novels. For example they both criticise the period of time they are living in. For Golding it is after the Second World War and he is addressing that war could break out again. Proving this is in the first chapter we hear “we was attacked!” This shows that mankind would attack children in a passenger plane. Whereas Conrad is living in the late Victorian era where Europe has thrust imperialism on Africa and has exploited the natives into slavery. Evidence of this is the “chain-gangs”.

Firstly I am going to look at how both of the novels in some show a sort of journey into the human mind. In Lord of the Flies it is where the children cross from the good side of the island to the bad side. This starts with Jack saying “Bollocks to the rules!” This instantly showed the breakdown in society. This started possibly not the journey of the children from good to bad, but it is a journey that the island takes from good to bad. It starts with Jack saying that his choir shall be “hunters.” This begins the journey. The island starts to get darker and the children start to show the darkness of the human heart. With hunters that can have qualities linked with it that turns people into mere animals with only one thing on the mind…killing. This is showed by how when Jack, Simon and Ralph find the ‘candle buds’, Jack acts aggressive with them “Jack slashed one of them open with his knife and its scent spilled over them.” He didn’t just cut them open; he ‘slashed’ them. He again has killing on his mind with “we can’t eat them.” It is not only Jack that has taken this journey into evil. Jacks ‘tribe’ are heard to be chanting incessantly “Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!” So Golding’s depiction of a journey into the human mind addresses the obsession of killing. Conrad has a similar approach, but instead of killing he uses madness. Evidence that this is a common thing in the Congo is when Marlow pays a visit to the Doctor. The Doctor was “then with a certain eagerness asked me whether he could measure my head” Marlow let him, and asked the Doctor whether he measured the peoples heads “when they come back too?” Now the Doctor says something somewhat strange “Oh, I never see them…the changes take place inside you know” So the Doctor implies that people go mad out there and never come back.

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The characters in the two novels sort of follow the same lines. I have grouped the main four characters from the two novels and have put them in to two pairs- Marlow and Ralph and Jack and Mr Kurtz. Firstly, with Marlow and Ralph they start off as good people but they both make mistakes. For Ralph it was ultimately letting the group vote on whether there were ghosts or not. He did not need to let the vote go. What was strange was the way in that he asked the question “Who thinks that there may be ghosts?” That question seems to lead everyone into saying that there are ghosts. He instantly lost power. He should have asked, “Who thinks that there are no ghosts?” This would have led everyone into voting for this. Marlow made the main mistake in being led into Kurtz’s charisma. He had stated his dislike of the ivory being kept, but when he met Kurtz you hear him say, “I was fascinated”

Jack and Kurtz were similar in that they were evil. I have already examined the way in that Jack is evil, as he instigated the break down in the society on the island. He also had a band of bloodthirsty hunters. Kurtz is evil in the way that he “brought in more ivory than all the other stations put together” but he never returned it.

Looking at the viewpoint of the two novels I find that are in two different ways to address the nature of the novels. ‘Heart of Darkness’ has Marlow’s viewpoint. I believe that this was done so that we could be in line with his thoughts and feelings. This makes us understand more about the darkness of the human heart. Whereas ‘Lord of the Flies’ has a narrator. We don’t get the same inside intelligence as with Marlow, but we get some viewpoints such as “Ralph wept for the end of innocence” Having a narrator helps us to have focused on Ralph on a curve of learning. Simon is viewed differently as his mind is open to us. For example when he encounters the Lord of the Flies, the words that the Lord of the Flies are saying is merely Simon speaking to himself. Golding is writing about Simon in this way so that he can express who the beast actually is. “Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt… you knew didn’t you? I’m part of you?” We instantly now start to understand that something as bad as the Beast has been made up by the human heart.

The setting that Conrad uses is firstly the Thames and then he compares it with Congo. He uses the fact that the Thames leads into “the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth.” Then the journey down the Congo is a road to evil and darkness. The things Marlow see such as the chain gangs. “Black shapes crouched, lay…attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair… They were dying very slowly-it was very clear”

In ‘Lord of the Flies’ Ralph is Adam in Garden of Eden as he has an instinctual relationship with his surroundings, but his goodness gradually fades as he is tempted by evil. The apple in the Garden of Eden is the bad side of the island (the fort area). This is proved by the fact that that was where Piggy was killed “his head opened and stuff came out and turned red.”

Both novels address the darkness of the human heart. I believe that they are both very similar. Conrad and Golding both use death as their tool of evil. In ‘Heart of Darkness’ it is the natives of Africa that are exploited and flogged until they die. In ‘Lord of the Flies’ Golding has used the fact that even children would murder each other if they were in charge of society.

Both of the texts are fables. The two authors criticise what is happening or what could happen in their period of time. Conrad didn’t like what was happening in Africa in the late nineteenth century. Golding was writing what could happen if another war broke out. They may both go to the extremes to condemn society, but with the violence of the everyday world and the overall greed, anything can happen.

Saul Kay 11G Page of