Heart of Darkness Essay. Throughout Marlow's narration of conquest and civilization, Conrad critiques the very nature of colonial conquest.
Evelin Labastida
Heart of Darkness Essay
In Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, he grapples with the idea of criticizing the attempts and attitudes of "civilizing". According to Marlow, conqueror's strength comes from the conquered's weakness in by which he defines conquest and civilization while Conrad critiques it. Throughout Marlow's narration of conquest+civilization, Conrad critiques the very nature of colonial conquest.
To begin with, the lack of strength of the "savages" just makes the conquerors more elegible to take over a society. For one thing, Marlow asserts that being more powerful than others is what makes themselves "civilized". For example, on page 4 it states, "..conquest of earth, which mostly means taking it away from those who have a different complexion...something you can set up, and bow down before..." This means that in reality, the lower class is being tricked into believing they will be helped. It is the idea that you think you are helping others but it is exactly vise versa. So it shows how weak others can be. Also, Marlow also describes how the white men saw the natives' weakness and they made them slaves of their company while forcing them to do all hard labor. They were referred as "savages" as well. As an illustration, on page 12-13 it says, "Six black men advanced in a file, toiling up the path. They walked erect and slow, balancing small baskets full of earth on their heads, and the clink kept time with their footsteps...each had an iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together with a chain whose bright swung between them, rhythmically clinking... They were called criminals..deathlike indifference of unhappy savages." In other words, this shows how powerful you can be in the way that you can take over someone else's life just like that. It comes up to the point where that person can become your own worker or slave. By the same token, all of the conquering that is going on while in Africa, made some changes in the way Marlow narrates conquest. For instance, on page 32 he says, "The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there-- there you could look at a thing monstrous and free." This means that Conrad is allowing colonialism to go beyond its limits of conquering which transfer to the meaning of "civilized" people and "uncivilized" people.
