The story takes places during a turbulent colonial period of Africa. This factor clashes the two opposites: “civilized” whites and “savaged” blacks. Whites invaded the foreign land seeking riches and power, from which many of them were restricted at home. Here in Africa overwhelmingly stronger Europeans manipulated the native population treating them like animals. They justified their actions by declaring “we are here to bring civilization to Africa”, however such phrases were not supported by any actions towards aiding the people. For Europeans, Africa and its people were another handy tools for acquiring wealth, in this case ivory.
This atmosphere of severe hatred and agony formed a black hole, which sucked in everyone who was involved. This place that began as a small asylum gradually evolved into a great empire of evil, as it acquired more souls and ruined lives of more people. It became a terminating point of all values and aspects of humanity with Kurtz being the main victim of this movement.
Marlow an officer from the British Army joined a life-terminating mission with an objective to crush Kurtz from his unsurpassable authority in the heart of Congo. Once being a man with a common faith to explore, conquer, and rule, Kurtz leaped a gigantic step further and acquired an almost a god-like figure among the local community. He was the biggest trader of ivory, and produced more than all other posts on the river combined.
He was a superior leader with almost magical persuasive abilities and strongly appealed to the public no matter how cruel and unjust his actions were. The complete power over the people and the insane nature of Kurtz’s character made him a devil that killed destroyed and knew no mercy and with lack of discernment.
Besides the harsh environment of the Congo River, the abrupt murders, unprecedented acts of violence, constant paranoia and fear, the most troubling and devastating conflict that Marlow had to face was to understand Kurtz’s mind. He needed to understand his motives, desires, justifications, and possible resolutions of his malignant ambitions. As a whole, the theme of the book revolves around Marlow seeking to understand Kurtz and his mentality, to realize what brought him to what he is.
Conrad wrote this novel with an intention for a reader to understand that Kurtz is hiding in all of us and that we all have the essentials to develop evil and later spread it in our society. However, Conrad emphasizes the point that not many people are truly able to build up this given potentiality and everything is geared by the choices we make and environment we inhabit. This is a strong factor that makes “The Heart of Darkness” a true masterpiece.
The peak of the story occurs upon Marlow’s arrival to the post where Kurtz was. At this point in the story the collision of the two minds came to the most extreme level as Marlow almost overcame the mental barrier to fully understand Kurtz. On the other hand Kurtz mind is idle physiologically, but he respects Marlow for understanding him.
Marlow takes Kurtz down the river and the “evil” man does not try to resist. He could of easily order Marlow to be shot, but he did not. Kurtz realizes that he is a slave of his own soul. He perfectly understands that he long before that had stepped into a tremendously sneaky trap from, which there is no way out. He hated everything he did. Finally, he admired the fact how this young man was able to overcome all the external and internal challenges of this journey, and thus let Marlow to take him.
Kurtz dies on the journey back down the river. His tortured soul and body could not cope with another such devastating challenge. He died screaming, “Horror, horror!” These words represented the complete desolation of his mind and the solid agreement of all the evils he ejaculated. When Kurtz was living Marlow referred to him as shadow¸ since he was a metaphysical shadow hanging over his mind making all his thoughts consciously be about Kurtz. However, now when he truly understood what Kurtz was, he called him the Shadow, the true embodiment of evil.
As Marlow’s journey in Africa terminated the results of the journey would stay in his mind forever, in the mind that went through a dramatic transformation and now was filled with completely different load of understanding the ills and evils of humanity. This new perspective on society’s ignorance did not give peace Marlow’s mind. He had to live suffering, yet tolerating the fact that there is Kurtz in each one of us and that the soul destructive forces of the Congo River might ignite in anyone triggering another tsunami of evil.
