A New Name

Over the past century, the name Joseph Conrad has progressively become one of the most influential names in literature. The English author was the product of two very educated Polish citizens living in Ukraine. His father had been an author and a translator of classical works, such as Shakespeare. A result of this was Conrad’s early education of literature. As well as being involved in composing and analyzing written works, his mother and father had taken part in many political organizations, most of which opposed the then imperialistic occupation of Russia in Ukraine. When one of these groups was discovered by Russian authority, the supporters (including Conrad and his family), were exiled to Russia, where living conditions caused the death of Conrad’s parents. Conrad escaped from Russia to France, eventually becoming employed by many vessels that would lead him to traveling the world. This occupation gave Conrad plenty of time to learn new languages as well as write short stories. One novel that Conrad wrote over the years that greatly assisted in elevating his fame was The Heart of Darkness. The Heart of Darkness is the story of a European trading company’s advance into the Congo in Africa, in an attempt to civilize its inhabitants and trade ivory amongst them. In the story, the trading company hires a captain of a vessel, Marlow, to go down to the Congo to retrieve one of the company’s most successful traders, Mr. Kurtz, as he had fallen ill. Marlow quickly discovers as he arrives in Africa that the company’s attempts to “civilize” the inhabitants and trade with them had nothing to do with trading and were by no means civil themselves. The company was incarcerating the natives, turning them into laborers, and forcing them to find ivory throughout the land and surrender it. Because of the extensive labor, Marlow witnesses many natives slowly perish due to exhaustion, malnourishment, and sometimes severe beatings. When he eventually reaches Mr. Kurtz’s location, Marlow is shocked to find out that Mr. Kurtz’s success in obtaining ivory is due to the fact that he slaughters anybody that stands in his way of it. The savage and immoral tendencies in which the European imperialists trade with the natives pose to be contradictory of their original intentions. Thus, these tendencies extricate the implicit theme of the contradictory conditions of imperialism in the novel, The Heart of Darkness. Marlow’s perception of the intentions of the European trading company, pre-voyage, was that the company was attempting to civilize the natives of Africa. In essence, the company wanted to utilize imperialism to move into this area and educate the inhabitants in diplomatic and economic affairs. By its description, such an act sounds beneficial for both parties involved. It wasn’t until he actually arrived at a station of the companies in Africa that he had seen “six black men (natives)” chained to one another, carrying what was thought to be fossil ivory in baskets on their heads. Marlow describes seeing “every rib” of the men, also noting that the “joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope”. Shortly after this encounter, he then sees an isolated and shaded area under some trees in which some “helpers (incarcerated natives) had withdrawn (from working) to die”. At this point, Marlow is aware that the methods that the Europeans used to justify an imperialistic advance into Africa were under false pretenses. This contradiction was coherent to him when he witnessed that the trading company’s form of “trading” was enslaving natives to aid in the quest to find ivory. Throughout the novel, the Europeans walked about Africa with a sense of superiority to the naïve natives. This superiority caused the Europeans to feel empowered, making them assume that any interaction with the natives was beneficial to the natives. It was this mentality, plagued by carelessness that strongly led to the contradiction in the European efforts to “civilize” the natives. Natives were treated along the lines of machinery; except machinery typically does not get “beaten” as much as the natives were.