Analysis of The Heart of Darkness

1. The Heart of Darkness follows the tale of Charles Marlow as he descends into the heart of the Congo in order to rescue Mr. Kurtz. The tale starts with Marlow talking to his fellow passengers on a ship anchored off the coast of Africa. The tale is a retelling of his memories. Charles Marlow is a young boy who had just returned from work as a sailor. However he gets bored with living in England and decides to take to the sea again. He gets a job as a steamboat captain for a company working out of the Congo. He travels there and assumes the position as captain. As he travels through the Congo, he sees the travesties of what the Europeans have done to the Congolese. They are a lifeless shell of what they used to be before colonization. Marlow then get's the assignment to find Mr. Kurtz. He travels to Kurtz and finds him. He is leader of a tribe of rebellious Congolese. Kurtz is taken aboard and there is a scuffle between the Africans and the steamboat crew. Marlow get's to know Kurtz as they travel back to the coast of the Congo, and sees the horror that man can become when apart from civilization. Kurtz later dies while on board the steamship.

2. The entropy of civilization in the midst of the uncivilized. Also, the debauchery of the weak by the strong.

3. Joseph Conrad's tone is very serious. He constantly focuses on dark and depressing concepts that are present from the very start of the novel. "As we left the miserable little wharf, he tossed his head contemptuously at the shore. 'Been living there?' he asked." His use of words like miserable or contemptuous leave the reader with a depressed tone. In another instance Conrad describes the death of sailors on a ship Marlow passes. "We gave her her letters (I heard the men in that lonely ship were dying of fever at the rate of three a-day) and went on." The connection between the lonely ship and the dying sailors is especially sober to the reader. And Conrad passes by this ship in an instance. This could represent how commonplace death was at that time. In one passage Conrad describes the African coast for the first time. "There it is before you - smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, Come and find out.

4. There is a lot of symbolism in The Heart of Darkness. One example of this is a little hard to pick up on the first time you read through. When Marlow is first traveling to Africa. He sees a lot of colonization, but one thing that stands out to him is a group of Africans paddling a canoe. They sing to themselves and look happy. This represents how the Congolese were happy before Europeans came to Africa. Conrad  writes, "They wanted no excuse to be there." This is contrary to the Europeans who used the excuse of civilization and God to colonize Africa.

There are a few elements of foreshadowing. One is the description of Mr. Kurtz, the antagonist, that Marlow, the protagonist, has to go and rescue. The description of one of perfection. The antagonist Kurtz is described as being the perfect person. However when the reader actually meets Kurtz, we quickly see how imperfect he is. The description foreshadows the actual character.

Another symbolism is both Kurtz and Marlow. The two represent the two spectrum of humanity. Kurtz is the insanity of man, while Marlow is the rationale of man.