Kelley Pujol Writes: Heart of Darkness

If you have never read Heart of Darkness or seen Apocalypse Now - I highly recommend them both. Below you will find an essay that discusses the historical references in Heart of Darkness. You can link to Roger Ebert's original review of the film below:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19790601/REVIEWS/41214002/1023

You will find that his remarks were and still are dead on cue.

Kelley Pujol Writes:

The historical and literary significance of Marlow’s journey in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

It is common in the American South to hear elders advise young children on the essence of character. One’s character, one frequently overhears, is what one does when no one else can see. What is left unsaid in this epitaph is the implication suggesting that one should operate when alone as if everyone can see. One should imagine the shame and guilt that would be felt if by some chance one’s private actions were, as is also often overheard, “carried out for publication.” But what if one were operating in a system in which everywhere one turned, each unspeakable act one viewed is being topped in its depravity by the next? Who, then, is the holder of the higher moral ground? These are just two of the questions raised by Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The literary vehicle Conrad used to raise these questions was the journey of his main character, Marlow, down the Congo River into the interior of Africa as Marlow tries to reach the renegade character, Mr. Kurtz.
Marlow is introduced by the narrator in Heart of Darkness as a man who “had sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a straight back, an ascetic aspect, and with his arms dropped, the palms of hands outwards, resembled an idol” (Conrad 2006, 3). Already the reader is to understand that Marlow is but a mere man, and like an idol, a man who exists on the surface of life. He has no desire to plum the depths of the human heart, least of all his own heart, but he will be called upon to do just that. As he carries out his physical journey down the Congo River, he must also – however reluctantly – carry out the journey into himself. He must examine man’s inhumanity to man, and finds himself feeling less and less kinship with the European “pilgrims” and more and more similarities between himself, the natives, and the mysterious, yet unknown Kurtz. Marlow describes the journey into the interior as he states:
We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness…We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet…The steamer toiled along slowly on the edge of a black and incomprehensible frenzy. The prehistoric man was cursing us, praying to us, welcoming us, who could tell? We were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings; we glided past like phantoms, wondering and secretly appalled, as sane men would be before an enthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse. We could not understand because we were too far and could not remember because we were traveling in the night of first ages, of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign – and no memories (Conrad 2006, 34-35).
Conrad’s refusal to give easy answers as to what character trait or lack thereof enables men carry out atrocities in the pursuit of wealth and power is part of the reason for the continued significance of this novel in the world of literature. Marlow, however, might give a much simpler answer. Men carry out these atrocities for the simplest of reasons: because they can.
Adam Hochschild, in his book King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa, quotes Primo Levi, a survivor of Auschwitz. Levi states, “Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are…the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions” (Hochschild 1998, 121). Countless European men in the Congo – men who were most likely also fathers and husbands – carried out atrocities on the families of the Congo acting as just such functionaries. Even the members of religious orders of the Catholic church set up schools in order that King Leopold might separate children from their families ( many of whom his soldiers murdered) and then drag these children across miles of physically harrowing journeys in order that the Catholic missionaries might “save their souls” while endangering their lives. Those that lived were in turn, to become soldiers for King Leopold and begin this sick cycle all over again (Hochschild 1998, 133-135). One must ask oneself, is it any wonder that a man such as Kurtz reacted to this depravity in such an extreme fashion?
While the character of Kurtz seems extreme in fiction, Hochschild also notes in this book that there was more than one actual person who could be a candidate for the creation of this character in Conrad’s mind. One such individual, Guillaume Van Kerckhoven, paid his black soldiers to provide him with human heads to display, as he believed this “stimulated their prowess in the face of the enemy” (Hochschild 1998, photo caption). Hochschild goes on to recount the systematic maiming, starvation, torture, and beating of the Congo’s indigenous population by its Belgian occupiers. That a man who could maim a five year old child because her father could not work fast enough or throw a woman’s baby into the bush to die so that the woman could carry cargo before she dropped from starvation and exhaustion – that such a man could then return to Belgium and attend candlelit suppers seems inconceivable to the uninitiated mind. It seems that some degree of madness is necessary to even accept these facts much less to carry out such actions.
If any good can be said to have come from the horrific colonization and abuses by King Leopold II in the Congo, it can only be that through the efforts of men such as E.D. Morel, along with others, the twentieth century began what was probably its first international human rights movement (Strauss 2000). It raised the public’s awareness as to the true cost of their imported goods. Unfortunately, it would not the century’s last encounter with human rights abuses. Hochschild stated in an interview with the on-line magazine AlterNet:
… what draws me to these things intellectually is the mystery of seeing and denial. How is it that Stalin could send some 20 million Soviet men, women and children to their deaths--millions of whom remained true believers to the very end? How is it that thousands of people worked on the docks of Antwerp for years, watched ships arrive from the Congo loaded with cargoes of valuable ivory and rubber, then turn around and sail back to Africa carrying mainly soldiers and firearms, and thought nothing of it? Then E.D. Morel came along, stood on the dock, and deduced: this means the ivory and rubber is being gathered by slave labor. Evil has long fascinated people--or there would be no market for storytelling, from the Greek playwrights onward. I'm also fascinated by who recognizes evil for what it is and who doesn't (Straus 2000).
It would be nice for the reader of Conrad’s novel in this modern age to be able to look back on the colonization of Africa and the atrocities committed by the Europeans as an event that happened in the distant past. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Today men are not harvesting rubber or ivory by such means. Today society must concern itself with the ruination of habitats in the Southern hemisphere so that those in the Northern hemisphere may have an unlimited supply of inexpensive shrimp. It must concern itself with children chained to tables in order that vast numbers of garments may be produced for Western department stores, or children who are chained in even worse places for much worse reasons. It must look upon nations that were former colonies and are now in a constant state of internal turmoil, and understand that the West bears some responsibility for these situations.
Some may argue that globalization ( just as was argued about colonization) is a complicated issue. Perhaps it is. Just as the fog that surrounded Marlow’s boat distorted the voices crying from the shore and blinded his sight as to what was ahead of him, so do the justifications of men who carry out human rights violations in the pursuit of profit attempt to blind and confuse those who wish to find a better way.

Reference List
Conrad, Joseph. 2006. Heart of Darkness. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc.

Hochschild, Adam. 1988. King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Straus, Tamara. 2000. King Leopold’s ghost makes a comeback. AlterNet. 26 April 2000. http://www.alternet.org/story/1059. Accessed 14 May 2008.