Heart of Darkness is a book mostly narrated by Marlow, a very introverted sailor. The book focused on his voyage through the Congo River to meet Kurtz (who had a reputation to be a idealist legend and a man of great means). Marlow gets hired as a riverboat captain for a Belgian company whose interest lies in making profits by trading in the Congo colony. During his journey through Africa followed by Congo, he is whiteness to multiple inequalities, lack of maintenance and brutalities in the Company’s stations. His journey makes him mature as an individual as he is confronted with many physical and emotional conflicts with a variety of characters, “cultivated or savages”.
At the time Heart of Darkness was written, the British Empire was at its …show more content…
However, it is hard to say what it might exactly mean, due to the fact that practically everything in the book is cloaked in darkness. Africa, England, and Brussels are all cities listed in the book described as bleak and somewhat dark, even if when reading, the book describes the sun is shining brightly. We can therefore assume that the word darkness is more of a metaphor, than a specific term describing a specific thing. Darkness in my opinion is for the author a way to describe an inability to see. In this case, failing to see an other human being for whom they are and their real value as a person (mainly referring to this predetermined idea they had of savages at the time). Failing to see another individual means failing to understand that person and failing to establish any sort of basic relations with him or …show more content…
He however gives much more credit to these populations who are much less advance technologically and unaware of the world surrounding the African continent. He condemns this way of thinking and sympathizes with the African savages. Marlow’s isolation from the manager and the rest of the pilgrims in chapter two forces him to consider the African members of the crew, he then is confused about what he sees. For example, he wonders, how the native crewman who keeps the boiler going is any different from a poorly educated, European doing the same job back at home.
As for the European they view these African societies as undeveloped and uneducated. They also view them as a way to make income for the motherland. These societies are a huge source of revenue for Europeans, providing them with natural resources and a workforce. But still they widely view them as “savage cultures” to be educated (taken advantage of). “He compares his journey to a voyage back in time, to a prehistoric earth.” This quote reflects the European way to regard colonized peoples as primitive, further back on the evolutionary scale than western