The novel Heart of Darkness (1900) is one of the most unique and outstanding works based on philosophical and psychological interpretations, historical and sociological issues. Until the actual military conquest of most of Africa by Europeans, the continent’s populations, except in regions significantly influenced by intruders from Asia, were largely left free to shape their paths of development. Thesis The title of the novel reflects its main idea and perception of the African continent by Europeans, old prejudices, and bias against African populations.
The title Heart of Darkness has a symbolic meaning portraying history and rejection of African values and traditions. For most Europeans, the African continent was associated with slow economic growth and a low stage of social and cultural development. Because of the physical configuration of the continent, especially south of the extensive Sahara Desert, where good harbors were extremely rare, Africans remained for long periods isolated from the main centers of the evolution of modern world civilization. Conrad writes all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men” (Conrad).
Its inhabitants pioneered, again in eastern and southern Africa, the development and improvement of the increasingly complex implements that allowed early man to accomplish the initial mastery of his environment that was a necessary prelude to all later progress.
Culture and economic relations between tribes and African states were unknown for Europeans who perceive this land as underdeveloped and dangerous for a white man. With the appearance of a settled agricultural civilization, Africa began to lose its position at the forefront of the evolution of world civilization. The decline, however, was not immediate.
An integral part of the early progression was located along the narrow and fertile banks of the Nile River, where the early Egyptians, profiting from the annual deposits of fertile topsoil stemming from the Blue Nile’s course through the Ethiopian highlands, created one of the most highly developed of ancient civilizations. The symbolic meaning of the title can be explained as follow: “It was very quiet there. … Whether it meant war, peace, or prayer we could not tell. … We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet” (Conrad).
The novel concentrates on one of the most unique African countries, Congo. Congo locates in the center of the continent and can be compared within the heart of Africa. “The vision seemed to enter the house with me – the stretcher, the phantom-bearers, the wild crowd of obedient worshippers, the gloom of the forests,… the beat of the drum, regular and muffled like the beating of a heart – the heart of a conquering darkness” (Conrad). Conrad underlines that most of Africa, therefore, underwent slow and measured evolution in isolation from the events occurring in the major centers of world civilization. Conrad is no nearer a central reality at the geographical heart of the darkness than he was when, proceeding down the coast, he was aware of a “general sense of vague and oppressive wonder” (Conrad).
Thus, Conrad states that Africans were never entirely cut off from many of the important steps in man’s progress taking place in areas outside the continent. Conrad underlines that there was a great difference between European countries and African states. The results of the Industrial Revolution made it almost inevitable that Europeans, growing in wealth and power from their increased store of knowledge and many technological innovations, would expand their presence into weaker regions. Conrad underlines that European man enters a world of danger and enticement, so he struggles to retain his morality. In Africa, these issues are more complicated, for here the possible moralities, the means of restraint, may be seen to be less available—as alternatives, unreal.
The title symbolizes another reality and the African world which differs greatly from European norms and cultural assumptions. Conrad says at one moment that it is in “work” that a man may “find” himself, his own “reality”; later, however, he appears to contradict himself and remarks, “When you have to attend to things of that sort, to the mere incidents of the surface, the reality—the reality, I tell you—fades. The inner truth is hidden—luckily, luckily. But I felt it all the same” (Conrad).
As these quotations indicate, Conrad uses the term “reality” in two ways: the primary reality is the suggested essence of the wilderness, the darkness that must remain hidden if a man is to survive morally, while the secondary reality is a figurative reality like work, an artificial reality by which the truly real is concealed or even replaced. And Marlow admits that this reality of the second sort is simply a deluding activity, a fictitious play over the surface of things.
Using the title Conrad shapes the story and underlines its unique meaning and interpretation. Conrad states that at certain moments men struggling with death and a wilderness can see any reality in a connection between moral “rights” and his experience; a man’s most severe challenges are necessarily encountered in an “atmosphere of tepid skepticism” (Conrad). Darkness means struggles with life and destiny. Darkness lies in “the amazing reality of its concealed life,” and although Conrad often asserts that he is penetrating “deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness,” in his insistence upon the vague and the paradoxical purpose of the wilderness remains always inscrutable. For Europeans, the African continent is perceived and understood as awesome, vague, and passive.
In sum, the title has a symbolic meaning reflecting European prejudices against the African continent, inability to understand and accept a black population. On the other hand, darkness is associated with the wildness of the land and the underdevelopment of the states. The title has both positive and negative meaning within the center of a man, of a wilderness and human experience itself. African populations are associated with “aloneness” or remoteness from the world there is revealed a general condition of human experience.
Works Cited
Conrad, J. Heart of Darkness. Prestwick House Inc, 2004.