Heart of Darkness

From 1885 to 1908, an area in Africa now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, then under the rule of King Leopold II of Belgium, experienced an intense genocide. Through the Red Rubber system, the people of the Congo were essentially enslaved to harvest rubber. Those who failed to collect enough rubber had their hands chopped off. Some died from disease brought on by the terrible conditions, while others were just flat-out murdered. It is estimated that around three to thirteen million people died between 1885 and 1908, perhaps 25 to 50 percent of the total population. By the end of this period, the Congo, which just a 100 years ago had hosted the expansive and successful Kongo Empire, had seen its natural resources destroyed, its people mutilated, and its entire society changed forever.

The negative legacy of colonialism is strong throughout Africa and across the world, but the Congo is one of the countries that suffered most. This is a horrifying, disgusting legacy. And one that this book does not on any level respect.

On the surface, this book can be read as anti-colonialist, a narrative that decries the brutality with which King Leopold II and other rulers allowed African people to be treated. This reading is comforting to us. It feels right. How can we read of their deaths and not feel ashamed? How can we see the heads of so-called rebels on pikes and not find ourselves filled with horror? How can we read a scene in which people walk in a chain gang and not find our deepest sympathies with them? n  How could Conrad not have felt the same?n

But I do not believe that is the intent, or, to be quite honest, an accurate reading of the narrative of this book. Conrad’s descriptions and depictions of black people are n  dehumanizingn to their core. No black character in this book feels real, feels like a person we may empathize with and care for. It is in the descriptions of Kurtz’s black mistress, of the slave-boy whose only contribution to the narrative is the line “Mistah Kutz, he dead” - Conrad does not share our empathies. Our horror at their fate and in their suffering is our own, not the narrators.

The thing about this book is that it’s not a criticism of colonialism, and while reading it as such feels viable on the surface, n  looking deeper into the narrative makes this book feel odder and odder.n This book is a look at the depth of human evil and how that can be brought out when society breaks down. Notice the end of that sentence? Because the reason Africa is the subject of this book is because this narrative fundamentally believes that n  Africa is a primitive, uncivilized, immoral landscape.n Which I find to be an inaccurate and frankly immoral view of Africa. The historical record of our time shows that pre-Colonial (and pre-slave trade) African civilization was filled with the same life as European civilizations, and populated by strong kingdoms. Conrad emphatically believes otherwise. And while I am willing to understand on some level that this was an ingrained belief of European colonists, this book pushes this message to a very high degree - it’s irrevocably tied to the message of the book - that I found impossible to ignore.

Yes, the idea is also pushed that the people of Europe are really no different from the people of the Congo. I am fully aware that Joseph Conrad is getting at the idea that none of us are so evolved and none of us are so civilized ourselves and white society cannot put itself totally above others. Conrad is explicitly attempting to put black people and white people on an equal level of brutality. But this narrative is still fundamentally flawed. The white characters in this book are evil colonists, but they are depicted as people. The black characters of this book are “savages.” They are rebels. At best, they are the helmsman, unnamed in his own narrative and dying ten pages in. At worst, they are literal cannibals. n  The narrative shows a fundamental dehumanization of each “savage” character, undermining any sort of anti-colonialist or pro-African message.n

And I find that fundamentally disturbing. If I cannot feel any horror within the narrative for a genocide, a time in which culture was destroyed and the environment strangled and thousands slaughtered for the profit of an empire, how can I garner anything from this book? How can I, in good conscience, enjoy or recommend this book?

I understand and appreciate that many are going to read this review and think I misread the text, because this book is a classic. I would remind them that no work of literature can be kept free from critique because it has stood the test of time. And beyond that, I do not believe this is at all a surface reading. It’s been pushed in the minds of many that reading this book as racist is a surface-level interpretation, but I genuinely believe that the racism is what you get upon close reading.

Literary analysis of racist historical works is a polarizing and complex topic, and I recognize that many will feel antagonistic towards this viewpoint. I also fully admit that this book makes good use of an unreliable narrator and is one of the most gritty classics I have read as to its depiction of the human soul, and I have nothing against those who enjoyed it. But I cannot enjoy this for those and erase the flaws. n  I cannot appreciate the literary merit of a book that lacks a fundamental understanding of the humanity of black people.n And I'm not sure I believe that I should.

recommended reading: Chinua Achebe's beautifully rendered essay on Heart of Darkness.

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Revisiting The Heart of Darkness


After passing past that Castle of Ego,

Laying siege on the very borders of Mind,

We entered the vast and bristling forests,

Of that strange, strange land, that Id,

Which doth divide the knowing, waking,

From the land of dreaming, unknowing.

But this way is much too hard to follow;

And is harder even to describe to you:

We are more likely here to perish,

Here in these vast, dense hinterlands;

For these woods that we see arrayed,

Has never previously been crossed,

By mortal men or by Gods before,

Except by the Duke, on his missions,

To plunder and to subjugate.



He had sliced a path so wide and true,

For himself and his army vast,

Marking along the trees as he trode,

Deeper and deeper into these woods,

Holding fast to his own marks,

And to the crude compasses of his day,

Wary of the beasts and birds,

And of dark shadows of the serpents,

And the importunities of bugs and bites.

Vexed he was by silence and dark,

But angered more by lonely shrieks.



So we move on in this path of old;

Those old trees that the Duke had marked,

Now but marshy ground to mire our carts,

When will we cross these woods so dark,

And reach the sparkle at the other end?

That river which we truly seek,

That drowned the Duke and freed the Mind:

That river so cool, called Sanity.

So there's this woman--wait a minute, are you telling me you plan to start your review with 'so there's this woman?' Which woman? Try again.

So there's this steamer--that's better. This steamer, in Africa, and there's this man. He comes and rescues this woman after--there you go again with this woman. Which woman? You know, the one played by that actress, in the movie. She and the man take the steamer down the river, and he doesn't like her and she doesn't like him, and then they fall in love--hold on a minute. What movie are you talking about? The African Queen, with Katharine Hepburn. Isn't that the adaptation? I think you had better shut up now, and perhaps stick to the movies.

3.5

“I think [the wilderness] had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude - and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core.”

Heart of Darkness is as easy to read as it is easy for me to rate it. (That is, not easy at all.) It is the classic example of a work that makes me ask myself what it is I'm rating when I rate my books: simply how much I enjoyed them? The ideas they pivot on? Or is my focus the awe they inspire in me? There are cases where I love the writing and not the story, the story and not writing, the principles at the core of the story and nothing else. How should one behave then?

This is exactly the problem I have with Heart of Darkness. Joseph Conrad is a master of English prose, and his words are indeed hypnotizing, some more than others. And yet, as much as I love it, I must also acknowledge that the writing was what posed me the greatest difficulty in reading this. It's normal for the paragraphs to be one page long, and losing the thread is all too easy. The fact that there is hardly a plot does not help in making it appealing to the casual reader.

So, no, I wouldn't recommend it as a book to read for pleasure; but I was utterly fascinated by its conceptuality, by the forest, by hollow-man Kurtz. Heart of Darkness is a book I would love to study, but not one I'd reread over and over again like I would a favourite.

“And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth.”

Book Circle Reads 19

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: More than a century after its publication (1899), Heart of Darkness remains an indisputably classic text and arguably Conrad's finest work.

This extensively revised Norton Critical Edition includes new materials that convey nineteenth-century attitudes toward imperialism as well as the concerns of Conrad's contemporaries about King Leopold's exploitation of his African domain. New to the Fourth Edition are excerpts from Adam Hochschild's recent book, King Leopold's Ghost, and from Sir Roger Casement's influential "Congo Report" on Leopold's atrocities. "Backgrounds and Contexts" also provides readers with a collection of photographs and a map that bring the Congo Free State to life.

A new section, "Nineteenth-Century Attitudes toward Race," includes writings by, among others, Hegel, Darwin, and Sir Francis Galton. New essays by Patrick Brantlinger, Marianna Torgovnik, Edward W. Said, Hunt Hawkins, Anthony Fothergill, and Paul Armstrong debate Chinua Achebe's controversial indictment of the novel's depiction of Africans and offer differing views about whether Conrad's beliefs about race were progressive or retrograde.

A rich selection of writings by Conrad on his life in the Congo is accompanied by extensive excerpts from his essays about art and literature. "Criticism" presents a wealth of new materials on Heart of Darkness, including contemporary responses by Henry James, E.M. Forster, Ford Madox Ford, and Virginia Woolf. Recent critical assessments by Peter Brooks, Jeremy Hawthorn, Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan, Andrew Michael Roberts, J. Hillis Miller, and Lissa Schneider cover a ranger of topics, from narrative theory to philosophy and sexuality. Also new to the Fourth Edition is a selection of writings on the connections between the novel and the film Apocalypse Now.

This Norton Critical Edition is again based on Robert Kimbrough's meticulously re-edited text of the novel. An expanded Textual Appendix allows the reader to follow Conrad's revisions at different stages of the creative process. A Chronology has been added, and the Selected Bibliography has been revised and updated.

My Review: Had I not read the critical edition of this book, I wouldn't have given it three stars. It's dense and chewy prose. It's a bleak story. It's Conrad's most famous and most lasting work because it's so astounding that a man of his era could be this perceptive and say so publicly! Oh, there was much tut-tutting at the time about the awfulness of Congo Free State's condition, but it was disingenuous at best and cynically political at worst. Conrad wrote a human response to a human horror, and he did so by making a White Man out to be Wrong!!!!!

Cue gasps! And start the applause.

But it is a slog to read, short though it might be. Simply put, Conrad spoke English as a third, yes THIRD language. He did an extraordinary thing, writing in his third language, but to me it felt like it was his third about half the time.

Still and all, I am quite pleased to have read the Norton Critical Edition, and to have a real sense of the book's revolutionary place. Quite a good use of my limited number of eyeblinks.

n  n
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Is Joseph Conrad a racist?

Well, that is a question, a question that is extremely difficult to answer. There are certainly racist aspects within Heart of Darkness. However, how far this is Conrad’s own personal opinion is near impossible to tell. Certainly, Marlowe, the protagonist and narrator, has some rather patronising notions as to how the Africans should be treated, and the image of the colonised is one of repression and servitude, but does this reflect Conrad’s own opinions? How far can we suggest that a fictional character embodies the author’s own notions of the world?

Marlowe could just be the embodiment of an ignorant Westerner with a misguided superiority complex. Conrad could have purposely written him this way to suggest how damaging the Westerner’s point of view was. There is also the consideration that the colonised doesn’t really have an intelligible voice through the entire novel, though, it must be noted, that the whole novel is technically a white man’s monologue; it is all reported speech rather than direct speech. So, everything Marlowe says could be bias; it could be slightly twisted with his perspective. Is this the intended effect? I don’t think anybody can say conclusively. Nor can anybody fully argue who Marlowe represents. I cannot personally tell whether he is an accidental suggestion of Conrad or a deliberate attempt to satirise the Western man. Convincing, and inconclusive, arguments can be made in either direction. This text is incredibly dense with conflicting interpretations. It’s hard to know what to make of it.

Well for all the difficulties with the racism angle, one thing is undeniable: Conrad does provide a harsh critique for colonialism. That cannot be ignored. Firstly, it can be seen as detrimental to the colonised. The Westerners exploit the tribes for their ivory and ship it back home. They take the wealth of the tribe folk, rouse their wrath and cause war between neighbouring villages. All in all, they shape the culture of the colonised; they destroy it. It provides an image of a society totally obsessed with monetary wealth, and how much they can gain through the evils of Imperialism. Secondly, it can be seen as detrimental to the coloniser. Kurtz enters the heart of the jungle and becomes completely corrupted. This suggests that the so called “savagery” of the tribe folk can set of the white man’s similar innate response; he can be altered and twisted into a lesser form. Conrad suggests that Kurtz becomes ruined as a result. But, this ruination could be attributed to the evils of colonisation rather than the black man’s influence. If both cultures can become ruined, then it can be read as a suggestion that colonisation is detrimental to all.

“They were no colonists; their administration was merely a squeeze, and nothing more, I suspect. They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force - nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got.”

So, Colonisation is bad. But, does this mean Conrad can no longer be considered a racist? If he wants to get rid of servitude and pull the white man out of the jungle, does this mean that this display of liberty ignores the difference between skin colours? No it doesn’t. Marlowe makes explicit reference to the “differences” between the white man and the black man. He doesn’t do this violently or purposely to offend; he does it in a patronising manner. He views the black man as a little brother, someone to be taught and led around. An educated black man then becomes whiter; he stands apart from his brethren. Indeed, the passage I’m about to quote is one that is used time and time again to suggest that Conrad is racist. Granted, the paragraph is terribly racist; it is patronising, offensive and vulgar. But, is this Conrad’s opinion? I recognise that this is a long quote, but the whole thing is needed to demonstrate what I’ve been trying to say:

“A slight clinking behind me made me turn my head. Six black men advanced in a file, toiling up the path. They walked erect and slow, balancing small baskets full of earth on their heads, and the clink kept time with their footsteps. Black rags were wound round their loins, and the short ends behind waggled to and fro like tails. I could see every rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking. Another report from the cliff made me think suddenly of that ship of war I had seen firing into a continent. It was the same kind of ominous voice; but these men could by no stretch of imagination be called enemies. They were called criminals, and the outraged law, like the bursting shells, had come to them, an insoluble mystery from the sea. All their meagre breasts panted together, the violently dilated nostrils quivered, the eyes stared stonily uphill. They passed me within six inches, without a glance, with that complete, deathlike indifference of unhappy savages. Behind this raw matter one of the reclaimed, the product of the new forces at work, strolled despondently, carrying a rifle by its middle. He had a uniform jacket with one button off, and seeing a white man on the path, hoisted his weapon to his shoulder with alacrity. This was simple prudence, white men being so much alike at a distance that he could not tell who I might be. He was speedily reassured, and with a large, white, rascally grin, and a glance at his charge, seemed to take me into partnership in his exalted trust. After all, I also was a part of the great cause of these high and just proceedings.”


The black man has been given animalistic traits. Marlowe describes them as having tails and remarks on their bodies in a way that suggests that they are beasts; they are mere tools for work in which the effectiveness of their body is their stock and trade. It’s all they have to go on: their ability to produce effective labour. Marlowe is repulsed by this idea; he recognises the absurdity of treating men like this, men who are apparently criminals. This is a criticism of Colonialism; it is a criticism of treating men this way. But, he, personally, describes them as savage; he, personally, suggests that their overseer, a black man who is employed by the Coloniser, is less black. Because he is guarding his fellow black man, he is now, according to Marlowe, whiter. This is blatant evidence that Marlowe (not Conrad) views the black man in a patronising manner. He opposes Colonialism, but he still views the black man as less than him.

Chinua Achebe takes this as direct evidence of Conrad’s own opinion. In his renowned essay, an image of Africa, he refers to Conrad as a “bloody racist.” He recognises that Marlowe may be a fictional creation, rather than an embodiment of Conrad’s own voice. But, he suggests that because Conrad didn’t condemn such racist remarks, they must therefore be approved by him. Achebe then went on to write a version of Heart of Darkness (Things fall Apart) from the black man’s perspective. I’ll be reviewing this soon in consideration with what I’m talking about here, but I think Achebe’s remarks are unfair. The evidence he provides is inconclusive. Conrad doesn’t condemn the racist remarks because he didn’t need to. If you view Marlowe as a purposeful creation of the Western man’s prejudice, then it would be awkward to condemn the prejudice. The ironic creation of such a character would achieve this without having to directly say it; it would be implied.

I’m unsure whether Conrad was a racist or not. There is not enough strong evidence to prove or disprove such an argument within the text. But, condemning him for being a racist is a little harsh; yes, racism is terrible, I’m not saying that. However, Conrad wrote at the end of the Victorian period. Whatever you may think about his possible viewpoints, to judge him by today’s standers is flawed. If you judge him by today’s rising liberal opinion regarding race, then you can systematically extend the same judgement to pretty much every author of the period and the periods that came before it. Half the English canon was probably racist. The Victorians, as a society, were racist. So was most of Western society for centuries. It’s how they saw the world; it’s how their society saw the world. This is, of course, a terrible thing. But it was the norm. If you dismiss Conrad based upon this, then you can dismiss many, many other authors too. So, for Joseph Conrad, who may or may not be racist, to condemn Imperialism and Colonialization is kind of a big step.

He is arguing against his entire government; he is suggesting that it is evil and corrupt. This is forward thinking stuff. It may sound simple by today’s standard, but this was the entire Western way of life. They cruelly, and systematically, built their wealth one of the most horrible situations in human history. For Conrad to point this out is almost revolutionary. I enjoyed reading his critique on it; I enjoyed the irony and how he suggests the evil of such a regime. But, regardless of this, I could never rate this book five stars. It is written phenomenally; it is bursting with literary merit; it is wonderfully interesting to read. Some of the prose is just beautiful. However, I will always see the unattributed whispers of racism in this work; I will always be aware of the possibility that it belongs to the author, and I cannot ignore that.

Prin 2003, am căzut peste o afirmație a lui Borges dintr-un prolog adunat în Biblioteca personală: „Inima întunericului este, poate, cea mai intensă povestire născocită de închipuirea omenească”. Afirmația m-a făcut curios.

Nu auzisem de această povestire. Mi-am procurat o traducere și am citit-o aproape imediat. Povestirea mi-a adus aminte de toate coborîrile la iad din istoria literaturii, îndeosebi de aceea din Eneida. Căpitanul Charles Marlow povestește unor prieteni drumul pe care l-a făcut pe rîul Congo, printr-un ținut pustiit și amenințător, pentru a-l întîlni pe un anume domn Kurtz (privit cu venerație și spaimă de călători), șeful unei „stații” de exploatare a fildeșului. Întîlnește un om bolnav („un diavol veștejit”), trecut dincolo de pragul oricărei nebunii, și asistă la moartea lui. Marlowe se ferește să judece, dar nu e un secret că tot ceea ce a văzut i se pare atroce și abject.

Întunericul la care se referă Conrad este, firește, întunericul sufletului uman.

Aș minți dacă aș spune că această povestire m-a entuziasmat. Nici în 2003, nici acum. Dar nu pot ignora eleganța și precizia stilului prozatorului polonez (pe adevăratul lui nume Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski):

„Într-o seară, intrînd în cabină cu o lumînare, am tresărit cînd l-am auzit pe [Kurtz] spunînd, cu glas oarecum scăzut, 'Zac aici în întuneric și aștept moartea...' [Kurtz] a strigat în șoaptă către o imagine, către o viziune - a strigat de două ori, o rostire ce nu era mai mult decît un suflu: 'Oroare! Oroare! Am stins lumînarea și am ieșit din cabină... One evening coming in with a candle I was startled to hear him say a little tremulously, ‘I am lying here in the dark waiting for death.’... He [Kurtz] cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision—he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath: ‘The horror! The horror!’ I blew the candle out and left the cabin”.

P. S. N-aș vrea să trec peste faptul că scriitorul Chinua Achebe a denunțat povestirea lui Conrad ca rasistă și a stîrnit o polemică înverșunată. Opinia cea mai cumpănită mi s-a părut, totuși, aceea a lui David Lodge:

„E o greșeală să citești texte dintr-o epocă trecută cu ochelarii ideologici ai prezentului...; după standardele vremii sale, abordarea colonialismului european de către Conrad este una progresistă” (Norocul scriitorului. Memorii (1976 - 1991), traducere de Radu Pavel Gheo, Polirom, 2021, p.446).

This is a book I read twice and will probably never read again. I try to see this as a "great" novel but I have always wished Conrad had achieved a greater separation between his own voice and Marlow's. For me his inability to do so made it difficult to stomach the inherent racism in the book. The passage that will always stick out in my mind is the one in which the narrator muses that an educated black man is as "unnatural" as a dog putting on clothes and walking on its hindlegs.

That said, I don't think this book is worthless. In my experience the people I've discussed it with tend to either completely ignore the racism or excuse it and instead focus on the pyschological state of Kurtz or else they see the racism and completely dismiss the pyschological and other symbolic aspects of the book. For me this is not a great novel in the sense of it being one of the best ever written. There are just too many internal tensions and the blurring of the character's and author's perspectives makes this a very uncomfortable read. It is a great book for discussion though if all of its tensions are recognized. There is a powerful message here about how the darkness of the mind (and one's own inhumanity) can be projected onto others and one's environment and there is something very anti-colonialist and anti-racist about that. At the same time, these themes exist side by side with the author's own unacknowledged racism. Knowing that a book was written long ago helps contextualize and explain something offensive but I don't think it ever makes it less painful to read. For me the value in Heart of Darkness is in examining both the story Conrad set out to tell and the one he didn't even realize he was telling when he wrote this book.