White Sepulchres: Heart Of Darkness By Joseph Conrad

“I don't like work--no man does--but I like what is in the work--the chance to find yourself. Your own reality--for yourself not for others--what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.”

Marlow in Heart of Darkness undergoes substantial identity changes as Conrad depicts the moral confusions of the protagonist as he ventures through the Congo. Conrad’s representation of the poisonous ethos of imperialism,where the self-image of racial supremacy, is ethically scrutinised. From their exploration of prejudice, the writer establishes discrimination as a product of Imperialism. Conrad comments on the times as being ‘reckless without hardihood, greedy without audacity, and cruel without courage’. Heart of Darkness was published at the height of European imperialism. Queen Victoria’s reign was coming to an end, coinciding with a Fin-de-siècle; anxiety that empires would fall. His novel takes place in foreign environments that had to cope with the oppression produced by capitalist countries like Britain. Conrad’s novel portrays deep social unrest where racial inequalities were predominantly to blame. 

Conrad’s title reflects the "heart of darkness" within the men in the novel, who can sometimes use others for their own benefit and profit, casting away human life as if it had no value. The term infers the lack of conscience in Kurtz who embodies the slave owners across the British Empire and America who manipulate the "primitive" people to the light of civilization. Conrad’s title may also refer to the Congo itself, due to the darkness of its uncharted territory and the mysteries that lurked within. “Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine”. Here, Conrad creates unsettling and uncomfortable imagery of the journey along the sweltering river and claims that it is as if Marlow has gone back in time to a world which seems prehistoric. There is considerable alienation depicted in the surroundings experienced by all the crew onboard the ship. Their trepidation is so strong that they develop a paranoia of the wilderness – its eerie silences and sudden blinding fogs, its impenetrable darkness. Being so far removed from any vestige of civilization only adds to their sense of helplessness. As well as the environment, the non-advanced natives with immense cultural differences at the time, aggravate the ship crew’s xenophobic attitudes.  Robshaw explains ‘In nineteenth-century Britain, Africa was known as the ‘dark continent’, a reference to its unexplored nature which quickly became a shorthand summation of the supposed barbarism and lack of civilisations of its peoples’. Conrad is creating a situation far away from modern fin-de-siècle civilisation, geographically and temporally. "In front of the first rank, along the river, three men, plastered with bright red earth from head to foot, strutted to and fro restlessly. When we came abreast again, they faced the river, stamped their feet, nodded their horned heads, swayed their scarlet bodies; they shook towards the fierce river-demon a bunch of black feathers, a mangy skin with a pendant tail—something that looked like a dried gourd; they shouted periodically together strings of amazing words that resembled no sounds of human language; and the deep murmurs of the crowd, interrupted suddenly, were like the responses of some satanic litany”. 

Upon arrival, the Nelle is described as a ‘fierce river-demon’ with its crew, alarmed by the natives on the shore. The natives are described as being ‘plastered with bright red’ and conversing in ‘satanic’ chants, resembling a striking image of numerous devils along the entrance of the land. Conrad does this to show how uncultured and divided the British are with the native Africans, what is actually a tribal dance appears to be a terrifying warning to Marlow due to the hell-like imagery. Conrad uses hyperbole on behalf of Marlow’s uncultured and alienated perspective of the Congo, to resemble how the British had conquered a land that they knew nothing about. Instead, the imperial figures partnered their xenophobic attitudes with frustration for the unknown. In Heart of Darkness, the story portrays darkness as emanating from the depths of morality. The main example of this darkness is within the station manager Kurtz, who performs such debauchery in the jungles that he eventually becomes ill and dies. “The horror! The horror!” are Kurtz final words as he stares into the abyss. His final verdict on the imperialistic world he has been exposed to is one of deep distress and fear. The character of Kurtz could be considered a catalyst for change, and the symbol for the Europeans' failure in the Congo. Marlow rejects his potential future of becoming just like Kurtz, by realising his indignation for people within society that truly fulfil ‘the heart of an immense darkness’ and in some way is enlightened by seeing Kurtz descend in this way. Unaware of his own evil, Kurtz is unable to fight the darkness within. 

There is a question of good and evil that is addressed within Heart of Darkness; the motifs of "light" and "dark" signify that light is slowly fading and engulfed by darkness, repeatedly. There is a constant conflict conveyed in Marlow in terms of his morality. “In a very few hours I arrived at a city that always made me think of a white sepulchre.” To describe the town as a ‘sepulchre’ suggests a tomb. The city possesses an ominous feeling of death driven by the greed and opulent class of the business men who are deceptively described as the white of the sepulchre. Therefore, Brussels is conveyed as the capital of evil. There he sees two women knitting with black wool outside the secretary’s office, and he is shaken by the image. “The swift and indifferent placidity of that look troubled me […] Ave! Old knitter of black wool. Morituri te salutant”. These women seen knitting resemble the Moirai[1] in Greek mythology; the weavers of fate from the underworld, who are meant to spin and cut every human being’s thread of life. The Latin phrase used, translates to ‘Those who are about to die salute you’. Conrad uses Marlow’s sighting of the women to foreshadow the death about to take place on the journey to the Congo. These underworld figures control the paths of the characters on board the Nelle, proving that not only do they face moral challenges but also have to tackle unrelenting forces. It seems that these men aren’t destined to go to the Congo and successfully carry out the ivory trade, as they soon meet their demise upon arrival. The fates establish the death as a warning to Marlow to not trespass and infiltrate the land which many imperial British colonisers have done beforehand.

Conrad looks at the morality within the European ivory trade. The moral intention of the Europeans going into Africa was to civilize the natives, but instead they infiltrated their land, then colonised it. The Congo became victim to imperialism. In Heart of Darkness, Conrad presents Marlow as an observer to the extremities of the ivory trade. The protagonists, descriptions allow explicit insight into a dark place where morality is always questioned. The divide between the Ivory traders and the native Africans is so drastically separated that Marlow realises the evil of the imposers of imperialism are far too unwavering and impenetrable to tackle. ‘Marlow ceased, and sat apart, indistinct and silent, in the pose of a meditating Buddha’. Conrad portrays an image of enlightenment for Marlow when he’s depicted as a Buddha suggesting Marlow has come to terms with the darkness of the world. Both writers criticise the colonisation which plagued vulnerable countries. The fact that they expose the world of imperialism for what it is, in a pessimistic way reveals the writers disapproval of the impacts of imperialism. 

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[1] [Greek Legends and Myths: THE MOIRAI IN GREEK MYTHOLOGY (2013) http://www.greeklegendsandmyths.com/the-moirai.html]