A Harsh Reality

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness portrays cruelty and mistreatment through unusual lenses. He vividly describes situations beyond the moral comprehension of human mind without flinching. Maintaining a serious tone through the pages, he resembles news presenters who seem equally affected by a massacre and a celebrity gossip. He describes his situation as if human sin was universally accepted and mundane, as if we had seen everything and whatever else happened was merely a repetition of a past catastrophe and not nearly as impressive.

Charles Marlow happens to come across some hostile situations with such frequency that they define his routine. When word comes that the previous captain to his ship was murdered, he sets out to find the body. As he finds it we face detailed descriptions ranging from the murderers to “the grass growing through his ribs tall enough to hide his bones” (13). As a reader I have time to picture the organs decomposed into the soil, maybe swallowed by some starving animal, the brothers that never had a chance to give him that last hug, maybe kids that never really knew what it was like to grow up with a father, a lonely woman with the duties of a household left by herself and so much misery that accompanies death. To Marlow death is a natural consequence of life and misery is part of everything humanity comes across. He cares not about another tragedy more than the waves that rush past the stern.

But death is a light matter when human creativity meets egocentric greed. Humans are capable of far worse than murder and Conrad knows it. Back at the camp, Marlow goes for a walk only to find slaves walking around in chains. He “could see every rib, the joints of their limbs where like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, and all where connected together with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking” (25). The image would fail to be more impressive if we where there. Conrad’s imagery and attention to detail makes situations drill into our conscience even as Marlow discards them hastily. The narrator becomes a vehicle through which Conrad condemns the conditions slaves where subject to, the conditions in which humanity was building a future.

What we find inside the novel is no surprise after the title. The pages portray a cruel reality resulting from dark hearts and wicked leaders. There is no hope in his writing, no allusion to grandeur and honor. I only expect to find more misery, greater injustice and moral dilemma as I continue my reading of Heart Of Darkness.