The Literature Book

196

ONE OF THE

DARK PLACES

OF THE EARTH

HEART OF DARKNESS (1899), JOSEPH CONRAD

D

uring the 19th century,

imperialism reigned

supreme, and many

European countries wielded

immense power over their distant

colonies. Western writers often

held fiercely colonial attitudes,

and the sense of superiority felt

by the colonizing nation can be

seen in novels of the period.

But at the turn of the 20th

century, colonialism, and its brutal

effects on subjugated peoples, was

starting to be questioned. Authors

moved away from imperialist

perspectives to explore the

complexities of colonialism, and

the rights and wrongs of empire.

For example, Rudyard Kipling’s

work subtly challenges the image of

the benevolent British Empire. But

nowhere are the themes of colonial

exploitation and intolerance seen

more clearly in the literature of this

era than in the works of Joseph

Conrad, in particular in his short

novel Heart of Darkness.

The darkness within

Africa, the setting of the novel,

was for Victorian Britain “the dark

continent.” Conrad uses this image

of darkness throughout the book—

he refers, for example, to the river

Thames leading out toward “the

heart of an immense darkness.” Yet

London was also “one of the dark

places of the earth.” The novel

suggests that this darkness can

exist within as well as without—

a white man operating beyond

the confines of the European

social system, such as the book’s

enigmatic ivory trader Kurtz,

might begin to glimpse the

darkness in his own soul.

At the beginning of the novel,

a group of friends sit in a boat

moored in the Thames. One of

them, Marlow, tells the story

of his time in the Belgian Congo,

prefacing it with thoughts about

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Colonial literature

BEFORE

1610 –11 Prospero enslaves

Caliban in Shakespeare’s

The Tempest, one of the

earliest fictional works to

depict colonial attitudes.

1719 In Robinson Crusoe,

Daniel Defoe’s hero teaches

the native Friday the “superior”

ways of the Western world.

AFTER

1924 E. M. Forster’s A Passage

to India questions whether

there can ever be a true

understanding between the

colonizer and the colonized.

1930s The Négritude literary

movement, led by Aimé

Césaire and L-S Senghor,

rejects French colonial racism

for a common black identity.

1990s The study of colonial

representation in literature—

postcolonialism—becomes

popular in literary theory.

Going up that river

was like travelling back

to the earliest beginnings

of the world.

Heart of Darkness

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