Heart out of darkness
"Your strength is just an accident owed to the weakness of others."(page 13)
Book review, Title Heart Of Darkness, Author Joseph Conrad, Rating 5.0, Heart out of darkness
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Heart Of Darkness Joseph Conrad Book review |
In Joseph Conrad's classic novella, Heart of Darkness, the sailor Marlow serves as the author's version of Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, compelled to tell his story of conscience to whatever audience he finds. The story he tells is indeed dark, and indeed about the heart, albeit mostly the lack thereof. Conrad takes apart the European colonial enterprise, particularly the carving-up of Africa in the nineteenth century, and strips bare all of the tales of adventure from those times and places, along with the high-flown language of imperialism which was used to mask the utter barbarity of the undertaking.
The story takes place in Central Africa on a great river, where dominant Europeans dehumanized native Africans so as to enrich themselves with ivory. (This story is based on Conrad’s experiences in the Belgian Congo Free State during the late 1800’s.) He reveals the arrogant and amoral elitism which employed high-flown causes and euphemistic language to explain away the theft of land and resources from natives. It is easy to recognize the twentieth century dismissal and destruction of the Untermenschen by Nazi Germany in this European treatment of the natives, built on pure indifference to what should have been a civilized and Christian concern for life, family and health; Europeans systematically overworked, underpaid, starved, enslaved, and killed. The result? Europe became materially richer, and native cultures were maimed or destroyed, along with many millions of people. (note 1)
Marlow’s path leads inescapably to Kurtz, renowned for his mastery of colonial ivory trade, expected thereby to be elevated to high position. It becomes clear to Marlow that the Kurtz, in this time and place, is a man of great talents and ambition, so much so that he yearns to meet him and learn from him. But the path to Kurtz also reveals to Marlow the means and morality that Kurtz employs to high success: In Kurtz he finds a heart mired in darkness, the blackness amplified as it is hidden from societal view on the dark Continent, a man who subverts moral suasion to terrible ends, for the sake of? . . . more ivory.
In the telling, Marlow’s story also reveals a heart out of darkness: his own. Marlow’s initial plans were to profit from colonial opportunities, and his own prejudices were not initially respectful of the native people. But he was unable to stomach cold cruelty in the name of advantage: he did not become brutal, but despaired over the brutality he surveyed. Marlow’s witness and recognition of cynical inhumanity was not itself a cynical exercise: As long as there are those who refuse to hard-heartedly exploit the relative weakness of others, there is hope for a world with less ruthless destruction and one-sided profit.
"It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams...No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream-alone..."
-Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (page 72)
Conrad’s skills as a novelist are on display here: This is tremendous writing, even more extraordinary as it was written in Conrad’s third language, English.
Is the book hard to read? If only because the subjects are contempt for the lives and property of the other, and acquisitive savagery. Conrad does not shrink from his psychological description of the thoughts that are offered in the exercise of gain without moral restraint. His protagonist Marlow describes "the horror! The horror!" (page 215)
This novella maintains a passion and raison d’etre similar to Solzhenitsyn’s master work, The Gulag Archipelago, which at many times the length of Heart of Darkness, retained a burning outrage at the deliberate destruction of Russians by their own government, and spelled out a truth of human existence: We can choose to be good to one another, or we can choose to destroy each other. Both are books that tell not only dark and deliberately obscured tales of inhumanity, but also of counter-currents of humanity, the impulse to treat others as fellow human beings, to share rather than to dominate. It has always been and will always be a choice.
Thanks to my brother Craig and my friend Tim, who were recently telling me how much they admired Joseph Conrad’s writing, stimulating me to finally read some of his books for myself.
Notes
Civilization: The West and the Rest, by Ferguson
1. The European colonialization of Africa and East Asia was the last surge of a four hundred year effort usually called the Age of Discovery. Today’s Western triumphalists like Niall Ferguson play down the brutality of this period while celebrating its resultant global dominance as a demonstration of Christian cultural superiority. Too little of the influence and culture of the Age of Discovery is found in these accounts: Systematic brutality and rapine in the name of Christ. The American experiment started here, and for its part exhibited the typical dominant European attitudes and actions towards Native Americans, and its African-American population during and after their slavery.