Heart Of Darkness :: essays research papers

The Transformation of Marlow - Conrad&8217s Explication of Europe&8217s Colonial habituate in Africa In &8220Heart of Darkness Conrad introduces his protagonist Marlow, his journey through the African Congo and the &8220enlightenment of his soul. With the skilled use of symbols and Marlow&8217s experience he depicts the European colonialism in Africa, practice Conrad witnessed himself. Through Marlow&8217s observations he explicates the naiveness of the Europeans and the insincere purpose of their voyageling into the &8220dark continent. Marlow&8217s experience in Africa starts with the desire for travel and spacious journeys to conquer the &8220blank spaces on the map and the naive study that the committal of the Europeans is to civilize the natives. Marlow&8217s aunt believes that this voyage is a mission to &8220wean those ignorant millions from their horrid ways. (Conrad, 16). In reality everywhere they went they colonized the land, used the natural resources, and left rui ns behind them. Marlow says,&8220They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind - as is very straight-laced for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it out from those who have different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves... (Conrad, 10). With the blossom of his journey Marlow starts his &8220enlightenment. We can observe his evolution from &8220everyday European to some iodin who realizes his feature naiveness and begins to see the surrounding reality. This is the moment when he witnesses the shelling of the continent,&8220In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was,incomprehensible, firing into a continent. Pop, would go one of the six-inch guns a small flame would dart and vanish, a little fresh smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a weakly screech - and nothi ng happened. Nothing could happen. There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in the plenty (Conrad, 17).Marlow is watching this occurrence, what to his fellow Europeans appear to be a fierce battle, in his eyes is a senseless destruction. He sees them firing &8220tiny projectiles producing a &8220pop, which symbolically represents the falsity of the European mentality. With that passage Conrad starts Marlow&8217s realization, and from this point on he begins his separation from the typical Europeans that surround him.