Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (Essay Sample)

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Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
While we have many meanings of the darkness in the novel heart of darkness, the darkness meant here mostly depicts the behaviors that are termed as evil. The perpetrators of some activities are found to have the darkest souls and thus have no feelings for human beings and their lives.
Darkness, as depicted in Joseph Conrad's, Heart of Darkness, means the existence of inherent evil that are practiced by humanity. Moreover, darkness has been linked to colonization that regards to exploitation of the people and natural resources by the colonialists. Trough colonization, darkness is depicted which causes Africa to be dark. In his work also, Conrad illustrate the negative ramifications emanating from colonization. Furthermore, darkness has been used in the novel to represent various parts of human nature and reality regarding the existence of corruption (Conrad 1957).
Moreover, darkness has been used to illustrate on inner states of specific characters. For instance, Kurtz who is a Caucasian man has a white skin bet ironically possess the darkest soul. However, it is noted that darkness is not strictly limited to the continent since it can appear anywhere else apart from Africa. This is evidenced by having some parts of England even with the state of civility it is there, darkness also exists as the rest of the globe.
Still in the darkness, dark hearts of the jungle has its morals eaten away by the darkness and also destroy the Kurtz soul. The voice is the only parts of Kurtz that survived the Congo’s destruction that he has all trough used it to force people to do his will. Since darkness eats Kurtz morality, the tools that he used in his actions was spared. This implies that darkness has also been used to symbolize both the moral place where Marlow fears he may end up in and the urge of greed and power which eventually overcame Kurtz.
More understanding shows that darkness has been used to reflect the people of Congo and the Congo in general. This is further evidenced by the evil sense in which the people are shown to have mysterious savages in the need of European colonizers to be civilized. Darkness has been used as well to describe something innate, like the soul. The Europeans who watch the villagers being torn apart by the quest for ivory shows darkness, they have darkest hearts (Conrad 1978).
From the Novel, Darkness has been seen to exist in some parts. To start with, the Company with head office in Brussels depict the presence of darkness since they trade in people and explaining their business as benevolent. In addition, Africa has been seen to have a darkness that is caused by the likes of Kurtz, who enjoy making others suffer by doing his will. Moreover, the England is not spared either as the Europeans colonizers are not treating Africans well; they enjoy seeing them suffer.
The presence of darkness has caused many impacts to the audience and mostly the victims themselves. Cruelty is witnessed as a result of darkness. It is seen that Mr. Kutz liked treating people with harshness and being cruel to everybody. In addition, hypocrisy is witnessed as a result of darkness in the people’s souls. Colonizers caused every kind of suffering to the villagers and enjoyed seeing them suffer. The heinous acts of the colonizers and Kurtz show that they didn’t value human life and treated as useless objects and subjecting them to suffering (Conrad 2008).
Any attempt for one to get oneself out from this darkness was very dangerous though possible. Kurtz treated people with cruelty and subjected many of them to suffer. If for instance the victims would have ganged up together and figh...