A Man or a Journey?

   In the classic literary novel, Heart of Darkness, author Joseph Conrad is well-known for his incorporation of deep symbolism.  There are symbolic themes of dark versus light, wilderness and civility, and as I read the book, I noticed that Conrad even used characters to represent his motifs.  One of the most prominent characters in the book, Mr. Kurtz, seems to symbolize the dark journey in and of itself.

The narrator of the tale, Marlow, describes how he began the adventure with an intense desire to discover. As to what he wants to discover, even he is unsure, but he feels and inexplicable yearning to get out of the old routes of his life and into the wilderness of what is now the Congo.  From the beginning, he is told of a man just as mysterious as the waters he is about to enter—a Mr. Kurtz, who has a rumored wealth of knowledge, expertise, and ivory from his travels.  Marlow craves to simply hear the man speak, and says later on in the story, “I was cut to the quick at the idea of having lost the inestimable privilege of listening to the gifted Kurtz” (Conrad 67).   At this point, Marlow has never met the man, yet thinks of him with the same sense of desire he has to navigate the unknown territory.  Both Kurtz and the land represent riches, adventure, knowledge, mystique, glory; the latter the source of untold resources, the former an example of the fame awaiting those who manage to tame them.

                Kurtz’s fate also follows the pattern of disenchantment that Marlow comes to experience as the journey goes on.  As Marlow sees the bloodshed and horrors of the “civilizing” they are doing throughout the land, he realizes that the adventure he has sought is far from noble and simply ends in ruin.  Kurtz is the physical representation of this.  When Marlow finally meets him, (his “coming to grips with reality”), he sees Kurtz as an influential man who has been indoctrinated in the local savagery and obsession with lucrative ivory.  He describes his first impression of Kurtz as follows:

“The wilderness had patted him on the head, and, behold, it was like a ball—an ivory ball; it had caressed him, and—lo!—he had withered; it had taken him, loved him, embraced him, got into his veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his soul to its own by the inconceivable ceremonies of some devilish initiation” (68).

               

Both Kurtz’s life and Marlow’s adventure in the darkness come to an end, and both are spoken of in ironic reverence and adoration back home in the city.  Marlow is known as one who has braved the unknown and come home a survivor, yet is severely broken and damaged as a result of the trip.  He tells no one of these horrors, letting them believe what they’d like.  He does the same with Kurtz’s memory.  He refrains from describing Kurtz’s madness and dark habits in the jungles, instead allowing his friends and loved ones to cling tightly to the high esteem they have for the dead man.

                Now bringing this back to our day: many Internet users are like the city people of Marlow’s day.  They see those who dare to explore and exploit the facets of the Web as brave and slightly foolhardy. Some people are like Marlow, who are interested in the journey and set out to try their luck in the darkness.  Then there are others who, like Kurtz, embrace the Internet and its components wholeheartedly and are able to profit immensely from it.  But these are they who sometimes lose contact with reality and allow the online world to transform them into a monster who, seemingly normal to those around them, are internally lost in the obsessive and captivating wild into which they have entered.