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.

"Conrad-ception" A Story Within a Story Within a Story

Heart of Darkness was written by Joseph Conrad in 1899. It is a short novel that explores the inner workings of humankind through the narrative of a man named Marlow. Marlow recounts his experience sailing on a river in the Congo as an ivory transporter. The Marlow’s experience has incredible depth because Conrad himself actually was a part of a similar operation in his earlier life.
There are many aspects of Conrad’s form that contribute to how this novel can be interpreted. One of the  most influential choices that Conrad made in form was to have the story told by an unidentified narrator who is listening to Marlow tell his tale of long ago. This decision affects how we internalize every page. This creates a “story within a story” and that changes how we view both the story and the character Marlow. We see this story as something that has happened in the past, as something behind us. This distance gives us a level of security. But that security is completely lost  as the story concludes and we are left feeling haunted as we read:

“Marlow ceased, and sat apart, indistinct and silent, in the pose of a meditating Buddha. Nobody moved for a time. ‘We have lost the first of the ebb,’ said the Director, suddenly. I raised my head. The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky-- seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.”

Even though we just spent the whole novel one step away from the darkness, at the end we realize that the darkness might actually be right ahead. That it might actually be inside each of us.
Choosing to have Marlow tell us the tale also affects how we contrast the characters of Marlow and Kurtz. Since we know that Marlow is here with us on the deck and since we are receiving his interpretation of past events, we come to see how he was able to escape from the pull of the darkness. As the story unfolds we witness the unhinging of Kurtz, but we can be partially reassured because we know that Marlow makes it out to tell the tale. Although the darkness is imminent, we like Marlow may be able to overcome.

This “frame narrative” does more than influence our connection with the “darkness” and with the characters. It also teaches us about experiencing isolation. As Marlow tells us this tale we feel this desire within him to make a connection with his fellow sailors. He is sharing a part of himself that affected him so profoundly we feel a brotherhood with him for sharing it with us.  But, we recognize that there will always still exist some level of isolation. That we will never truly know how Marlow feels. As one of my favorite lines from the book says, “Marlow was silent for a while. ... ‘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....’”

Experiencing literature in this age is still about what literature has always been about. It will always be an attempt at connecting the minds, hearts, and souls of individuals. It will always be directed by the desire to overcome this isolation. THAT is why we have Goodreads, Amazon, and Kindles.

Like Carving a Path Through the Congo

There are times when I am given a book to read in class, and by the end of that book I immediately understand why that book is important and why it resonates even until this day. Heart of Darkness was not one of those books.

Heart of Darkness, I will openly admit, seems like the kind of book that was once considered very posh and important because it pretty much says that colonialism is hypocritical and bad, and in our modern time casts a large and not-at-all-ominously named "Company" into a questionable light. It seems as if the only reason why we consider it a classic is because it is old, and it reminds us of the mistakes once made in the past against native peoples.

Heart of Darkness is not well written, in my opinion. For the time, it was probably excellent and exciting and horrifying, but I don't think that this is the case anymore. It makes me think of a phenomenon that I like to refer to as "Nostalgia Goggles." We are found to be wearing Nostalgia Goggles when we think a thing is good and important now, because it was good and important at some previous point in history and for no other reason. We usually see this is mediums such as Film and Video Games. The Maltese Falcon was a good movie for its time, and did a lot of things right. However, if you were to re-release that movie with the exact same dialogue, film quality, camera direction quality, and other aspects of the film, it wouldn't be considered good by the majority of people, unlike when it came out.

From reading the reviews on Goodreads and elsewhere, I feel that Nostalgia Goggles have been keeping Heart of Darkness alive while the general consensus of the book comes out to "meh." It's okay. It might mean a lot to you if you're into it, but a lot of people won't like it at all. Yet, we put so much stock into it that one review puts it like this: " Heart of Darkness is one of those classics that you have to have read if you want to consider yourself a well-educated adult. "
Why?
I could learn most of the important lessons of the book by brushing up on the history of colonialism, and would likely be more educated about world events and important matters than if I read Heart of Darkness. 

This is not to say that all that is old is automatically bad. There are films and media that withstand the test of time. I just don't think that Heart of Darkness is one of them.