the darknees in heart of darkness
...lonialists. But the river is still blank. That fascinated him. The motivation, idea of the maps here is actually symbolized guides to the exploration. The Thames symbolizes the gateway to the civilized world; in depth, it symbolizes the darkness. The Thames connects to the civilized city of London, which is in Europe, the ruler of colony system. Correspondingly, the Congo River can symbolize the gateway to the brand new unknown world, and was known to be another dark place afterwards. Then, the Congo River, which is the most important role of the article, it is another complex symbol. The river also seems to want to expel Europeans from Africa altogether: its current makes travel upriver slow and difficult, but the flow of water makes travel downriver, back toward gcivilization,h rapid and seemingly inevitable. Marlowfs struggles with the river as he travels upstream toward Kurtz reflect his struggles to understand the situation in which he has found himself. The ease with which he journeys back downstream, on the other hand, mirrors his acquiescence to Kurtz and his gchoice of nightmares.h‡@ gIn a very few hours I arrived in a city that always makes me think of a whited sepulchre. Prejudice no doubt.h The quotation above is from part one, the gwhited sepulchreh is probably Brussels, where the Companyfs headquarters are located. A sepulchre implies death and confinement, and indeed Europe is the origin of the colonial enterprises that bring death to white men and to their colonial subjects; it is also governed by a set of reified social principles that both enable cruelty, dehumanization, and evil and prohibit change. The phrase gwhited sepulchreh comes from the biblical Book of Matthew. In the passage, Matthew describes gwhited sepulchresh as something beautiful on the outside but containing horrors within (the bodies of the dead); thus, the image is appropriate for Brussels, given the hypocritical Belgian rhetoric about imperialismfs civilizing mission. (Belgian colonies, particularly the Congo, were notorious for the violence perpetuated against the natives.) Besides symbolization, there is another special feature. In this novella, Conrad arranged two narrators; one is Marlow who tells the tale. One is a passenger who isnft even given a name tells us about the surroundings, the reactions of the other audiences, indirectly shows readers the status. One is Marlow, the narrator in this novel, likes a surrogate for the author. He recounts the tale to the passengers then he takes us into his journey physically, moreover mentally revealing much truth. He acts as a guide for the reader. Marlowfs intermediary position can be seen in his eventual illness and recovery. Unlike those who truly confront or at least acknowledge Africa and the darkness within themselves, Marlow does not die, but unlike the others in the Company, who only focus on money and advancement, Marlow suffers horribly. He is thus gcontaminatedh by his experiences and memories, so he needs to repeat his story to all who will listen to achieve something like purgation or penance. Kurtz, who was thought to be civilized, but lead a brutal life in the Inner Station when Marlow meet him. He is a somewhat evil genius. He does not trade but rather takes ivory by force, and he describes his own treatment of the natives with the words gsuppressionh and gexterminationh: he does not hide the fact that he rules through violence and intimidation. His perverse honesty leads to his downfall, as his success threatens to expose the evil practices behind European activity in Africa. This shows that in Europe, the civilized world, they behave civilizedly, whereas in the dark place, they totally forget the gcivilizationh. That is the truth of imperialism. Kurtz, although is not the leading role here, he does play a very important part. He was the object of Marlowfs quest. And he is another gdar...