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... Joseph Conrad traveled to the Congo in the middle of this period and later wrote Heart of Darkness as a glimpse into his experiences and a fictional parallel to the events that were being carried out in the name of imperialism (Conrad). ... There was a vast amount of red… a deuce of a lot of blue, a little green, smears of orange, and…a purple patch…I was going into the yellow”(Conrad, 69). ... Before venturing into this world of imperialism, Marlow is eager and willing to do almost anything to attain his goal of exploration of the Congo, “I wouldn’t have believed it myself; but then – you see – I felt somehow I must get there by hook or by crook…Then…I tried the women. ... As Marlow continues his journey, and delves deeper into the heart of the practice of imperialism, his innocence, and to a certain extent, his sanity quickly fade, so that by the end of this expedition he is but a shadow of his former, idealistic self, “I found myself back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams" (Conrad, 141). ... Both separate in their own right, yet the disintegration of the characters after their exposure to imperialist practices is an open admission of Conrad’s distain for this ideology. Conrad has Marlow, at the beginning of the story but at the end of Marlow’s journey, state very succinctly his beliefs of colonization and imperialism, “The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much" (Conrad, 65).
Approximate Word count = 1234
Approximate Pages = 4.9
(250 words per page double spaced)
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