Postcolonial Study of Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is one of the most discussed and controversial texts in postcolonial study. It shows the nature and effect of European colonialism in Africa. At the same time, it attacks the colonizers as well, though Conrad can not escape the attack of some post colonial critics like Chinua Achebe for his “dehumanizing” the Africans.

Almost all the characters in Marlow's tale take part in the colonialist enterprise for selfish purposes. The narrator expresses that the target of the colonial expedition in different times has been Congo, the heart of darkness which has been the mission for many Europeans

“bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire”

Here the symbols "the sword" and "the torch” refer to brutal forces colonial enterprise and to the negation of the native culture by the so called light of civilization.

          Marlow's aunt is pleased with herself for helping to send Marlow to Africa as one of the ‘workers' and as an ‘emissary of light' bearing the task of ‘weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways'.

In fact, the Europeans have set themselves in Congo as the saviour and light bringer, but ironically they are doing nothing beneficial for the natives other than suppressing, oppressing and degrading them.

In Heart of Darkness, the colonial agent is Mr. Kurtz. When he first came he was “a first-class agent”, “a very remarkable person”, but within very short time after his coming to Congo, instead of turning his station into ‘a centre... for humanizing, improving, instructing' (p.48), Kurtz, the central figure, has given in to the ‘fascination of the abomination' (p.21), as indicated by the human heads on the poles around his house.  “Evidently the appetite for more ivory”, as Kurtz’ Russian friend observes, has spoiled Kurtz. Indeed, lust for power and wealth corrupts humanity to a great extent and reduces into savagery.  

Conrad is in the novella critical of the effects of colonialism. Marlow gathers firsthand experience of the cold truth of colonization: physically wasted workers operating in deplorable conditions, backstabbing co-workers jockeying for the most profit and recognition, and a colonized people literally being shackled.  It's as if the company is a steamroller plowing through the jungle, flattening anything and anyone that happens to be in the way, all, of course, in the name of profit.  On his journey, Marlow, Conrad’s alter ego, meets “a white man in an unbuttoned uniform, camping on the path with an armed escort”. The white man claims that he is working for the “improvement” of this region. Marlow ironically says that he could not understand the meaning of “improvement” until he sees

“the body of a middle-aged negro, with a bullet-hole in the forehead”.  

At the very first of the novella, Marlow, while on a boat anchored in the Thames river outside London, expresses his realization:

"And this also…has been one of the dark places of the earth."

And this observation, leads him to recollect and tell his journey to Congo which was thought to be the heart of darkness but later he realized the reversal.

Kurtz is the embodiment of the whole Europe. Marlow explores his identity:

His mother was half-English, his father was half-French. All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz.

Moreover, The International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs commissions Kurtz to write a report.

Therefore, when we see that Kurtz presides over the natives' midnight dances which always end with ‘unspeakable rites', it seems that Europe itself has begun to occupy a high place among the devils of the land for its taking pleasure in human sacrifice, in the shedding of the blood of human beings, in sexual orgies, in sexual perversions, and in similar other monstrous passions. 

Therefore, Kurtz’s last cry ‘horror! horror!' can be his recoil from European brutality in Africa and thus, a judgment on failure of white civilization. Thus, we find deadness and illusory greatness of Western civilization in this novella.

In spite of showing such presentation of colonialism, Conrad can not get rid of the post colonial criticism. Chinua Achebe's controversial article “An Image of Africa” on Heart of Darkness expresses the allegation that in Western psychology there is a desire and indeed a need

"to set Africa up as a foil to Europe, as a place of negations at once remote and vaguely familiar, in comparison with which Europe's own state of spiritual grace will be manifest."

Achebe also entitles Conrad as "a bloody racist" who tries to show his "civilized" culture against the ‘darkness" of a "primitive" Africa and thus de-humanizes Africans.

For this reason, Marlow can express his disgust at his journey into the savage beauty of the jungle, a primeval world, full of peril and lush

"Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world.”

Achebe’s criticism of Heart of Darkness raised such a storm in the thinking of postcolonial study that one of the English professors wrote to Achebe,

“After hearing you the other night I now realize that I had never really read Heart of Darkness although I have taught it for years.” (Achebe, x)

          To conclude, ………….