Heart of Darkness

I have to admit I was skeptical about this book at first and not only due to the none too cheery title.  The fact that one of the smarter people in our class expressed his dislike for this book left little hope for me.  However I was surprised in many ways by the novel.  Contrary to my expectations it did not drudge along lingering on every little detail and talking about all of the narrators feelings and thoughts.  That isn't to say that Conrad doesn't delve into many of the more interesting aspects of the human soul and mind.  The title "Heart of Darkness" refers not only to the heart of darkness in the Congo that Marlow and his crew are venturing deeper and deeper into but also the figurative hearts of darkness in the characters of the novel.  It is foreshadowed that one of the characters is going to resort to some kind of brutal savagery at some point in the novel.  In a place like this it would be surprising if someone didn't.  Everything seems decayed and dying from the old railway car that looked, " as dead as the carcass of some animal" to the people that are hiding underneath the trees that are in all forms of pain and look like they could drop dead at any second.

In class we are doing an activity called the envelope activity.  The Motif that i am supposed to be researching is Savagery or primitive behavior.  This novel is full of both of these especially since it is based in the primitive Congo where all of the people are primitive in the European view of the word.  One prime example i found of primitive behavior is when Marlow and the steamboat float by the village of natives.  These people all start to jump around and yell n languages nobody understands and in other words act like primitive people and in the eyes of the Europeans of the day, including the people on the steamboat, like savages.  Not only are the black natives in the Congo viewed as savages but they are treated savagely by the Europeans.  They are put in chains and driven like animals to do the will of the Europeans at the trading post.  They are often not even doing work that really needs to be done an example of this is the huge, pointless, artificial pit that the white people made them build just to keep them busy.  Even when the slaves have been worked to the point that they can no longer work they do not get any respite.  They are thrown aside to the sweltering heat of the trees where they are left to die of starvation or by one of the many wounds that they endure during their labor.