Essay The Heart Of Darkness

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Savannah Hurley
Mrs. Wright
World Literature
9 May 2014
Soul of Darkness
Some of the traits of well-adjusted humans are that they empathize and identify with people around them. At the point when people lose this ability, they start to lessen their relations to humanity and increase their degree of savagery. In Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Conrad demonstrates that humans enclose some form of bitterness within his or her heart. This bitterness becomes evident when people strip themselves of a civilized setting. The novella reveals the corruption and true barbarousness of the Europeans as they leave their sophisticated country and attempt to develop Africa. Seeing the Africans as inferior people, the Europeans treat them as if they were animals. In the Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad depicts the Europeans as genuine savages in this novella.
In this story, the African locals have a superior quality of life compared to the Europeans. They have more restrictions that seem to humanize them more than Europeans. Limitation for human life is normality; the Europeans do not have this trait, which makes them more savage and cruel than the African locals. An illustration of this might be when Marlow was on his steamboat and was heading for Kurtz; he perceives that the man-eaters on his pontoon were starving and respects the fact that they have little opportunity to consume anything on their travels up the river. “Restraint! What possible restraint?... No fear can stand up to hunger” (Conrad 68). The cannibals on the boat esteemed life and treated them like people despite their basic desire for food. Conversely, the Europeans treated the locals like garbage not like human beings, slaughtering them and pushing them to work to death. This shows that the Europeans are more savage than the locals. Debra Baldwin illustrates, after Marlow witnesses the cannibals limitation and their capability to reason, Debra Baldwin portrays Marlow as being “torn, constantly revising his expectations. He expects the Africans to be “cannibals”- only to discover that they exhibit more restraint than the Europeans” (Baldwin 200). Restraint for human life is a characteristic of being human; the Europeans do not have it making them more savage and inhuman than the African natives.
Kurtz is likewise an illustration of how savage and pitiless the Europeans are and how being in the Congo progresses individuals. From the start, Kurtz came to Africa for the cash for his life partner, however that later changes as his new intentions are to get ivory and profit. Kurtz changes from having great plans to becoming gluttonous. As an example, Kurtz slaughters and puts the beheaded heads of locals on his wall encompassing how savage he is as he performed this horrific coldhearted act regardless of the fact that it was to show his dominance. An alternate way Kurtz shows his harshness was the point at which he said “Exterminate all the brutes” (Conrad 62), this shows how little he values the life of the natives as he wants to kill them all, which makes him inhumane and a savage. Samet Guyen’s Post-Colonial Analysis of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness states, “Kurtz uses these skulls to threaten the others and this shows his brutality against the natives” (Guven 84). Continuing from aforementioned before Kurtz becomes a hollow being from his actions and Marlow confirms that his cruel treatments appear in his physical appearance and his physical appearance is leading to death
An alternate case of how the Europeans are savages is the way the Europeans in the book characterize themselves as dolts making them show up as if they are less of a human. One illustration is the point at which Marlow's watercraft finds itself under attack, and Marlow advised everybody on his boat to stay silent however, “The pilgrims had opened with their Winchesters, and were simply squirting lead into a bush” (Conrad 45). In this quotation, the Europeans neglected to listen to reason and
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