lighthod Binary Oppositions in Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness Essay

Binary Oppositions in feel of Darkness In Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad used a series of turn traditional binary oppositions to convey the theme that every man has his admit heart of trace that is simply masked by the superficial trip out of refinement. The novella focused primarily on the adventurer Charlie Marlows journey into the African Congo, scarce dealt with larger themes. Marlow was from Europe and understood the basic premises of imperialism, just was unprepared for the world he encountered in the wilderness. The world of the African hobo camp did not abide, at that time, by the same laws with which Marlow had been raised. There was an inherent barbarism in the jungle that he had not previously encountered and for which he was unprepared. This is root apparent when Marlow encountered the shaded death grove early on in his journeys. Marlow see the natives suffering immensely for what seemed to be nothing - their work seemed for naught - but he did not speak up or stop his trek. This is as well the first time that the reader gets a glimpse of the broader binary oppositions within the text. Marlow glanced at one of the dying natives, one with a piece of clear European yarn tied around his neck. In the area that is the out Station, the white Europeans had the natives - and vicariously the jungle nature, as the natives became symbols for the land surrounding each station - in a stranglehold. In this case, the color white, usually associated with excellence or goodness, became a symbol for the evil that was imperialist colonialism. The black of the natives skin, perambulator the color often associated with evil and inner darkness, is a stark bank line to the white of the yarn. The fact that Marlow responded with q... ... oppositions, it becomes clear that it is only through the pretense of civilization that mankind is able to resist the internal darkness inherent in its nature. However, the intensity of civilized behavior is direct ly related to the physical and virtuous environment in which humans are placed, and is therefore unstable. Through Kurtz and Marlow, and their vestigial binary oppositions, Joseph Conrad proved that every man has a heart of darkness that is often obscured by the false illumination of a civilized society. kit and boodle Cited and Consulted Adelman, Gary. Heart of Darkness Search for the Unconscious. Boston Little & Brown, 1987. Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. Ed. Robert Kimbrough. seventeenth ed. New York Norton, 1988. Levenson, Michael. The Value of Facts in the Heart of Darkness. Nineteenth-Century Fiction 40 (1985)351-80.