The Blinding Truth

Heart of Darkness is a bone-chilling book. It forces the reader to take a look inside of themselves and confront the unknown. Conrad plays with quite a few themes, but I think that the most important one is truth. He asks his readers to question everything by taking us on a journey. What starts off as three men sitting in a boat on the Thames river later turns into an account of Marlow's experience in Africa. One line that stood out to me the most was: "Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valour, rage--who can tell?--but truth--truth stripped of its cloak of time" (43). Here Conrad is analyzing the mind of a man. A man feels many emotions, but cannot show them because being forward isn't be masculine.

Conrad then goes on to mesh two themes together: truth and darkness/light. He has a tendency to associate light with geography, and darkness with mankind. "Light" is mentioned at the very beginning of the book: "The water shone pacifically; the sky, without a speck, was a benign immensity of unstained light" (4). While he associates darkness with the "utter savagery" of mankind (7). Men are savages because we give them too much power, we put them on pedestals as most men did with Krutz. They allowed Krutz to "englarge" their minds (65). One quote that stood out to me was "You don't talk with that man [Krutz]--you listen to him" (64). We also see Conrad depict men as savages when the reader learns that Marlow is looking at "heads on stakes" posted outside of Krutz' house (70). Marlow couldn't make out the heads until he took off the binoculars and got a closer view. I think the binoculars are a metaphor, just like the fog was a metaphor; Marlow doesn't make out the heads until he sees them with his own eyes. Instead of the binoculars helping him see, they blinded Marlow, in the same way that the thick fog would have caused the natives to get lost on the river (51). Here Conrad is hinting at the idea of sight, and being able to determine the truth with your own eyes.

Truth is such a big topic in this book because there are so many hidden motives. One of the characters that we meet that seems to have a hidden motive is the Manager. Krutz overhears the Manager saying how he wants to "do away" with Krutz. This is crucial because it is at this point that the Marlow hints, and that the reader thinks, that Marlow's boat was sabotaged. Another character that we finally have the chance to meet is Krutz. Krutz doesn't really have a secret motive, but more so the reader sees this overarching theme of secrecy with the two women in Krutz' life: the native and the Intended. Both women represent a different time period in Krutz' life. Aside from being a clear representation of savagery and civilization they also literally represent the colors black and white. What I found interesting is that these colors can stand for so many things. These colors take us all the way to the end of the book where Conrad has Marlow say that "The last words he pronounced was--your name" (95). Even though the majority of the book takes place in Africa Conrad wanted to make sure that while Krutz did venture off into a savage foreign land and had an African lover, in death it was as if Africa had never changed him because he ended up saying the Intended's name.

The book as a whole felt something like the written version of Inception but to a lesser extent. The book challenged the idea that we have the power to make others believe what we want them too. It was almost as if Conrad was trying to show this through the god-like figure Krutz. One thing that I liked the most was that Conrad began the book talking about the Nellie and "light," while at the end he truly leaves us in the "heart of an immense darkness" (96).