Thoughts on the Heart of Darkness

The Heart of Darkness is a short novel written by Joseph Conrad and draws from his experiences as a steamboat captain on the Congo River in the late eighteen-hundreds. It is one of those novels that everyone was supposed to have read. As the backdrop for his narrative, Conrad uses vivid scenes of the rainforest and river, along with unflattering descriptions of its inhabitants.

It is a chronicle of the brutal exploitation, atrocities and enslavement of the indigenous peoples of the Congo by nineteenth century Belgian colonialists and ivory traders.

I first read the book as a high school assignment without any knowledge of the world, and thought of it primarily as an adventure story. After my own trip up the Congo River, I reread it with greater cultural insight and a broader historical knowledge. 

In his writing, Conrad who was born in Poland and became an English citizen, condemns the inhuman treatment of the Congolese natives under Belgium’s rule, but never mentions colonial Britain’s mistreatment of indigenous peoples in other parts of Africa and Asia or Britain’s involvement in the slave trade.

As a young high school student, I naively thought that the title, “The Heart of Darkness,” alluded to the mysteries of the unexplored Congo Basin and its shadowless equatorial jungle.

When I reread it, I realized that what it referred to was the evil that is exposed in the hearts of men when the thin veneer of civilization is scraped away.

Reading that celebrated story again with my perception sharpened by travel and experience was for me, a tradeoff between its eloquent prose on one hand, and on the other, its condescending descriptions of the native Congolese.

Has Conrad´s book passed the test of time?

In the last hundred years, that question has been repeatedly debated. Literary scholars and historians still can’t decide if it is a critique of colonialism or an example of it, and because he is a brilliant and praised writer, and academia considers the book to be a classic, Conrad is usually forgiven for the demeaning way he describes the indigenous peoples of the Congo. 

What remains is the troubled history of modern Africa, where poverty, corruption, political instability and the worst forms of violence exist in a perpetuating cycle. That is the toxic legacy of European imperialism, greed and negligence.              

*Henry Morton Stanley in his Africa books written in the 1880s describes Africa as the “dark continent” to create a sense of mystery and excitement about its unknown people and unexplored forests.