Heart of Darkness

THE HEART OF DARKNESS

The symbolic meaning of light and darkness play the central role in the novel

“The Heart of Darkness”. Most of the book has darkness related things; the

setting of the novel is often dark, for example, the african jungle is called dark. The

most common answer of why is that there's not much light in there but another

answer it’s that the wild makes men blind to their situation

and surroundings, or when the steamboat is socked in by fog; dark-skinned

people that inhabit the entire region and are savages according to the company.

The light possessed people want to civilize them, educate them. The company

says that they want to give light to them all. But in the reality they try to keep

them under their control for them to work the company ; and, of course, there is

a certain philosophical darkness.

Social status, political power all are under the control of the called light

possessed people. The object ivory becomes related to darkness, those who

pursue it the most become crazy and violent basically savages by its influence.

The best example to show this is Kurtz, who possesses the most ivory, and is the

most brutal. Kurtz instead of getting rich and gaining power as he wished, the

minute he lands in Congo slowly he looses his humanity including his morals and

becomes a “savage”, Kurtz represents darkness by showing the unknowable and

primitive heart of all men.

As any child, darkness is scary because it represents the unknown; it can  make

us think of things we are too frightened to see or even just imagine them even

though there is nothing at all in there or when it´s night and you hear a sound at

get scared but in reality it´s just the house making noises .  Several times in the

novel we see characters afraid, not of the dark jungle, but of what is in the

darkness.  One of the scenes occurs when the men aboard the fog-bound steamer

and they start hearing a cry from somewhere around them. The men know that a

threat is near, but they cannot see it; it is simply out there in the darkness,

Darkness also conceals certain savage acts for example one of Kurtz's most

disturbing acts is the placement of human heads on the top of poles surrounding

his house. He has been completely transformed by his experience in the Congo.

He has been lost in the darkness and revealed the savagery that any other

In this book the darkness is difficult to explain from only one point of view, the

darkness is used as a symbol that depends on the point of view of each person, it

could mean being afraid of not being able to see what is happening around you,

like Kurtz who died from it and Marlow who has been touched with memory of it

as he says "he has been one of the dark places of the earth.", the darkness also

represents the dark side of humanity.

The whole novel has symbolic aspects of light and darkness. All the characters

and settings are describing the bad aspects of dark and light.