I could not tell her. It would have been too dark–too dark altogether…
The Values of Heart of Darkness
Conrad never shied away from injecting moral messages into his texts. Whatever his personal or literary thoughts, Conrad was an author with a notion of right and wrong. His most famous novel, Heart of Darkness, has been the subject of much criticism, both positive and negative. Both classical imperialists and post-colonial critics have taken issue with his work. The imperialists find his lambasting of western superiority irksome, while critics like Achebe perceive a prevalent racism from Conrad himself. We don't have to pay the imperialists any attention, but someone like Achebe deserves some consideration. Achebe contends that Conrad does not see black people as people, that he, at the very least, holds a view of black people that places them lower on the human hierarchy than white people. Conrad's unwillingness to give names to black characters or portray events from their perspective lends some credence to the idea that he viewed them not as sentient beings but mere props. Further, some troublesome remarks uttered by Conrad in his personal dealings suggest that anti-racism was not exactly a pet cause of his.
However racist Conrad was, it cannot be denied that Heart of Darkness is an anti-imperialist text. Whether or not his anti-imperialism goes hand-in-hand with notions of racial equality is up for some debate (though it seems fairly clear that they do not), but Conrad was not the sort of imperial advocate that other authors, such as Kipling, have become known (and reviled) as.
It is actually somewhat difficult to define exactly what Conrad felt was wrong with imperialism. He is clearly sensitive to the atrocities being committed by the Europeans in Africa. Whether or not he viewed the native Africans as equal to himself, he understood the brutality of their imperial overlords. He also clearly understood the absurdity of the imperial project; the utter disconnect between the stated intentions of the imperialists and their true intentions and actions. Whatever high-minded nonsense Kipling spouted about the civilizing presence of the white man, it is obvious that the imperialist's chief intention was to extract wealth from his holdings and return it to the motherland. Honestly, the reputations of the imperialists are, at this point, beyond saving. Whatever the morality of their time, or their intentions, or the material conditions on the ground, it just doesn't seem to matter. There is clearly a difference between a good faith missionary going off to help the poor natives and spread what, in his mind, is the incontestable goodness of God, and Leopold II, whose mission seemed to be to make as much money in the worst ways he could think of, but cataloging the specifics of that difference just seems tone-deaf and exhausting.
Thus, we are going to assume that imperialism is bad; that it is basically always bad. Conrad probably wouldn't agree with this, he was a product of his time, after all. But even in Conrad's somewhat objectionable morality there is much of worth. For the essence of Conrad's morality has nothing to do with the complex geopolitics and theories of power that pop up in discussion of imperialism, but with notions of honest work and honest memory. Considered in this way, Conrad's morality becomes more of a framework than a set of dictates. Conrad applied this framework and didn't quite come to the conclusions we would've liked, but we believe that a new application of the framework could bear useful results.
So what actually is the moral framework of Heart of Darkness? Through two of the text's pivotal scenes, we will examine Conrad's attitudes on work and memory. First, Conrad establishes the universality of his framework by putting into Marlow's mouth a tale of the Romans. Before Marlow begins his main tale, he tells his fellow Thames-travelers his thoughts on the Romans who sailed up the same river some 2,000 years prior. Marlow begins: "I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came here, nineteen hundred years ago–the other day…" Nineteen hundred years ago, the other day, the two are the same. The past and the present are conflated. But if our framework is universal, then it doesn't matter. The Romans confronted the same moral issues we are all familiar with. Right? 1
Conrad also uses this story about the Romans as a slick way to undermine English notions of cultural superiority. While Conrad might have been a racist, he was highly critical of western notions of cultural superiority. He saw the Europeans as arrogant and undeservedly patronising. These attitudes are toxic to the moral framework he will go on to establish. By referring to the Romans, the prototypical imperial civilization, going up the Thames, Conrad reminds his English readers that they were not always the rulers of the Earth. The roles were once reserved. By conflating past and present he suggests that this role reversal did not take place during some primordial past, but exists as a continuous process, as active in the present as in the time of the Romans. Thus, the English could fall from greatness just as easily as anybody else. This effect is strengthened when one considers that the Romans, the great grandfathers of western civilization writ large, are now but a dead language and some scattered ruins. Marlow is much more explicit a few sentences later, when he says that "your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others." The moral framework is universal, it is the application of it that matters.2 Thus, the English (and the Europeans as a whole) cannot claim that their world domination results from greater moral virtue. The Spanish did not conquer the Aztecs because the Spanish were invincible warrior gods, but because they brought debilitating disease and happened across the Aztecs during a time of massive political instability. The English did not take India because they were fundamentally better than the Indians, but because they took advantage of a politically fragmented and vulnerable subcontinent. The idea here is simply that deriving a personal moral purity from a collective moral purity absolves the individual of moral work or reflection. If you are de facto better because you are white, you never have to do anything except exist. You can derive moral satisfaction simply from being. You have devised a system that allows you to feel morally superior without having to do anything (white people have gotten pretty good at this). Conrad doesn't oppose this view because his is radically anti-racist, but because it is anathema to his moral framework. To be moral requires effort, and basking in false notions of cultural superiority destroys the will to work.
Now Conrad can begin constructing his framework. Central to it are the notions of memory, introspection, and work. Marlow continues extolling the virtues of the Romans, saying that they were "men enough to face the darkness." The Romans' manliness came not from their physical prowess, the size of their empire, or their cultural superiority, but because they possessed the force of will necessary to travel into the darkness. Darkness does not refer strictly to the darkness of the map, the uncharted regions at the empire's periphery, but to the darkness within themselves. Marlow also refuses to specify a Roman in particular. He deftly sidesteps the "trap of the great man." Like the inherent superiority of one culture, the trap of the great man is a method by which people absolve themselves of moral guilt. Simply put, there is a prevalent idea in human culture that some "great men" are destined to rise above the chaff and perform great deeds. Not only is this belief a tautology (the great men are identified in hindsight) it is also dangerous. If only a few special men are meant to rise above and be morally great, it allows the rest of us to wallow in our moral mediocrity. It is similar to the previously discussed fallacy of cultural superiority in that it allows people to ascribe the state of things to fate. In the case of cultural superiority, you are morally better no matter what you do because you are a member of a certain culture, whereas with the trap of the great man you are morally mediocre no matter what you do because you aren't a great man. Conversely, the great men are, by definition, always moral, because they are great men. This, like many of these systems meant to morally absolve a bunch of lazy bums, are predicated on notions of self-evidentness. Conrad completely rejects this. He talks of the Roman everyman, a sort of ancient Julius posca. There was nothing inherent in Roman culture that allowed them to better face the darkness, nor was the ability reserved for their great men. They simply did it.
There is a strange scene that lies at the heart of Heart of Darkness. The structure of the novella is actually that of nested matryoshkas, with Marlow moving deeper into his memories and, thus, deeper into Africa. Then, he emerges in reverse order. Thus, the structure appears like this: England -> Belgium -> Congo -> Belgium -> England. In the center of the story is the Congo, where, far up the river, waits Kurtz, the revelation of the story. But before Kurtz Marlow encounters something infinitely more puzzling and, I believe, more telling. As he journeys he "[comes] upon a hut of reeds, an inclined and melancholy pole, with the unrecognisable tatters of what had been a flag of some sort flying from it, and a neatly stacked wood-pile." Then, even more strangely, Marlow finds a book, An Inquiry into Some Points of Seamanship. Consider the framing of this scene. The objects that survive are those that reflect simple, honest work and introspection. A book on seamanship, a neatly stacked wood-pile. Marlow describes the book with the following: "at first glance you could see there a singleness of intention, an honest concern for the right way of going to work, which made these humble pages, thought out so many years ago, luminous with another than a professional light.'' The book's effect is so powerful that "to leave off reading was like tearing myself away from the shelter of an old and solid friendship." This is an old and solid friendship. What Marlow encounters is the distillation of an entire moral framework. A stacked pile of wood, an honest and thoughtful book. It doesn't matter that the book is utterly out of place deep in the jungle. The context of the system's application doesn't matter so much as that it is applied. Thus, even miles away from the sea, a book that seeks to engage in honest and genuine discourse is welcome.
Consider now what has not fared well. The flag: tattered to the point of being unrecognizable. The pole it tried to use to declare its importance is inclined, melancholy. Nothing of this nationalistic nonsense survived. And, unfortunately, it is for this same reason that our mystery man, the man who made this camp, is also doomed. When Marlow reboards his boat the manager remarks that it must have been the trader that left the scene. Marlows says, "he must be English," to which the manager replies, "It will not save him from getting into trouble if he is not careful." Of course it won't. In fact, the trader wasn't careful, and is already in trouble. One might wonder how, if he is clearly following the prerogative to work honestly and diligently, that he is still doomed. It is because, while his work was honest, he failed to monitor the application of his work. There is a disconnect, clearly, between the work he is doing and how that work is being applied. Marlow himself seems to notice this. In a metaphorical sense, the book's marginalia (Marlow initially believes it to be written in cipher, but later learns it is written in Russian), represents the coded (but real) connection between the wood pile/book and the tattered flag on the flagpole. The labor might be honest, but it fueled a vast and horrific imperial project. And herein lies the essence of Conrad's moral framework. One must possess the ability to perform honest, genuine work. But one must also possess the ability for introspection, to consider that work, consider its consequences, its applications. Most of the characters Marlow meets in the Congo do not even reach the point where they are performing honest work in the first place. But even the few characters that could be said to are clearly putting that labor towards disastrous ends.
For some brief remarks on the morality of work, see "Remarks on Work," by American Oneironautics.
The Darkness of Memory
Kurtz, who is clearly performing labor of some kind (the amount of ivory he extracts is said to be incredible), is perhaps the clearest example of disaster within Heart of Darkness. If the "heart of darkness" had to be a person, most people would nominate Kurtz. Kurtz actually represents a strange and uncommon reversal of the above example with the trader. While the trader might perform honest labor but lack the introspection to value its application, Kurtz seems to understand exactly what is going on. Despite that, he keeps doing crazy shit.
However, the representation of Kurtz's darkness, the actual "heart of darkness" within the text, is Kurtz's fiance, the young woman living in Belgium to whom he was betrothed. It is in Marlow's interactions with her late in the text that we begin to perceive the distillation of the text's darkness.
Before we continue down this line, we should further investigate what the text means by "heart of darkness" and what value this implies. There are essentially two ways to view the heart of darkness within this text. The first is that it serves as the darkest part of the text (the meeting with the fiance) and the representation of moral catastrophe. The second is that it serves as the darkness that is injected into that scene, the darkness that Marlow is able to confront while the fiance shies away. Heart of Darkness, as a paradoxical text (the imperial project is the ultimate expression of paradox) holds both of these to be true simultaneously.3 What this means is that the heart of darkness can refer both to the dark but honest reflections that Marlow holds but will not relate to the fiance, and to the darkness resulting from the fiance's delusion. To put it another way, the fiance's inability to face the darkness results in a darkness even purer than the darkness she refuses to face. As we will see, it is not Marlow's withholding of the dark memory (Kurtz's horror) that results in the fiance's delusion, but his appreciation of her preexisting delusion that causes him to withhold the darkness. The darkness wins out when one refuses to grapple with it. The fiance's unwillingness to grapple with whatever the "dark heart" previously was (Kurtz's death, Kurtz's actions in the interior) cause that dark heart to absorb her. At this point, she is so tangled that she is, herself, indistinguishable from the dark heart. She is the heart of darkness.
The Dark Heart
As we've discussed, Marlow's interaction with Kurtz's fiance constitutes the "darkest" part of the text. But this need not be a mere assertion, we have the empirical data necessary to back this claim up. In "Heart of Darkness - Data," we tracked every instance of the words "dark" and "heart" within the text. Variations of these words, such as "darkness," were counted. This project was intended to identify where, if anywhere, Conrad uses these words a disproportionate amount. It should come as no surprise that the text as a whole features "dark" and "heart" in greater frequencies than an average text, but these instances are not spread evenly throughout. Nor are they disproportionately located where you might expect.
When asked which section of the text they expect to be the dark heart of the text, most readers reply that they expect it to be the section in which Marlow interacts directly with Kurtz. But that is incorrect in the most objective sense that something in literary analysis can be incorrect. Tracking the frequencies of both "dark" and "heart" reveals that Marlow's second visit to Belgium contains both words in much higher frequencies than any other significant section of the text. Let us review this data comprehensively.
First, we tracked the frequency of "dark" and "heart" per part of the text. Heart of Darkness consists of three parts, each roughly containing the same number of words. Part III is actually the shortest of these three by a bit, but it contains well over twice the instances of "dark" as Part I and nearly three times as many as Part II. The same pattern follows for "heart." But this is not unexpected. Part III is when Marlow interacts with Kurtz. It is when Marlow gets deepest into the African interior. In order to further investigate, we tracked the frequency of "dark" and "heart" in relation to Marlow's geographical location.
In terms of location, Heart of Darkness follows a clear nested structure, with Africa resting in the middle. Marlow begins in England, heading up the Thames. This is where we meet him, and when he begins telling his story. His story begins in Belgium. He then travels down the coast of Africa to the mouth of the Congo River. He travels up the Congo River, deep into the interior, and meets Kurtz. Then he returns to Belgium and meets with Kurtz's fiance. Finally, the text takes us back to England and the Thames, where we witness Marlow concluding his tale. Mapping the frequencies of "dark" and "heart" over Marlow's location reveals something interesting. Namely, that the second Belgium-section contains half the instances of the word "dark" as the entire African section while containing less than 1/10th of the words. Marlow's time in Africa spans 28,832 words, 31 of which are "dark." His second visit to Belgium contains 3,175 words, 14 of which are "dark." The rate of words-to-dark in Africa is 930:1, while the same rate for the second Belgium section is 227:1. "Dark" appears well over three times as frequently in the second Belgium section than it does in the African section.
The entire section in which Marlow is with Kurtz spans 8,352 words and contains 14 instances of "dark." This ratio is 597:1, well over double the second Belgium section. In fact, all the European sections combined come out to 7,089 words and 23 instances of dark, for a ratio of 308:1. Conrad uses the word "dark" twice as much when writing about Marlow's travels in Europe than he does when writing about Marlow's direct interactions with Kurtz himself. The instances of "heart" follow this pattern as well, as our data clearly indicates. Of some interest is the fact that almost half of the appearances of "heart" are in sentences that also contain "dark." The sentences that contain both "heart" and "dark" also follow the patterns described above, appearing much more frequently when Marlow is in Europe than when he's in Africa.
It is very unlikely that this pattern is unintentional. Even if it wasn't something Conrad had at the forefront of his mind while writing, it is almost certain that careful consideration of his theme burrowed the conclusions leading to this pattern into his subconscious, and thus caused him to express his conclusions in his usage of these loaded words.
A Memory of Darkness
Kurtz's famous final words ("The horror! The horror!") leads directly into Marlow meeting with his fiance. This is the last sizable chunk of the text, the final major scene before we are pulled suddenly from the narrative-within-the-narrative and thrust back onto the Thames for the sudden conclusion of the entire text. Kurtz's statement serves as a warning, a declaration of what is to come. Kurtz is not reflecting on the horror of the African interior or his own deeds, but telling us of the horror we are about to experience.
Moving cleanly from Kurtz's statement, flowing like one thought to its natural extension, we see Marlow waiting in the "lofty drawing-room" belonging to Kurtz's fiance. The sudden jump in the text wouldn't suggest it, but nearly a year has passed. But time has no meaning here. The fiance, stuck in her eternal and delusional bereavement, doesn't care if Kurtz is a day dead or ten years dead. The drawing-room is, therefore, outside of time. Conrad's descriptions reflect this, painting a picture of a room that is eternal; a cold, forgotten temple to indistinctness.
What light once existed in this place is losing to the dark. As Marlow relates, "The dusk was falling." Even the fireplace was "cold," with a "monumental whiteness." Even the windows, though "luminous," seem more like the "bedraped columns" of some sterile ruin than the windows of an airy drawing-room.
The fiance embodies this darkness even more dramatically. She is dressed "all in black." Her head is "pale." She moves towards Marlow as if she's "floating." And despite the time that has passed since Kurtz's death, she seems like she will "remember and mourn forever." She is a shade, a ghost. She will mourn forever because she is stuck outside of time. Her actions are necessarily the actions of forever, and since the only action possible for her is to mourn and remember, she will perform them forever. But we should not take her remembrance to be the same as Marlow's. The fiance is, essentially, wrong about Kurtz. Her memories of him baffle Marlow. She does not understand what he was like, what he did, what he thought. Just like she is outside of time, she is functionally outside of space, and basically outside of reality. Marlow continues describing her, saying, "The room seemed to have grown darker, as if all the sad light of the cloudy evening had taken refuge on her forehead. This fair hair, this pale visage, this pure brow, seemed surrounded by an ashy halo from which the dark eyes looked out at me." What light remains has accumulated on her forehead, closest to the organ of her remembrance. But the light is sad. What angelic qualities she possesses are "ashy." Her eyes are dark. She is steeped in darkness. She is, if angelic at all, a sort of false angel, a self-supposed martyr, but a martyr without cause. Shockingly, Marlow perceives that she seemed almost "proud of that sorrow, as though she would say, 'I–I alone know how to mourn for him as he deserves.'" Of course, she knows nothing of the sort. The honest truth is that nobody knows how to mourn properly for Kurtz, because Kurtz probably doesn't deserve to be mourned for at all.
At this point, Marlow realizes the truth about this woman and her relationship to time. He says, "But while we were still shaking hands, such a look of awful desolation came upon her face that I perceived she was one of those creatures that are not the playthings of Time. For her he had died only yesterday." The fiance, as we've said, does not exist within time. Her senses are not dictated by chronology, but by the raw impact of emotion. Thus, she is perpetually experiencing both the climax of her grief and the moment of Kurtz's death. The two, for her, are entangled. Marlow realizes this, saying, "I saw her and him in the same instant of time–his death and her sorrow–I saw her sorrow in the very moment of his death. Do you understand? I saw them together–I heard them together." That the fiance was not present for Kurtz's death hardly matters. Since time and space are of no concern to her, she can superimpose her grief onto his death (and vice versa) with ease. It is not incorrect to say that, in the fiance's warped mind, she literally remembers Kurtz's death.
Marlow is utterly baffled. He starts to panic. He says, "I asked myself what I was doing there, with a sensation of panic in my heart as though I had blundered into a place of cruel and absurd mysteries not fit for a human being to behold." Marlow has realized that nothing good will come from this complete denial of reality. Throughout his entire journey, Marlow has learned that reality needs to be faced, that one needs to confront not only the reality outside of oneself but the reality inside of oneself. Only then can the honest labor on which a life of merit is built can be achieved. The fiance, however, faces no reality, inside or outside. She does not confront even one of the four dimensions truthfully.
It is all Marlow can do to tell her what she wants to hear. She insists that nobody knew Kurtz the way that she did. This is obviously false, but Marlow concedes the point regardless. He says, "'You knew him best,' […] And perhaps she did. But with every word spoken the room was growing darker, and only her forehead, smooth and white, remained illumined by the inextinguishable light of belief and love." This light is inextinguishable because it is based on utter illogic. The ever dimming light radiating from the fiance is a poisoned light, a toxic light. It exists inexorably, but because of that it cannot be called a true light.
Marlow isn't even sure that he retrieved the right parcel to bring to her. He suspects it was another bundle that Kurtz wanted him to deal with. It clearly doesn't matter. All are rendered defenseless amidst this unreality. Marlow tries to console her. "We shall always remember him," he says. "No!" the fiance cries. It's as if she is speaking to us directly, reminding us that she won't remember him, not really. That, for her, memory doesn't really exist, since time doesn't really exist. Since all events for her are occurring simultaneously, there is nothing to recall. As if in a desperate last bid to escape her horrible plight, she asks Marlow for something more. She asks him for Kurtz's last words. She says, "I want–I want–something–something–to–to live with." This is her last attempt to escape the timelessness, the unreality, the false memories. But Marlow realizes that this plea, though perhaps genuine, is hopeless. He doesn't believe that he can help her. She cannot recognize even the most blatant provocations of reality. Marlow wants to scream at her. Instead, he says, "The last word he pronounced was–your name." With this remark, he dooms them both.
Honesty and Labor
What is it that the fiance became so entangled with? If the dark heart she refused to confront (and was thus absorbed by) was Kurtz's death, and she is therefore entangled with Kurtz's death, then how can she maintain such delusions regarding it? This question, and the answer to it, represent the clearest assertion of the "moral" of the text. The answer lies in the fact that one can be entangled with an event and still be unable to correctly perceive it. The fiance is entangled with Kurtz's death, that is true. And yet, the event, taking place in an ever-shifting series of realities (for the great subjectivity, at this point, more or less reigns supreme) need not be properly perceived to exist. In fact, a truly proper perception of it is likely impossible. The great subjectivity suggests that the very idea of proper perception is more or less meaningless.
This might lead us to conclude that the fiance's interpretation of the event is just as valid as Marlow's. And while, in technical terms, that might be true, it serves no prescriptive purpose. Setting aside the fact that Conrad would not concede nearly as much to the subjectivity as we are willing to, the "purpose" of any text dissolves if we concede the nonexistence of oughts. So while such a thing might be correct in a technical sense, it will probably not surprise anybody that, for the duration of this essay, we will suspend the consideration.
With that out of the way, we are left only to consider what we "should" do. What should the fiance have done? Most obviously, she should have engaged in reality in a more honest sense. Kurtz was an imperialist, a psycho, and something of a monster. He died in a braindead attempt to exploit the natural resources of a track of African land for the benefit of a few bigwigs who didn't care an ounce about him. His fiance clearly didn't know him very well. He was not universally loved or respected. His impact on the world, outside of such an obvious impact on Marlow, was very little. Her inability to realize any of this leads only to the perpetration of all the untold evils Kurtz actually represents. The horrors that Kurtz seemingly recognized must include whatever in this vast social construction encourages and profits from the utter delusion that the fiance partakes in.
Such a strong denouncement of the fiance risks falling into the realm of misogyny. We feel compelled to make it clear that while the fiance might serve as the dark heart of this text, we believe that moral responsibility for Kurtz's actions lie first and foremost with him. Furthermore, the fiance should not be judged without due consideration for the suffocating society in which she exists. For one thing, she doesn't even receive a name. One might view this as Conrad's way of substituting her for the mechanisms of society as a whole (that do not directly embark on the imperialist project, but benefit from it and mischaracterize it) but we would caution those taking this interpretation to extend it to the point where they regard said mechanisms as feminine in nature. While we will not perform a feminist analysis of the fiance as a character, we should emphasize that such a project is certainly called for, and that we recognize and implore our readers to consider the forces at work that shape this character. The fiance is not blameless (almost nobody is) but she is not the cause or even a general representation of these problems.
For more on the intricacies of imperialism, see "Ulysses and the Intricacies of Imperialism," by American Oneironautics.
Conclusion
Given all this, should we conclude that Marlow is the character we should emulate? Alas… no. In the end, Marlow fails. He falls prey to the unreality. In his old age, in the twilight of an epoch, he succumbs to the same toxic darkness that gobbled up the rest of the text's characters. One of his earliest remarks, which we first read as a moral story, subtlety reveals Marlow's fall. He says, "I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came here, nineteen hundred years ago–the other day…" The other day…
Was it Marlow's inability to express truthfully to the fiance Kurtz's true condition that led to this? He thought that there was nothing he could do, but should he have tried anyway? In that sad drawing-room Marlow found a darkness that he could not confront, that he could not overcome. "I could not tell her. It would have been too dark–too dark altogether…" In that moment Marlow planted the seeds of his downfall.
Time is ceasing to exist. The river of time, or the River Thames, is flowing into oblivion, into a nothingness in which the notion of flow ceases to have meaning. For the moment, Marlow seems to retain enough introspection to fight against this startling descent, but we feel that this willpower won't ultimately save him. In the end, he and his fellow travelers are traveling on a "tranquil waterway." The flow of time is slowing. Marlow, our narrator, and the others are doomed to descend "into the heart of an immense darkness." It is Conrad's sincere imploration that we don't do the same. "The more things change, the more they stay the same" might look good on a bumper sticker, but it won't sustain us. Face the darkness. All the darkness. Overcome it. Things must mean something, or else everything dissolves.
1: No, of course not. Things are more complicated than that. The only nature a human has is the pretty flower he sets as his desktop background. But we will have to return to this at some other point, or we'll get bogged down.
2: Universal in the minor sense. Universal in the practical sense. Not universal in that it dissolves time and space.
3: This truth is similar to the paradoxical truth that holds the dissolution of time as catastrophe but also extorts the value of a "universal" moral framework. While it might be impossible for these things to exist in conjunction, it remains a fact that they must.