Exploring the Heart of Darkness English Literature Essay
Analysis of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The 1924 essay "Geography and Some Explorers" describes Joseph Conrad as a schoolboy who amused classmates by pointing to Africa on a map and declaring, "When I grow up, I will go there." Eighteen years later, Conrad took a post as a steamboat captain for a trading company. Heart of Darkness centers on Marlow, an introspective sailor, and his journey across the Congo River to meet Kurtz, who was known as an idealistic man of great abilities. Marlow starts working as a riverboat captain for the Company, a Belgian company that trades in Congo. While traveling to Africa and then through the Congo, Marlow comes across The Portrait of Darkness in the Congo. The Heart of Darkness is a story that revolves around one man's journey to Congo. The entire story brings forth a portrait of darkness as it emerges from the depths of the jungle. This gross darkness fills the people of Congo with evil and makes them act on it. Take an example of darkness: the themes expressed in Modernism are perhaps among the most diverse, disturbing and difficult to understand. One of the main themes expressed in modernist literature is alienation. This motif can be found in James Joyce's story, The Dead, TS Eliot's poem, The Waste Land, and in Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness. Essay Score: B. With the Death of Kurtz With the words “The horror The horror” readers are left wondering what he meant by that statement. And as one of those readers, I could only conclude that he was referring to the horror as a form of emptiness, a deep nothingness that is at the core of everything..