Essay on Marlows Racism in Joseph Conrads Heart of...

Marlows Racism in Heart of Darkness Heart of Darkness is an intriguing story as well as a symbol for Joseph Conrads social commentary on imperialism. Marlows journey takes him deep into the African Congo where he bears witness to a number of life-altering revelations. He beholds his most striking revelation when he begins to compare the civilized European man with the savage African man. These two opposing forces represent the two conflicting viewpoints present in every dilemma, be it cultural, social, or otherwise. As a modern European man who believes religiously in imperialism, Marlow is inherently arrogant. Yet, although he cannot accept the African jungle as being equally important as imperialism, his†¦show more content†¦No; you want a deliberate belief.* The inherent strength of civilized people is in our ability to trust to faith, to believe so much in something that it will preserve our sense of self even when it is threatened by total absence of, even the opposite conditions of, all that formed to make it. The Africans fascinate Marlow, lure that part of him that wants to escape from the surface-realities created by sociality. Is it a deliberate belief that saves him from asserting his attraction, or an accident of situation? You wonder I didnt go ashore for a howl and a dance? Well, no-I didnt. Fine sentiments, you say? Fine sentiments be hanged! I had no time. I had to mess about with white-lead and strips of woollen blanket helping to put bandages on those leaky steam-pipes, I tell you. ...There was surface-truth enough in these things to save a wiser man.* The technological realities of civilized man happened to allow him to focus his thoughts on work. â€Å"This reconciles with the notion of a deliberate belief because Marlow unshakeably believes that work contains truth (and he can assert this truth against the truth of the Africans) and is not another system of surface-reality†(Hubbard 125) . Marlow sees his journey as a demonstration of the failure of surfac e-realities to restrain man from gratifying his instinctual lusts; their failure in even remaining surface-truths but degenerating in the minds of man toShow MoreRelatedGender Role In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness Essay1430 Words   |  6 PagesGender Role In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness For the most part people who read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad may feel that the novella is strictly a story of exploration and racial discrimination. But to Johanna Smith who wrote â€Å"’Too Beautiful Altogether’: Ideologies of Gender and Empire in Heart of Darkness† it is much more than that. Johanna Smith along with Wallace Watson and Rita A. 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Not only does he describe the actual, physical continent of Africa as â€Å"so hopeless and so dark, so impenetrable to human thought, so pitiless to human weakness†, (Conrad 154) as though the continent could neither breed nor support any true human life. Conrad lived through a time when European colonies were scat tered all over the world. This phenomenon and the doctrine of colonialism bought into at his