Marlow in The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (Book Analysis)

In the novel, The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, the story centers around Marlow, a sailor traveling up the Congo to meet Kurtz, an ivory trader and commander of a trading post for the Company. On Marlow’s journey down the Thames River, Conrad paints the imagery of a savage land in which the Company has already began to expand in the ivory trade. Marlow had already witnessed the violence that is brought on by the Company. Things such as desecrated environments and mistreatment of African people were a result of colonial actions. The novel explores the ideological prevalence of colonization in Africa and how the European perspective relies on racist values to rationalize their projects.

Throughout the novel, Conrad uses racist views which were widely accepted throughout Europe. Not only does the use of vulgar words represent racist ideals at the time, the description of the environment and natives also demonstrates this. The Africans are subjected to names such as "savages" and "cannibals" by the members of the Company which relates to their ideological beliefs which was a standard throughout Europe (Conrad 19). As Marlow and the crew went deeper into the Congo, he could "feel the savagery, the utter savagery" of the landscape and its people (Conrad 4). The description of the environment embodies European ideals as a whole which uses colonial biases to form the imagery in the novel to justify their actions. The idea of being civilized versus being barbaric is the basis of these ideas is rooted in the binary nature of Europeans and Africans. European ideology of race is dependent on the African stereotypes. Conrad showing the perspective of Europeans being civilized and behaving in a socially acceptable manner is compared with the idea of African societies being savages or uncivilized brutes that exhibit animalistic qualities. Therefore, inferring that Europeans are of greater status or importance compared to the Africans in which they can justify their actions and colonial practices. Marlow notices the violence against Africans at numerous stations. One way that the novel grapples with this binary nature is through European biases rooted in racism. Conrad both argues and critiques the blatant injustices at the trading stations but also pushes the racist stereotypes of natives being primitive "savages". The people who work for the Company, actively participate in a form of liberal critique of race by justifying violence as a form of power. Racialized practices such as treating Africans in a dehumanizing way are the accumulation of the racist perspective of Europeans whose idea of primitiveness was a way to conquer the African land and people. 

Furthermore, in the novel, imperialism and colonialism represent the values and beliefs of any European explorers, which represent European superiority ideology. In the 19th century, by discovery and conquest, countries expanded and colonized the unexplored regions of the world, spreading European institutions and culture and exploiting the African lands and peoples for economic gain. As Marlow travels down the Thames, the scenery is described as "a darkness" like an uncharted area and unexplored which is reminiscent of the imperialist ambitions in Africa. Their rationalization for committing violence against natives stems from their sense of God-like mentality when being compared to African natives. Conrad refers to the European characters as "supernatural beings" in which "they can exert a power for good practically unbounded", therefore justifying their actions to make natives become civilized (Conrad 7-25). European expansion was centered around the ideology of superiority, which was used to excuse the amount of destruction they caused to natives and their environment. In the novel, we notice that people like Kurtz and Fresleven are referred to as a deity (Conrad 25) which is a representative of why Europeans colonized less developed countries. Their actions were all done for the sake of civilizing (or so they believed), but in reality, their intentions were a mask which covered their racism towards the African population. Marlow says, "We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster", therefore establishing that Europe has every right to civilize the uncivil "monsters" of Africa (Conrad 13).

To conclude, The Heart of Darkness explores how racist colonial views were reliant on the perpetuated stereotypes of African natives as benign savages and uncivilized. In the novel, the European concept of superiority and intelligence are also used to justify the heinous violence committed against Africans and how their desecration of African landscapes is all justified through a colonial mindset.