For Africans, Heart of Darkness is a difficult read. The Africans portrayed in the book are primitive, defeated, and grotesque. They are manipulated by the book’s shadowy character, Mr. Kurtz, and are capable of committing terrible atrocities.
How were the natives treated in Heart of Darkness?
The native population in Heart of Darkness are represented as savages who are criminals and enemies. The natives described as cannibals are poorly treated and only fed hippopotamus meat, refused food by the Europeans. … The Natives are also demonstrated as savages due to their distinct lack of technology.
How does Heart of Darkness portray Africans?
Throughout Heart of Darkness Conrad uses images of darkness to represent Africa. Darkness is everything that is unknown, primitive, evil, and impenetrable. … This portrayal of Africa as both a romantic frontier and a foreboding wilderness continues to dominate in the minds of Westerners even today.
How does Marlow describe Africans?
By describing Africa with such a dense, complex sentence, Conrad through Marlow reveals his view of Africa as unknowable and obscure. … The “dark-green” forest is “almost black”; Conrad does not differentiate between the two colors, implying that green and black are the same, and therefore nothing (48).
How does Marlow treat the natives?
Throughout Marlow’s trip in the Congo River, he sees the horror of Natives being abused by Company agents. Marlow sympathizes with them, but sympathy is just that, a feeling that makes someone feel awful without having the urge to help alleviate the suffering of others.
Why do the natives like Kurtz?
In Heart of Darkness, the natives adore Kurtz and worship him as a demigod partly because of his personal charisma, but also because he has superior European technology which they have never seen before.
What did the natives think of Kurtz?
It is said that he must always act like a god, and give himself the reason to lead the “savage” people to the light and civilization. According to the harlequin, the natives worship Kurtz as the false god he puts himself out to be.
What is the moral of Heart of Darkness?
Morality in Heart of Darkness is presented as a unifying set of ideas. Where morality keeps society in one piece and makes everyone equal. It is the only thing keeping chaos and destruction out of peoples’ lives.
What does Heart of Darkness teach us?
Heart of Darkness suggests that Europeans are not essentially more highly-evolved or enlightened than the people whose territories they invade. To this extent, it punctures one of the myths of imperialist race theory.
What does Kurtz symbolize in Heart of Darkness?
Kurtz, one of the leading characters, the other being Marlow, the narrator of the soty, represents many symbols in the novel. Firstly, he symbolizes the greed and the commercial mentality of the white people of the western countries. Secondly, he symbolizes the white man’s love of power.
Is Marlow a hero?
Marlow is a complicated man who anticipates the figures of high modernism while also reflecting his Victorian predecessors. Marlow is in many ways a traditional hero: tough, honest, an independent thinker, a capable man.
What truth about the natives is Marlow acknowledging?
Marlow describes his fellow European conquerors as something other than colonists when he says, “They were no colonists, their administration was merely a squeeze, and nothing more… It was just robbery with violence” (Conrad 7). He is acknowledging the lack of humanism in the actions of the Europeans.
Who is the main character of Heart of Darkness?
Kurtz is a central fictional character in Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella Heart of Darkness. A trader of ivory in Africa and commander of a trading post, he monopolises his position as a demigod among native Africans. Kurtz meets with the novella’s protagonist, Charles Marlow, who returns him to the coast via steamboat.
Why does Kurtz say the horror?
Kurtz’s last words—“The horror! … These final words could also broadly symbolize the horror of Belgian (and European) colonialism. For Marlow’s part, he interprets the exclamation as Kurtz’s response to his impending death. Each of these meanings coexist uneasily in Kurtz’s last words.
Why did Marlow lie about Kurtz last words?
Key Questions and Answers
Marlow lies to Kurtz’s Intended to spare her the painful reality of her fiancé’s descent into madness and evil. … Marlow lies that the last word Kurtz uttered was his fiancée’s name because “it would have been too dark” to tell her that Kurtz last spoke of pure and desolate horror.
What is the ending of Heart of Darkness?
When she asks about Kurtz’s final words, Marlow lies: “your name,” he tells her. Marlow’s story ends there. Heart of Darkness itself ends as the narrator, one of Marlow’s audience, sees a mass of brooding clouds gathering on the horizon—what seems to him to be “heart of an immense darkness.”