Decoding “Heart of Darkness”: Archetypes, Myths, and Imperialism

Humanity’s Legacy in “Heart of Darkness”

Religion, myth, and stories are literature essential to the history of humankind and are passed through generations. These literary and oral pieces build humanity’s collective unconscious. From this collective unconscious, intuitive archetypes are derived, with more literature added to each generation to contribute to this generationally passed bank of knowledge. Archetypes such as the hero enduring a transformative journey and various other color archetypes have been strengthened in humanity’s memory for centuries.

Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness utilizes these derivative archetypes to relate to the reader so that they may ultimately understand Conrad’s opinion on imperialism and colonialism. Although Nofal asserts that Heart of Darkness uses archetypes that highlight the contrast between black and white, and Taghizadeh asserts that Heart of Darkness uses the embedded myth archetype of the hero enduring a journey, one can argue that Conrad uses both archetypes to convey his negative ultimate message about imperialism and colonialism.

Black & White: Moral Shades in Conrad’s Tale

All authors influence their writing with their own ideologies. Conrad began the book by separating white and black, saying white represented good and civil, whilst black represented dark and evil. This initial separation is highlighted in the scene where Marlow describes that England was one of the original dark and gloomy places on Earth prior to its civilization. He suggests that “the civilized white people who came from England are good while the black primitive natives are evil and inferior.”

Marlow foreshadows that his trip to Africa is the archetypal journey because he discusses traveling into the center of the Earth rather than the center of Africa. This would be a journey into the human spirit, mind, and self-discovery.

Nofal then discusses how the entirety of the novel presents various imagery of darkness and the dark heart of man. With the notion that Conrad believes that man is inherently evil, Conrad exploits the archetypes of black & white and dark & light in different ways. Some of these ways include dark being represented in the savages, white being represented in ivory or civilization, darkness in the lack of names, darkness in the decaying machinery of Marlow’s boat, and darkness in Kurtz’s last words. Breaking down is another indicator of darkness. Marlow’s boat keeps breaking down ‘decaying machinery,’ Kurtz has a mental breakdown, and there are breakdowns in communication: people speak different languages, Marlow tells lies about Kurtz to his fiancee, and ‘amongst the most frequent content words in the book is the lemma’ silence.’

Additionally, Kurt’s dying words, ‘The horror! The horror! are indications of his complete descent into darkness. The setting itself is full of darkness from the very beginning to the very end: The contrast between light and dark is clear in the theme of the setting, the changes in Europeans as they drive farther into the River Congo, and the white man’s collapse under the darkness of the River Congo.

The setting of the novel is very critical. All incidents throughout the book indicate darkness. Marlow, for example, tells his story on a boat in such deep darkness that he cannot see his friends, creating a sense of evil surrounding the story. The natives are described as if they were animals, not humans: ‘Near the same tree two more bundles of acute angles sat with their legs drawn up. One, with his chin propped on his knees, stared at nothing in an intolerable and appalling manner. Others were scattered about in a very pose of contorted collapse, as in some picture of massacre or pestilence.’ Ultimately, Conrad uses the archetypes of light and dark to convey civilization and savagery.

The Soul’s Journey in “Heart of Darkness”

Taghizadeh defines myth as being a collective unconscious embedded in human nature. Various archetypes derive from this myth: “Originating from our ‘collective unconscious,’ these archetypes have their abstract language there in us, which literary works reveal through images. In different times and places, these archetypes are usually interpreted in the same way because what they represent is the deepest dreams, desires, joys, aspirations, and fears of the universal man.”

Heart of Darkness is filled with archetypes that are innately embedded in mankind and myth. The hero archetype is most notably derived from the previous myths and is a main factor in Heart of Darkness. Taghizadeh says, “Archetypes are the ‘primordial images’ or the ‘psychic residue’ of repeated patterns of common human experience in the lives of our very ancient ancestors which survive in the ‘collective unconscious’ of the human race and are expressed in myths, religion, dreams, and private fantasies, as well as in the works of literature.”

One can argue that Conrad, in Heart of Darkness, uses archetypes that are not only derived from the collective unconscious or myth but strengthen it. Heart of Darkness is a novel that tells the story of heroes who take a journey: “To achieve their goals of journey, these heroes’ overcome insurmountable obstacles.’”

Heroes with different faces appear in universal literature, religion, and folktales. But the most common archetypal hero is perhaps the ‘hero’ in literature. In the world of literature, one comes across different faces of the hero, with different modes and manners of such celebrities. However, literary heroes have many things in common, like a radical determination, a great soul that enables them to play incredible adventures, and the achievement of precious outcomes of their daring quests.

To be a true hero is to triumph over disease, want, and death. The first step in Marlow’s initiation is a separation from home. On an exotic journey, he gets separated from Europe and its civilization, and as he passes a series of obstacles, he gets prepared to gain the holy grail of his initiation. His journey to the dark of his heart reminds one of ‘Dante’s imaginative journey in The Inferno, and the allusion to ancient Rome helps to recall The Aeneid, where both heroes descend into hell and face different trials through their journeys.

Like the classical heroes, Conrad’s hero, through his quest, descends into hell to gain knowledge and bring it back to others, where hell represents the darkness of his unconscious. For Marlow, the steamer crawls to where Kurtz is on a mission. In fact, the holy grail of the former is the achievement he makes when he goes on the quest to see Kurtz, for it brings him to an ‘impenetrable darkness’ and makes it possible for him to visit a ‘hollow man’ who is also a ‘universal genius’ in charge of the most productive trade of ivory.

Colonialism’s Dark Heart in Conrad’s Novella

Colonialism is a major theme in Heart of Darkness. Since Conrad had been using white archetypes to represent good and black to represent evil, he portrays colonialism as the light in the midst of the darkness of the Congo. Throughout Marlow’s journey archetype to the Congo, he observes scenes of torture, slavery, and various other cruelties. The imagery alone that Conrad uses to describe such obscenities insinuates his disapproval to Religion, myth, and stories are literature essential to the history of humankind and are passed through generations.

These literary and oral pieces build humanity’s collective unconscious. From this collective unconscious, intuitive archetypes are derived, with more literature added to each generation to contribute to this generationally passed bank of knowledge.

Archetypes such as the hero enduring a transformative journey and various other color archetypes have been strengthened in humanity’s memory for centuries. Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness utilizes these derivative archetypes to relate to the reader so that they may ultimately understand Conrad’s opinion on imperialism and colonialism. Although Nofal asserts that Heart of Darkness uses archetypes that highlight the contrast between black and white, and Taghizadeh asserts that Heart of Darkness uses the embedded myth archetype of the hero enduring a journey, one can argue that Conrad uses both archetypes to convey his negative ultimate message about imperialism and colonialism.

References

1. Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer. Signet Classic: New York, 1997.
2. Nofal, Khalil Hassan. ‘Darkness in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness: A Linguistic and Stylistic
3. Analysis. Theory and Practice in Language Studies. Literature Resource Center. Accessed 4 Dec. 2019.
4. Taghizadeh, Ali. ‘Penetrating into the Dark: an Archetypal Approach to Joseph Conrad’s