Heart Of Darkness Analytical Essay

Joseph Conrad’s, Heart of Darkness, parallels with Conrad’s own experiences as a sailor during the Belgian colonization of Congo in the late 1800’s. Extracting accounts from his personal encounters with the wilderness of Congo, Conrad presents these accounts through the narrative of Marlow, the main protagonist. Marlow’s journey through Congo leads to his uncovering of the company’s subjugation and discrimination of the natives. Not only did the company look to sabotage the natives, the company also seeked to eliminate Kurtz, the company’s best agent. In Marlow’s mind, lying is a moral sin, one in which he despises. However, he contradicted his own virtues when he lied to protect Kurtz from the company’s wrath. Marlow also lied again to Kurtz’s

Guilt-tripped by the pleas from the intended of finding out her deceased husband’s last words, Marlow had no choice but to lie about Kurtz’s final words. “I could not tell her. It would have been too dark-too dark altogether….” (146). Earlier, the intended professed her love for Kurtz and praised him as a genius and humanitarian with a “noble heart” who ventured out to improve the world. (143) However, her image of Kurtz was idealistic in the sense that she wanted to believe that her husband was a martyr dying for a just cause. However, Marlow did not want to threaten her ideal image of Kurtz by telling her of his real last words as well his true actions at the inner station. Marlow innately believed that women are “out of touch with truth” and “live in a world of their own,” unbeknownst to the true realities outside their idealistic views of the world. (19) Marlow believed that the intended was too innocent and emotionally vulnerable to be corrupted by the truth of Kurtz’s actions and saw it as a moral justification to try and euphemistically lie about Kurtz’s last words in order to prevent the darkness that would have come with the