Joseph Conrad wrote Heart of Darkness was an autobiographical satirical critic book because Conrad aimed to expose the primeval atrocities committed by the civilized Europeans. Isolated from the horrors of foreign lands the Europeans were as innocent as baby lambs. In the late nineteenth century Joseph Conrad went to the Congo on a mission of civilization and exploration, just as the other Europeans were doing during the time. There in the Congo Conrad experienced a true form of human brutality that was mainly exhibited by the Europeans. After his travels Conrad wrote the novella Heart of Darkness where he placed himself as the character of Marlow and the Europeans exploits, misguided goals, and failed hopes. Through his novella Conrad was able to exploit and insult that which was fiction and what was reality, how he writes it there was but a blurry line. …show more content…
In his novella, Conrad exemplifies the atrocities. Marlow, on his mission working for the Company, sees “[t]hese round knobs were not ornamental but symbolic; [the faces] were expressive and puzzling, striking and disturbing…black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids- a head that seemed asleep” (Conrad). Kurtz had taken his leadership role with the natives in a personal headstrong manner. The implication that the Europeans were sticking heads on pikes as examples was not a thing of fiction, as Adam Hochschild writes about; “The collection of African heads surrounding Kurtz’s house… many women and children were taken, twenty one heads were brought to the falls” (Hochschild 145). Brutal acts such as these were hard to imagine coming from a people that were seen to be as civilized as they