Heart Of Darkness Rhetorical Analysis

Often times, when a car crash appears to have occurred, entire freeways and roads will be backed up, not due to obstructions in the road but simply from all of the drivers slowing down to view the destruction. Situations similar to this are often referred to as a train wreck, something terrible that has happened but for some reason gives the urge for people to watch. There is something psychologically intriguing about it and this fascination with the abomination is no new concept. The 1899 novel Heart of Darkness explores this very idea of an intense fascination of gore and savagery within its text. In the very beginning of the book, a sailor by the name of Marlow is on a journey up the Congo River to meet Kurtz and finds himself surrounded

As the novel personally states and possibly foreshadows: “...all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men…it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination…” (Conrad 4). Different ideas and situations intrigue Marlow soon after, including cannibalism or the excessive violence of stabbing decapitated heads through spikes. Though Marlow’s point of view is understandable, the natives must have looked upon the Europeans as a different form of savagery, arriving uninvited to their land with new technologies looking to terrorize the natives and forcing them to become “civilized”. Upon Marlow’s return to civilization, he learns about the many different people who have known Kurtz and have had their lives changed thanks to him. Marlow cannot help but think back to the experiences Kurtz had gone through and view him as a different man than the rest of the people who have never left Brussels. Adapting back into a society where gore and savagery is not an everyday occurrence is unimaginably difficult and

Self restraint can blatantly be put as one’s ability to hold themselves back from acting upon certain actions. Being such a large theme in the novel, both Marlow and Kurtz exhibit restraint, or lack of restraint, where their actions speak volumes for the characters and society at the time. The men who had traveled to the Congo for work had done so out of a lack of self restraint as their greed has led them to collect and obsess over ivory and how much each man is getting out of the profits. Kurtz is shown as the greedy head of this situation, almost the devil overseeing workers, stealing profits for his own benefit. Looking deeper into Kurtz’ actions, he has lost the restraint needed to remove himself from the savagery he so enjoys. More often than not, Kurtz views the natives as completely savage, yet buries himself in the culture and rituals he talks so badly about. This lack of restraint is what leads to hypocrisy, when one’s actions go completely against their beliefs. He actually has trouble finding the motivation to return to civilization while he is so deep in these abominable activities. The only real restraint observed was through the cannibals aboard Marlow’s steamer who had completely stopped themselves from attacking and eating the pilgrims even though they were near starved. The author was possibly attempting to explain that the real savagery