Savages And Evil In Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness

In Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad created the feeling of ‘other’ with the way the people Marlow encountered on the journey were described. Words are what leads a reader to form an opinion and Conrad leads his reader’s into believing the natives are wicked. In the novel, Joseph often times calls the African people savages or creatures, “...deathlike indifference of unhappy savages” (20) and “...one of these creatures rose to his hands and knees...” Savages and creatures give the connotation that they were evil and animalistic. His words impact on how we think of the African characters.
In the description of the women with Mr. Kurtz, she was “savage and superb, Wild eyed and magnificent” (81). The way she was described left the impression that she was exotic and wanted, yet she was savage and an animal. "And from right to left along the lighted shore moved a wild and gorgeous apparition of a woman" (81). Apparition implies a ghost-like image.

Marlow defines him as an “improved specimen” and it was like “seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat,” (106). He compares the native fireman to a dog, equating a human being to an animal. A specimen to me relates to science either an animal or a rock. The fireman was a person, but the reader looks at him as an animal in an experiment and how absurd it is that he can learn things. Marlow begins to describe the fireman looks, “...and he had filed teeth too, the poor devil, and the wool of his pate shaved into queer patterns, and three ornamental scars on each of his cheeks. He ought to have been clapping his hands and stamping his feet on the bank, instead of which he was hard at work, a thrall to strange witchcraft, full of improving knowledge” To Marlow, it 's crazy to see the native man working on something that’s not ordinary in his culture. Conard leads us, the readers, into thinking this native man is “other” than the European