Significance Of Moral Ambiguity In Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness

In Joseph Conrad’s book Heart of Darkness, there are a myriad of characters that can be viewed as morally ambiguous. The most prominent of these characters has to be the main character, Marlow. His moral ambiguity is demonstrated throughout the book with his many conflicting actions, opinions and principles. Many of the traits that demonstrate Marlow’s moral ambiguity give credence to the larger meaning of the work that the greatest barrier to knowledge is one’s preconceptions. Marlow is a good man by the nineteenth century standards that the characters in heart of Darkness adhere to. These standards include being a gentleman, especially to women, and being an honest man. These views are generally accepted today, except for the doctrine of

Marlow tells of how “You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies - which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world - what I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do,”. Through this Marlow depicts himself as despising lying. This loathing is not caused by fear of getting caught lying but instead from the simple dislike of it. He can not stand it when he or others lie. However, like most people do, he breaks his own personal laws against lying. Twice he lies in the book. The first was for personal gain; Marlow needed rivets so he let the rather unimportant Brickmaker believe that he had great influence. Despite this being a betrayal of his own principles and the Brickmaker’s trust, it was for a good cause: Marlow needed rivets to repair his steamship to do the job he was hired to do. That makes this somewhat justifiable even though, ironically, he never got the rivets and was still able to complete his journey thus making his lie