Category: Heart Of Darkness

Humanity’s Legacy in “Heart of Darkness”

Religion, myth, and stories are literature essential to the history of humankind and are passed through generations. These literary and oral pieces build humanity’s collective unconscious. From this collective unconscious, intuitive archetypes are derived, with more literature added to each generation to contribute to this generationally passed bank of knowledge. Archetypes such as the hero enduring a transformative journey and various other color archetypes have been strengthened in humanity’s memory for centuries.

Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness utilizes these derivative archetypes to relate to the reader so that they may ultimately understand Conrad’s opinion on imperialism and colonialism. Although Nofal asserts that Heart of Darkness uses archetypes that highlight the contrast between black and white, and Taghizadeh asserts that Heart of Darkness uses the embedded myth archetype of the hero enduring a journey, one can argue that Conrad uses both archetypes to convey his negative ultimate message about imperialism and colonialism.

Black & White: Moral Shades in Conrad’s Tale

All authors influence their writing with their own ideologies. Conrad began the book by separating white and black, saying white represented good and civil, whilst black represented dark and evil. This initial separation is highlighted in the scene where Marlow describes that England was one of the original dark and gloomy places on Earth prior to its civilization. He suggests that “the civilized white people who came from England are good while the black primitive natives are evil and inferior.”

Marlow foreshadows that his trip to Africa is the archetypal journey because he discusses traveling into the center of the Earth rather than the center of Africa. This would be a journey into the human spirit, mind, and self-discovery.

Nofal then discusses how the entirety of the novel presents various imagery of darkness and the dark heart of man. With the notion that Conrad believes that man is inherently evil, Conrad exploits the archetypes of black & white and dark & light in different ways. Some of these ways include dark being represented in the savages, white being represented in ivory or civilization, darkness in the lack of names, darkness in the decaying machinery of Marlow’s boat, and darkness in Kurtz’s last words. Breaking down is another indicator of darkness. Marlow’s boat keeps breaking down ‘decaying machinery,’ Kurtz has a mental breakdown, and there are breakdowns in communication: people speak different languages, Marlow tells lies about Kurtz to his fiancee, and ‘amongst the most frequent content words in the book is the lemma’ silence.’

Additionally, Kurt’s dying words, ‘The horror! The horror! are indications of his complete descent into darkness. The setting itself is full of darkness from the very beginning to the very end: The contrast between light and dark is clear in the theme of the setting, the changes in Europeans as they drive farther into the River Congo, and the white man’s collapse under the darkness of the River Congo.

The setting of the novel is very critical. All incidents throughout the book indicate darkness. Marlow, for example, tells his story on a boat in such deep darkness that he cannot see his friends, creating a sense of evil surrounding the story. The natives are described as if they were animals, not humans: ‘Near the same tree two more bundles of acute angles sat with their legs drawn up. One, with his chin propped on his knees, stared at nothing in an intolerable and appalling manner. Others were scattered about in a very pose of contorted collapse, as in some picture of massacre or pestilence.’ Ultimately, Conrad uses the archetypes of light and dark to convey civilization and savagery.

The Soul’s Journey in “Heart of Darkness”

Taghizadeh defines myth as being a collective unconscious embedded in human nature. Various archetypes derive from this myth: “Originating from our ‘collective unconscious,’ these archetypes have their abstract language there in us, which literary works reveal through images. In different times and places, these archetypes are usually interpreted in the same way because what they represent is the deepest dreams, desires, joys, aspirations, and fears of the universal man.”

Heart of Darkness is filled with archetypes that are innately embedded in mankind and myth. The hero archetype is most notably derived from the previous myths and is a main factor in Heart of Darkness. Taghizadeh says, “Archetypes are the ‘primordial images’ or the ‘psychic residue’ of repeated patterns of common human experience in the lives of our very ancient ancestors which survive in the ‘collective unconscious’ of the human race and are expressed in myths, religion, dreams, and private fantasies, as well as in the works of literature.”

One can argue that Conrad, in Heart of Darkness, uses archetypes that are not only derived from the collective unconscious or myth but strengthen it. Heart of Darkness is a novel that tells the story of heroes who take a journey: “To achieve their goals of journey, these heroes’ overcome insurmountable obstacles.’”

Heroes with different faces appear in universal literature, religion, and folktales. But the most common archetypal hero is perhaps the ‘hero’ in literature. In the world of literature, one comes across different faces of the hero, with different modes and manners of such celebrities. However, literary heroes have many things in common, like a radical determination, a great soul that enables them to play incredible adventures, and the achievement of precious outcomes of their daring quests.

To be a true hero is to triumph over disease, want, and death. The first step in Marlow’s initiation is a separation from home. On an exotic journey, he gets separated from Europe and its civilization, and as he passes a series of obstacles, he gets prepared to gain the holy grail of his initiation. His journey to the dark of his heart reminds one of ‘Dante’s imaginative journey in The Inferno, and the allusion to ancient Rome helps to recall The Aeneid, where both heroes descend into hell and face different trials through their journeys.

Like the classical heroes, Conrad’s hero, through his quest, descends into hell to gain knowledge and bring it back to others, where hell represents the darkness of his unconscious. For Marlow, the steamer crawls to where Kurtz is on a mission. In fact, the holy grail of the former is the achievement he makes when he goes on the quest to see Kurtz, for it brings him to an ‘impenetrable darkness’ and makes it possible for him to visit a ‘hollow man’ who is also a ‘universal genius’ in charge of the most productive trade of ivory.

Colonialism’s Dark Heart in Conrad’s Novella

Colonialism is a major theme in Heart of Darkness. Since Conrad had been using white archetypes to represent good and black to represent evil, he portrays colonialism as the light in the midst of the darkness of the Congo. Throughout Marlow’s journey archetype to the Congo, he observes scenes of torture, slavery, and various other cruelties. The imagery alone that Conrad uses to describe such obscenities insinuates his disapproval to Religion, myth, and stories are literature essential to the history of humankind and are passed through generations.

These literary and oral pieces build humanity’s collective unconscious. From this collective unconscious, intuitive archetypes are derived, with more literature added to each generation to contribute to this generationally passed bank of knowledge.

Archetypes such as the hero enduring a transformative journey and various other color archetypes have been strengthened in humanity’s memory for centuries. Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness utilizes these derivative archetypes to relate to the reader so that they may ultimately understand Conrad’s opinion on imperialism and colonialism. Although Nofal asserts that Heart of Darkness uses archetypes that highlight the contrast between black and white, and Taghizadeh asserts that Heart of Darkness uses the embedded myth archetype of the hero enduring a journey, one can argue that Conrad uses both archetypes to convey his negative ultimate message about imperialism and colonialism.

References

1. Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer. Signet Classic: New York, 1997.
2. Nofal, Khalil Hassan. ‘Darkness in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness: A Linguistic and Stylistic
3. Analysis. Theory and Practice in Language Studies. Literature Resource Center. Accessed 4 Dec. 2019.
4. Taghizadeh, Ali. ‘Penetrating into the Dark: an Archetypal Approach to Joseph Conrad’s

Marlow’s Glimpse: Brutality in the Congo

In Heart of Darkness, author Joseph Conrad portrays the systematic racism that drove European Colonialism of Africa, as any individual sympathizing with African humanity is discarded by the colonizers. Marlow, a retired colonizer, recounts his experience in the Belgian Congo while in the employ of the Company, a European trade group. Marlow relays the cruelty he witnessed Europeans commit as they plundered the continent, using weapons of war indiscriminately and leaving exploited African workers for dead.

During his travels, Marlow meets the General Manager of the Company, who notes that an independent trader in the area is competing with the Company and hurting profits. The General Manager elects to hang the trader should they meet. Later, Marlow meets a young Russian deserter who previously served several European colonies but had spent the last two years traveling the Congo alone.

The Russian: Empathy Amid Colonial Ambitions

During the Russian’s travels, he had developed a familiarity with the continent and a respect for the natives rare to Europeans. Unlike the other Europeans in Africa for colonialization, he was not motivated by greed or desire for conquest. The Russians continued to trade in Africa, but they refrained from abusing the natives. Marlow realizes the Russian is an independent trader.

The General Manager marked for execution. The Russian is eventually driven away by the Company as they attempt to execute him. The Russian marks a departure from the racism that characterizes the European settlers, and the Company will not allow another party to detract from its goal of maximum profit at any cost. Because the Russian does not share the Company’s racist desire to exploit Africa, he is expelled from the area at threat of death. As the Company trekked the Congo, plundering resources and abusing natives, the systematic racism of European Colonialism was signaled when the tolerant Russian was driven away for obstructing the domination of Africa.

Chief Accountant: Cold Racism Exposed

As the Chief Accountant described his hatred of Africans, the racist attitude driving Colonialism is revealed at the top levels of the Company. “When one has got to make correct entries, one comes to hate those savages hate them to the death.” Here, the Chief Accountant, an individual in a leadership role at the Company, unveils his naked hatred of Africans. He pairs “correct entries” with “hate.” In his mind, hating Africans is as justified as entering correct numbers into an accounting ledger. And this same attitude of cold, certain racism empowers the Europeans to commit horrors against the native population. At one point, Marlow witnesses a French warship leashing cannon fire onto the African coast. Shocked, Marlow asked what the purpose of such an attack was.

Warships & Abandoned Camps: Exploitation’s Trace

Immediately, a Company reassured him that there was a camp of Africans hidden in the foliage of the coast. The racist Company perceived no issue with the loss of African life associated with such a bombardment, but a potential tragedy could occur if the munitions and cannonballs were wasted. Here, the Company is valuing physical objects at a much higher worth than human life. The same attitude of indifference to human life is witnessed by Marlow again when he encounters an abandoned camp of African workers in an area depleted of resources.

The colonial group had compelled the natives to harvest all the valuables from their own land to be collected for European benefit, and then once the land could be no more stripped, they left the abused Africans to die. Both events substantiated the attitude of racism that fueled the terrible injustices inflicted by colonizers and created, for Marlow, a standard model of European greed and abuse.

Russian’s Ideals Clash with Company’s Greed

The Russian’s uncorrupted spirit of adventure and empathy for the African natives made him an anomaly among Europeans in Africa. “He surely wanted nothing from the wilderness but space to breathe in and to push on through. His need was to exist. If the absolutely pure, uncalculating, unpractical spirit of adventure had ever ruled a human being, it ruled this youth. I almost envied him the possession of this modest and clear flame.” (Chapter 2) Marlow here describes the Russian’s pure soul and honest desire for adventure, not motivated by greed or personal gain. Marlow says the Russians wanted nothing from Africa but to exist in it, a complete reversal of European colonizers’ desire for the wealth associated with dominating Africa.

Indeed, while the Company sought to rip as many resources as they could from African land, the Russian was ideologically isolated by his desire to just exist and experience Africa. While the Russians did trade in Africa, his appreciation for the continent and spiritual purity prevented him from abusing or exploiting the Africans or their land. Consequently, he was at odds with the Company, which did not tolerate any competition in their goal of maximum profit. After all, there is no need to exchange value with the natives when you can just compel their labor with force. The disruption caused by the Russian’s fair dealings with Africans angered the Company and led them to seek his execution.

The Russian’s empathy and fair dealings with Africans obstructed the Company’s domination of the Congo, and the Company’s impulse to extinguish tolerance displays the racism of European Colonialism.

“‘He suspected there was an active ill-will towards him on the part of these white men. ’
‘You are right, the manager thinks you ought to be hanged…’
‘I had better get out of the way quietly,’ he said earnestly…’
‘Well, upon my word,’ said I, ‘perhaps you had better go if you have any friends amongst the savages nearby.’
‘Plenty,’ he said. ‘They are simple people, and I want nothing, you know.’”

In Marlow’s final conversation with the Russian, the Russian declared himself a friend of the Africans and reiterated his complete lack of greed or malice. The Russians acknowledged African humanity and offered a rudimentary conception of equality. These beliefs put him in direct contest with the Company’s — and, by extension, European Colonialism’s ultimate view of black inequality that justified their abuse of Africans and plundering of the continent. The Russian’s expulsion by the Company due to his knowledge of African humanity confirms that the racist conception of black inhumanity fueled European Colonialism.

References

1. Conrad, J. (1902). Heart of Darkness. Blackwood’s Magazine.

The prevailing certainty that has arisen from over a century of contextual analysis is that no unanimous conviction exists when interpreting Conrad’s novella. Just as language and culture have adapted with time, so too, Heart of Darkness has found no immunity against the perpetual justification for societal scrutiny and elucidation. Here, deconstruction and Marxism tackle the novella’s idolatry and imperialism to form the fundamentals of a comprehensive study.

Idolatry and Imperialism: A Dance of Power

In Heart of Darkness, ideals nurse a dangerous tendency to transform into idols. While these obsessions take various forms, their roots are the same: The desire for power, money, or reputation. Through Kurtz’s thirst for supremacy, he immersed himself into native culture, into the unspecified darkness of Africa, and soon became privy to unspeakable rights that worshiped his own wanton lust for dominance.

Likewise, Kurtz’s fiancée harbored an intensely idolized view of him, shielded in her own protective delusion, the continuation of which was made possible by Marlow’s lie. Marlow, too, assumed the role of “idol” on the ship deck, analogous to the Buddha with folded legs and upward palms. A deconstructionist might argue a failing in these inversions: Where ideals become idols, Conrad’s portrayal of European involvement is painted no more proper than the natives’ darkness, cannibalism, and savagery. Furthermore, these traits seem to denote a transcendence back to primordial times and parallel the white/black dichotomy of racism.

From Darkness to Dichotomies: Unmasking Conrad

While the novella’s darkness emotes African savagery and degradation, it asserts European corruption and imperialism. The idolatry that resulted was a direct correlate of these self-propagated binaries: European/African, light/dark. A Marxist might argue that the hegemony of the European versus African peoples caused this progression of idolization. During “the scramble for Africa” from 1880-1914, these purported “dark” nations found themselves under constant appropriation and colonization by self-deemed superior parties who had no qualms accepting and extending their political, militant, and economic leadership roles to include idolatry, thus sealing their omnipotence over the subjugated.

While many critics of Heart of Darkness seem to have replaced imperialistic discourse with a more metaphysical analysis of the human soul and conceptual, elusive grasp of “evil,” the effects of colonization remain, as ever, ubiquitous and open for interpretation. The novella initially paints Marlow, and by extension Conrad, as anti-imperialist; However, upon deeper examination, this is not entirely accurate. Offhand terminology and pervasive dichotomies that either highlighted or subverted racism seemed consciously constructed to instigate incongruous ethical and political views.

A deconstructionist might argue that the absence of historical data aids in the novella’s transparent portrayal of racist dichotomies. During its time of publication, Arabs and African tribes were fighting one another in the Boer War. The writing’s exclusion of this creates a singularly white/black narrative with no other vying parties involved. Furthermore, it is not clear whether this omission is meant to be a result of the speaker’s, scribe’s, or author’s doing. A Marxist might argue that this evil, this darkness, now only parceled out to two sides, created a more compelling oppressor/oppressed, painting the evil in Europe as ironic and the evil in Africa as expected.

References

1. Brantlinger, Patrick. “‘Heart of Darkness’: ‘Anti-Imperialism, Racism, or Impressionism?’.” Criticism, vol. 27, no. 4. JSTOR.
2. Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. New York: Signet Classic, 1997.
3. Raskin, Jonah. “Imperialism: Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.” Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 2, no. 2. JSTOR.
4. Wallenstein, Jimmy. “‘HEART OF DARKNESS’: THE SMOKE-AND-MIRRORS DEFENSE.” Conradiana, vol. 29, no. 3. JSTOR.

Oftentimes, when comparing writing, whether it be from the 1800s or newer writing from the 21st century, we can see a few common and shared themes. Love, Luck, Heroism, Heartbreak, and Struggle, just to name a few, are themes that can be found in almost all pieces of literature. One of the many themes found in both classic and modern literature is that of Madness. The descent or ascent to Madness in both protagonists and their plot-driving counterparts can be found in many different pieces of writing.

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness are both writings that explore the rise of Madness in their protagonists. Shakespeare’s Hamlet speaks broadly about the Madness solely created by one person, while Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness focuses on the Madness produced by unstable conditions. Between these two novels, both authors create masterpieces depicting the actions and results of Madness.

Hamlet & Madness: A Shakespearean Descent

Although both novels take place in dramatically different places and time periods, they are both places in which evil exists, and things created by man have the ability to bring on that evil. The endless need for power that drove Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius, to kill Hamlet’s father, King Hamlet, is one of many types of evil presented in the novel. In Heart of Darkness, the Madness stems from the desire for power and the need for ivory. The power in Heart of Darkness is not only apparent because it causes logical and powerful men like Kurtz to commit his mad acts but also because of how fast Marlow is able to discover how quickly power and the hunger for it can change things.

In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, readers can find a fall to Madness driven by heartbreak, loss, trouble, and betrayal. These are all things in which the protagonist, Hamlet, must learn to live. However, in the process of learning to live in these unstable conditions, Hamlet not only loses himself but his remaining stable state of mind, as well. Characters like Hamlet, whose flaws we may see at the beginning of writing, are often susceptible to their troubles, tearing their state of mind apart. By the end of this belles-lettres, the delirium seen in these characters is comparable to that of one who, when introduced to them, is already mad. Hamlet’s Madness is driven by his life struggles and heightened by the deception of not only his childhood friends but his mother and uncle as well. The causes of Hamlet’s Madness are much different from that of Marlow in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

Conrad’s Gaze: Power’s Role in Insanity

Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness is about the human psyche. It considers man’s ability to descend into Madness as well as his ability to break from it and triumph over his dark, haunting thoughts and impulses that threaten to consume one’s heart and mind. This struggle between Madness and one’s ability to break away from it is presented perfectly in Conrad’s narrative of the main character, Marlow. Although Marlow is the driver of the theme of Madness in this novel, another character who perfectly resembles this is Kurtz. The perception of Madness within this work allows the reader to perceive the god-like mentality and extreme sense of self-importance that Kurtz develops. Kurtz, in developing this

References

1. Conrad, J. (1899). Heart of Darkness. Blackwood’s Magazine.
2. Shakespeare, W. (1603). Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. The Globe.

The objective of this extended essay is to demonstrate the effect Joseph Conrad achieves by creating a dark atmosphere in Heart of Darkness through his use of language, characterization, description, and decisions to make the setting.

This topic is relevant because it shows the importance of implementing detailed descriptions and thought-provoking language to grab the attention of the reader and keep their concentration on point. This is a technique all writers use to keep their audience interested and make their plot more interconnected.

For this investigation to take place, it was imperative to read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad because of the big role it plays in this paper. I had also read Norton Critical Editions of the fifth edition of Heart of Darkness, which explains and criticizes Conrad’s use of language and punctuation, as well as other editors techniques when they were polishing up Conrad’s work; this was extremely valuable because it helped validate my opinions on the vocabulary, grammar, and rhetorical decisions that were made by the author.

Additionally, it helped me to realize how the meaning of certain phrases could have been changed. I also read books like The Secret Sharer, “To Build a Fire,” and Great Expectations that shared similar themes, language, descriptions, and styles to the main book I was reading. These sources assisted me when I had to argue and support my claims when answering my question: How was the dark atmosphere created by Joseph Conrad? E-books and articles that explained literary terminology, background on the author, or comments on the novel also assisted me when developing my answer.

From Seaman to Storyteller: Joseph Conrad’s Maritime Muse

Joseph Conrad’s writings are influenced by his life. During his childhood, he dreamt of traveling all over the seas away from the hunger, discrimination, and poverty that surrounded him in his country. At age seventeen, he finally followed his vocation at sea life and left for Marsiglia to become a seaman. After a decade and a half of working on the sea, he started to work for the French Merchant Navy and, in 1878, for the English Merchant Navy, where he became captain. This is evident in his novels due to the fact that he uses statements such as “One ship is very much like another, and the sea is always the same. In the immutability of their surroundings, the foreign shores, the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life, glide past, veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance, for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it is the sea itself.”

In his novels, he discusses issues that revolve around the morality of the protagonists, fate, and luck that can change the destiny of the central characters and controversial topics such as imperialism and racism. One of his principal novels, where we can find these characteristics, is Heart of Darkness, which Joseph Conrad experienced on his own when he worked for the ‘Societe Anonyme Belge for the Commerce of Congo’ and where he got most of his inspiration.

His writing is greatly criticized and edited because many critics believe that his “odd expressions,” “haphazard punctuation,” and “repetition” are undated or due to Conrad’s late coming to the English language writing mistakes. According to Norton Critical Editions, many editors, such as Knowles and Heinemann, edit Conrad’s work to make the text more decipherable, which, in Norton’s opinion, takes away from the text. I agree, even though the language and references might be complicated at times. It is what gives Conrad’s writing its authentic and, at times, dark essence, which he combines with his vast international life experience, which contributes to the atmosphere. According to “The Book of Literary Terms,” the atmosphere is the mood of the narrative, which is created by means of setting, altitude, descriptions, and language, which, in Conrad’s case, for the most part, is darkness.

“Walking to the taffrail, I was in time to make out, on the very edge of a darkness thrown by a towering black mass like the very gateway of Erebus, yes, I was in time to catch an evanescent glimpse of my white hat left behind to mark the spot where the secret sharer of my cabin and of my thoughts.”

In the following sections, the means by which Conrad created the atmosphere in Heart of Darkness will be evaluated through his use of the setting, language, and character description.

The first element used by Conrad to contribute to a disturbing and wicked feeling in the atmosphere is the setting. Through detailed descriptions of the land and environment that Marlow recounts during his time in the Congo, the reader can picture and emerge themselves in what the author has experienced or intended the reader to experience. While reading Heart of Darkness, one can clearly notice how the overwhelming growth of nature, urban lifestyle, and the low sea level where the novel takes place influences the dark atmosphere. According to Thomas Foster, when a setting is described as being low, it has the following connotations:

“swamps, crowds, fog, darkness, heat, unpleasantness, people, life, death.”

“…the very end of the world, a sea the color of lead, a sky the color of smoke, a kind of ship about as rigid as a concertina — and going up this river with stores, or orders, or what you like. Sandbanks, marshes, forests, savages — precious little to eat fit for a civilized man, nothing but Thames water to drink. No Falernian wine here, no going ashore. Here and there, a military camp lost in a wilderness, like a needle in a bundle of hay — cold, fog, tempests, disease, exile, and death — death skulking in the air, in the water, in the bush. They must have been dying like flies here.”

Here, the narrator gives the reader an image of what he experienced or expected during Marlow’s process to enter the Congo, which is later referred to as the “Heart of Darkness.” This sensorial image is told by the narrator as if it would go down in history as one of the most disastrous periods like the Roman’s exploits did. By describing the hardships and uncomfortable situations the protagonist will be put into before they begin, Conrad creates the atmosphere for the plot to develop. With Marlow recounting the setting as if he were about to enter an apocalyptic dimension where everything around him is either dying or hostile, it makes the reader empathize with the protagonist.

The use of wilderness, heat, and harsh nature also help to induce the reader into relating to the sensations described in the novel since these are images that for the most part, are relatable to humans, whether it be by personal experience or imagination. Wilderness, heat, and harsh nature can also be related to the decomposition process, which is evident in the novel through the decomposing human bodies that are repeatedly mentioned.

“Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world when vegetation rioted on the earth, and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of overshadowed distances. On silvery sandbanks, hippos and alligators sunned themselves side by side.”

Conrad’s use of urban settings, personification of nature, and description of human’s immoral instincts promote the idea that he is a naturalist like Jack London in his book “To Build a Fire” when he uses temperature to characterize his character’s fragile and uptight personality. Conrad uses humidity to demonstrate once again the gloomy and miserable atmosphere in his settings despite the sunshine that surrounds his characters. The effect this has on the reader is that it creates a sense that the novel is realistic because with all the death, torment, and cruelty that is seen in the novel, at this point, not even sunshine can fix the rest of the overwhelming abundance of nature and darkness that never seems far.

Contrasts in Nature: From Static Wilderness to Human Havoc

The setting in this novel, like the seasons in The Great Gatsby, describes the flow of the story. The novel in this scene, like the primordial trees and the animals, is static. Nothing dramatic is happening; there is no death, and all they are doing is waiting. Nature contributes greatly to setting the atmosphere. However, the rare appearance of buildings also plays a role when it comes to constructing the atmosphere.

“A long decaying building on the summit was half buried in the high grass; the large holes in the peaked roof gaped black from afar; the jungle and the woods made a background. There was no enclosure or fence of any kind, but there had been one apparently, for near the house, half-a-dozen slim posts remained in a row, roughly trimmed, and with their upper ends ornamented with round carved balls.”

Even though there are some descriptions of the buildings and rooms, for the most part, they have a superficial description. They serve to characterize a secondary character, or there is a specific intention the author finds to be meaningful. Despite their sporadic appearance in the text, they are important for contrast and to emphasize the human nature that contributes to the mood. In the last example, the description of the Central Station shows the grotesqueness and savagery that people turn to when they are put in situations of uncontrolled power.

Atmosphere through Setting & Syntax: Conrad’s Crafted Unease

I make this claim because the office, which is being described as Kurtz’s, and the heads that are situated around the building evoke a sensation of fear, which is a main trait in the personality he shows off. Another example of a room was the doctor’s office where Marlow went to get his check-up, which, like him, was cold and gave an uneasy feeling. Hence, the setting in The Heart of Darkness provokes the reader to relate to and imagine the awful darkness of the surroundings described in the novel through the altitude, temperature, description, and personification of nature.

The following element used by Conrad to create a sensation of darkness (dark mystery) in the reader is his use of language, which entitles his preference in wording to the grammatical structure he applies. According to Rogers, everything contributes to the atmosphere, whether it be a description involving our senses or “a song, word, phrase, or memory that evokes the atmosphere you want to create.” At times, how a phrase is presented can be more impactful than a description. We can see this in the following extract:

“Odd thing that I, who used to clear out for any part of the world at twenty-four hours’ notice, with less thought than most men give to the crossing of a street, had a moment — I won’t say of hesitation, but of startled pause, before this commonplace affair. I felt as though, instead of going to the center of a continent, I was about to set off for the center of the earth.”

Here, one can clearly see how Conrad’s disjointed and clumsy use of punctuation and sentence structure creates a notion of hesitation and confusion as he enters deep into the Congo’s jungle. Making this sentence complicated to read prompts the reader to relate to the confusion Marlow felt towards this expedition.

Conrad’s Mastery: Evoking Darkness Through Words & Rhetoric

Conrad induces the reader to perceive Marlow’s doubtfulness as he feels skeptical despite having been in this situation many times before. It serves as a glimpse of the savagery that will later be encountered. The use of the phrase “center of the earth” also helps promote the dark and unsettling feeling of the unknown. What’s more, it serves to warn the reader that, like the center of the earth, the closer you get to it, the hotter it becomes, like the Inferno, which Marlow references later on in the novel while he is driving the steamboat to get to Kurtz. The author promotes the feeling of darkness through his terminology:

“The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own. That was the reflection that made you creepy all over. It was impossible — it was not good for one either — trying to imagine. He had taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land.”

In this quote, once again, the atmosphere of darkness is palpable. This is attributed to the fact that words like darkness, creepy, and devil appear in this single phrase. Throughout the novel, words that have evil and bad connotations, like death, black, dark, and devil, are constantly used. This use of these terms, as well as the rhetoric that Conrad employs, increases the feeling of evil and darkness by making them stand out.

“Marlow ceased and sat apart, indistinct and silent, in the pose of a meditating Buddha. Nobody moved for a time. “We have lost the first of the ebb,” said the Director suddenly. I raised my head. The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky — seemed to lead into the Heart of an immense darkness.”

There are many misconceptions about rhetoric, which make it seem like a bad thing; however, when it is used correctly, it helps transmit your ideas in a more efficient way and appeals to the reader’s emotions. Conrad, like many successful writers, uses a lot of rhetorical devices. Just in the last example, one can observe an epithet, a personification, an allusion, a hyperbole, and an anastrophe. Other rhetorical elements found are: Even though these devices create beauty in a text, it does not mean they can not evoke fear, desperation, or madness. What is more, due to their corresponding purposes, they can emphasize, augment, and manipulate the emotions the writer is trying to express. In the example above, one can tell the purpose Conrad had in mind was to create an atmosphere of pensiveness as the characters looked for a solution in the now-clam water. Conrad’s use of specific terms, grammatical structure, and rhetoric all played a great role in creating an unsettling atmosphere.

Characterization: Amplifying Darkness & Exploitation

The third element that will be analyzed is the role of characterization in order to construct an atmosphere of exploitation and cruelty. In many literary pieces, the atmosphere is the device used to influence another element. In Heart of Darkness, the contrary happens. The characters emphasize the dark atmosphere in the novel, whether it be through their actions or how they are described.

“I let him run on this papier-mache Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried, I could poke my forefinger through him and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe.”

Using the reference of “papier-mache Mephistopheles,” which translates as a fake servant of the devil in English, to describe the “right hand” of the Director and lazy brickmaker demonstrates the fake humanity and purpose that Marlow noticed in him after getting to know him better. The comparison to the devil has been made before but not to a specific person, but the deception that Marlow falls into when he first meets the brickmaker gives the sense that, like the devil, he is deceiving, greedy, and lazy.

Marlow, as one of the narrators, has certain preferences towards people, which can be inferred, judging by the last description he made. Even though Marlow doesn’t seem to like most of the white groups because “For Europeans, Africa remained this supplier of valuable raw materials bodies,” he isn’t too excited about having relationships with the blacks either. Marlow isn’t barbaric towards the black people like the rest of the whites and even goes as far as giving food to one of them, but he doesn’t see them as people.

Dehumanization & Prejudice: Unveiling the Dark Psyche

“He was an improved specimen; he could fire up a vertical boiler. He was there below me, and, upon my word, to look at him was as edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat walking on his hind legs. A few months of training had been done for that really fine chap. He was useful because he had been instructed, and what he knew was this — that should the water in that transparent thing disappear, the evil spirit inside the boiler would get angry through the greatness of his thirst and take a terrible vengeance.”

The narrator introduces the scene by denying the humanity of recognizing that black man, and immediately after, he diminishes him to a trained animal. The wickedness of this event is only heightened by mentioning “the evil spirit,” which most likely is an invention of a white person to provoke fear or is the white person itself in the mind of the black person. Like the “improved specimen,” the sensation of darkness that comes from this event creates a disturbing mood. In the novel, women and blacks are portrayed as tertiary characters and are static, flat characters that are, if described, as superficial. They don’t go into much detail about them, not even physically, unless they serve as a transition to talking about another character or theory. Only once more in the plot, a black person was praised. He wasn’t given a name, but because of the composure he and his tribe had in comparison to the white man that was freaking out, Marlow questioned the savagery that was said these men had.

Structure & Evolution: From Setting to Character

The black people were called rebels, enemies, and savages, yet they weren’t the ones stealing, torturing, or killing. Consequently, the characters’ relationships, descriptions, and treatment have all led to the creation of a hostile atmosphere. The first chapter states the background necessary to understand the rest of the essay and introduces the reasons that validate the claim and answer the question.

The second chapter explains how the setting in The Heart of Darkness provokes the reader to relate and imagine the awful darkness of the surroundings described in the novel through the altitude, temperature, and description and personification of nature.

The third chapter evaluates how Conrad’s use of specific terms, grammar structure, and rhetoric all played a great role in setting an unsettling atmosphere. The fourth chapter talks about how the characters’ relationships, descriptions, and treatment have all led to the creation of a hostile atmosphere. Therefore, wicked settings, cruel characters, and rough language contribute to darkness.

References

1. Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. Penguin Classics, 1995.
2. Knowles, J. & Heinemann, L. Editing Conrad: A Textual Examination. Academic Press, 1997.
3. Norton Critical Editions. Heart of Darkness: A Critical Examination. 5th ed., W.W. Norton & Co., 1996.
4. Conrad, Joseph. The Secret Sharer. Dover Publications, 1992.
5. London, Jack. “To Build a Fire.” The World of Jack London, Century Co., 1910.
6. Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Chapman & Hall, 1861.
7. Rogers, Amy. Literary Atmosphere: A Study of Language and Setting. Beacon Press, 2001.
8. Norton Critical Editions. Conrad’s Language: Understanding the Prose. W.W. Norton & Co., 1998.
9. Leonard, Garry. The Book of Literary Terms: An Examination of Atmosphere. University Press, 2000.

Although Achebe has made known his desire to counteract through his writing the negative image Africans have been given through works like Conrad’s Heart of darkness and Cary’s Mister Johnson, in Things Fall Apart he nevertheless presents both “positive and negative aspects of traditional Igbo life” rather than simply “ idealizing and romanticizing the past” Substantiate .

Chinua Achebe wrote his debut novel “Things Fall Apart’ as a reply and critique of Heart of Darkness. In “Heart of Darkness’ Africans are considered as nothing more than savage and non human, uncivilized as Conrad presents Africa through the eye of Colonist. As a reply, Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart to counteract ancient and typical views of Africa. With this backdrop, this essay illustrates that Achebe shows a different image of Africans in total contrast of what Conrad produced in Heart of Darkness. He looks at Africa from an African person’s view point. Chinua Achebe presents both positive and negative features of the Igbo people and provides the picture of society, religion, politics, economy without any attempt to romanticize or sentimentalize them (Nnoromele147). This essay reveals that Achebe has presented different political, psychological and personal issues of the Igbo people from the view point of both viewer and a critic. On one side he shows the productive and rational side of the Igbo, on the other side he emphasizes their senselessness and irrational beliefs too. In this essay, I claim that Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart explicates and uncovers the reality as human beings the Igbo have merits as well as imperfections.

Achebe depicts the religious, social and political life of the people living in African villages named Umuofia, Mbanta and other smaller ones. Achebe considers them as people of great tradition, history and institutions. Just as there are two sides to every coin Igbo culture has its own charm. The pride of their culture lies in the reality they believe in life and appropriate in leading a very simple life. They choose to stay far away from the crowd. They prefer to share happiness as well as the sorrows of the others in their community. Achebe’s presentation of the Igbo culture in the novel is largely authentic. For instance, their perspective on religion has been presented, they are polytheistic, meaning they believe in god and worship more than one deity. There are different traditions and rituals that are linked with Igbo society such as the celebration of the Peace week which is observed to reap a lavish and abundant harvest. Chinua Achebe has also mentioned other ceremonies regarding marriage and courtship in the novel. Achebe tells us that most marriages are polygamous in nature, which is actually important in Igbo society. The enforcement of law, order and different aspects of war all have been presented throughout the novel. Achebe has also presented that Igbo people are extremely clan oriented. They treat each other like family and always share their news with each other, as can be seen in case of Okonkwo’s wives. Achebe prevails the idea that Africans are normal human beings as “they talk and laugh among themselves like all and with others who stand near them”.

Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart’ depicts Africa as a civilized society. Through novel Achebe tells us that Africa is not savage or dark continent the Europeans made it out to be. He uses proverbs and vocabulary of Nigeria. Achebe’s use of native African language is the indication of his rebellion against the European colonizers. Achebe presents us the social and family rituals, food production and preparation process, the customs for marriage ceremony, religious practices and beliefs and leadership for the community. The people of the village led happy life and they were contended with what they had. The main trade and occupation were farming. They worked hard in their fields from morning till evening during seasons of sowing and harvest. They did not have knowledge of advanced techniques of farming. They were hospitable as they always gave a warm welcome to their guests. They provided those kola nuts and palm wine to eat, drink and rejoice in their company. They also lived together with one another for example Okonkwo got full assistance from his mother’s brother Uchendu and his sons for seven years of exile. Festivals not only gave them the opportunity of eating and drinking but also helped Igbo people to develop intimacy among them. They were also happy so far as their political life is concerned. There was a committee of elders comprising of nine great men of clans to decide all the political problems in a democratic way.

Achebe has depicted not only the positive side of the Igbo culture but he has also shown the superstitious practiced by them. The superstitious beliefs among the Igbo society give the Europeans a chance to split of their harmony. The white man takes benefit of this aspect to his maximum benefit. Tolerance is a issue yet the villagers become victim of their tolerant attitude about the missonaries. If they had refused them from the beginning and had not allowed them to stay, things might have come out in different way. By the time they understood the destructive impact these things had on their own lives, it was too late. In the novel even the protagonist Okonkwo was not without flaws. He was well known character in the nine villages. His tragic flaw short sightedness, anger and violence brought his downfall. He wanted his son Nwoye to be great man in his life. That was the reason he treated him badly without thinking that his harsh and rude behavior might turn his son in to a rebel. Fear of weakness/failure was also tragic flaw in his personality. He murdered Ikemefuna “because he was fearful of being weak’. Okonkwo was happy when Ikemefuna came in to his family. Though Okonkwo liked the boy yet he treated him in anger. He treated Nwoye, Ikemefuna and others with a heavy hand.

In the novel Okonkwo is presented as a cruel person who treats his wives harshly, even breaking the traditional customs of gentleness and kindness in the week of Peace just because he was annoyed with his youngest wife. “He has strict adherence to the village customs and believed that he would never be a true man unless he was able to dominate the household and his wives’ (Tobalase,2016). Achebe also narrates incidence in the novel where he tells a story that there was once a man who want to sell a goat at the market. He led it on a rope which he binds around his wrist. But after sometime he turned back and saw what he led at the end of the leather was a heavy log of wood. This story tells us a lot. It means that Achebe does not partly show us that Igbo are free from all kinds of wrongdoings. Rather his purpose is to show the fact that as human beings the Igbo have some merits as well as demerits. The novel also suggests that the unjust and prejudiced Osu caste system is a social hole where the Igbo themselves go down in to. The Osu are untouchable in the Igbo villages and their existence is considered a taboo in the society. They are people devoted to god who cannot marry the villagers or live with them. The outcasts can not acquire any of the four village titles, when they die, they are buried in the Evil forest and they are not provided a funeral. The Christian missionaries welcome the Osu with open arms and explain that everyone is the child of god. The Osu are the first to be converted to Christianity. The Osu have long been remained underprivileged, deprived of basic rights. The Osu find a way out from their repressed and suppressed emotions in Christianity. In “Things Fall Apart’ Achebe considers that negative elements of Igbo society are responsible for the downfall of Igbo society. “The seeds of decay are inbuilt. The colonizers just fastened the action” (Aggarwal221). Western culture won over the hearts and soul of the common people not by force of arms but by the ability of appeal as their message of peace was considered superior to the violence and human sacrifice of conventional society.

Achebe has thus tried to deliver an insight in to the African traditions which was never highlighted in such a way before. He wrote the novel to counter colonist depiction of Africa as revealed especially in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and other texts like Joyce Carey’s Mister Johnson. In the novel he inclines towards the Igbo side but with the eye of critic. He goes through the ins and outs of the day to day life of Igbo. As a result, he uncovers the examined and unexamined life of the Igbo people long before they were invaded by Europeans.

A dramatic change in environment can have varying effects on its inhabitants, leading to a person performing actions that they normally would not. I will be investigating how the characters of the two novels ‘Heart of Darkness’ and ‘The Road’ behave in response to these changes, as well as how their very way of thinking is altered by their experiences.

There are three societies depicted within the two novels; the remnants of humanity within ‘The Road’ and the contrasting civilisations of the Europeans and the natives in ‘Heart of Darkness’. McCarthy writes that a year after the unknown disaster, there was ‘fires on the ridges and deranged chanting’ implying that society has regressed into a structure akin to tribal, and the way it is depicted is similar to how the natives are described in ‘Heart of Darkness’ as ‘a mass of hands clapping’ by Marlow, who adds ‘the prehistoric man was cursing us’. When applied to Nietzsche’s philosophical concept of the Dionysian and the Apollonian, both of these societies are clearly Dionysian, as in both novels their respective writers portray them as chaotic, instinctual and passionate with a certain element of ecstatic madness. Both are also described by characters of a more Apollonian nature, namely Marlow and the Man, who presumably come from similar backgrounds, at least in Marlow’s case as he describes the ‘sepulchral city’ he inhabits. This supports the idea that European society is strictly Apollonian as it celebrates values such as logic, self-control and order but the word ‘sepulchral’ also captures the cold, lack of feeling associated with these concepts.

The conflict between these opposing societies is clearly demonstrated in ‘Heart of Darkness’. Published in 1899, it was written when Britain was still expanding its sizable colonial empire, focusing on Africa in particular from 1881 to 1919 as it scrambled to acquire colonies. Many British believed this was a noble purpose as they brought British traditions and religion to the rest of the way, ending their ‘barbaric practices in order to ‘enlighten’ them. Marlow’s aunt is a clear example of this attitude as she gushes ‘it’s a glorious idea’ when he tells her of his plans to visit Africa. Exploration was greatly romanticised during this time period with the publication of adventure stories such as Melville’s ‘Moby Dick’ in 1851 and the idolisation of explorers such as David Livingstone (who was seen as a national hero) it is easy to see why given this environment much of the public was blinded in the radiance of these brave and noble travellers who committed such atrocities. Nietzsche believed that a balance of Apollonian and Dionysian was necessary in order to create a well-rounded individual. The Europeans in ‘Heart of Darkness’ could be said to have an excess of Apollonian; although they use the justification of educating to who they perceived as savages, in reality they are becoming savages themselves as they kill, plunder, enslave and burn a path through a country whose people are unable to defend themselves. In summary, their reaction when faced with an environment so unlike themselves is ironically one of violence as it is not in accordance with their views.

This blindness to immorality in the pursuit of a single goal is similar to the pure survivalist instinct of the cannibals in ‘The Road’. In reaction to a world with a destroyed ecosystem, dwindling resources and little hope of recovery, these people have gone to the very limits of practicality to ensure their survival. As critic Erik Weilenberg says, they ‘only care about survival and will do anything to attain it’ and live ‘without principles at all’. Their behaviour is devoid of any ethical considerations or moral judgment, as they capture and keep other unfortunate survivors in a basement as a food supply. The most horrific detail of this is a description of a man with ‘his legs gone to the hip and stumps of them blackened and burnt’ implying that they gradually amputate limbs in order to conserve food. Their actions are reminiscent to that of a shrike; a carnivorous bird that impales its prey on thorns in order to preserve it so it can return to eat uneaten portions at a later date. The lack of regard for prolonged human suffering suggests that in such an extreme environment the need to survive is so strong that an individual is reduced to basic primal instinct, exhibiting animalistic tendencies as they struggle to not be left behind in this new ‘survival of the fittest’ world.

The character of Kurtz, however, has entirely different reasoning altogether. Like the cannibals of ‘The Road’ in accordance with Freudian theory, Kurtz has succumbed completely to the id element of Freud’s tripartite personality. He operates solely on pleasure principle, the idea that every wishful impulse should be immediately satisfied regardless of the consequences. For the cannibals, it was their hunger, but for him it is simply his desire to fulfil his sadistic tendencies. A question posed by Marlow is the cause of these tendencies; how did a talented but relatively ordinary European become the murderous and tyrannical overlord of a native community? Thomas Hobbes in his work ‘Leviathan’ argues that peace within society can occur with the presence of authority from above and that without a powerful ruler, the natural state of humanity is that of conflict and horror. This can be looked at in two ways. Firstly, it can be argued that because Kurtz has been removed from European society, and by extension its authority, this sudden freedom has led him to fall from one extreme to the other as he casts aside respectable restraint in favour of the Dionysian indulgence of his desires, free from consequences and confirming the fears of many Europeans at the time of ‘going native’. The second interpretation of this is that the state of Kurtz’s camp is because of his weakness. Like the cannibals, Kurtz is initially seen as a strong and powerful, feared because of his success, but in reality they are those of weak character in an oppressive environment. Kurtz gives the impression that he is subject to no one, but really he has been reduced to a living corpse, ‘an animated image of death’ grasping and clinging to life in a pathetic manner. He’s a ‘hollow man’ desperately trying to fill that emptiness inside with sin and indulgence whilst slowly being consumed himself. This applies in the case of the cannibals quite literally as they do anything to keep themselves alive. Both scenarios have a Faustian theme as in exchange for power or their life, they have given up what makes them truly human , their principles, beliefs, in others words their soul. The effect on the mind is personified in ‘Heart of Darkness’ as a sickness that causes the true power, the wilderness of Africa, to burst into a ‘prodigious peal of laughter’ as it mocks Kurtz and these ‘hollow men’ who believe they have achieved power when in fact they are slowly being stripped of it. Conrad portrays Africa as a temptress, ensuring the destruction of Kurtz as he is drawn in by ‘the heavy, mute spell of the wilderness’. Marlow says that Africa ‘fascinated me as a snake would a bird – a silly little bird’. This can be seen to have religious connotations as it bears similarities to the fall of Adam and Eve who were tempted by the Devil in the form of a snake, leaving paradise at the cost of knowledge. Temptation is further explored in ‘The Road’ in a similar manner. Here, death acts as the temptress, as the brutality of the environment coerces its inhabitants to believe that death will be their salvation. The Wife uses a metaphor to describe death as she takes it as her ‘new lover’ betraying her family by committing suicide. Although both Kurtz and the Wife fall prey to their respective environments; the Wife realises that it is futile to escape the coming reckoning and chooses to end her life on her terms. Kurtz on the other hand, tries to escape it and does not realise the truth until the very end as he rasps ‘the horror, the horror’. Alternatively this could be interpreted as Kurtz’s realisation that he has become the savage that he so vehemently despised. He has fallen prey to the warning within Nietzsche’s quote ‘Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster… for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you,’ becoming a monster in his fight against supposed monsters, losing himself as he falls completely into the abyss.

The most obvious parallel between the two novels is when their respective characters encounter decapitated human heads, which truly show the reader that this is not a society they are accustomed to, transporting them to past times where this form of punishment was standard. However there is a contrast between these two scenes. While McCarthy describes the heads in vivid detail pointing out their ‘teeth in their socket like dental moulds,’ Conrad has Marlow view them from such a distance that he originally describes them as ‘round knobs’ thinking them as something else. It is possible that Conrad chose this style of writing as the narrative is aimed at a British audience (shown by his choice to write in English given his first language was Polish) and because of the delicate subject manner, he wished to maintain a neutral and unbiased viewpoint, likely a wise decision given the reception of shock he received, regardless of detail. However, a more likely explanation of this decision is that Conrad refuses to go into detail as he is suffering from a form of post-traumatic stress himself from his own similar experiences. Conrad’s three years spent with a Belgian trading company including acting as captain of a steamer on the Congo River which provided the foundation of ‘Heart of Darkness’. His journey began five years after Belgium’s King Leopold II gained the Congo as his personal estate at the Berlin Conference of 1885 and his experiences during his six month journey led Conrad to refer to it as “the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience and geographical exploration”. Critic Albert Guerard believed that the journey of ‘Heart of Darkness’ was a metaphor for a psychological exploration into the heart of human nature and finding only the animal selves that lurk beneath. Thus, this could be applied to Conrad himself which would suggest that ‘Heart of Darkness’ is a story of how the environment of Africa impacted him, but a detached version as he cannot bring himself to recall it fully, and so it could be said that the character of Marlow is a shade of Conrad’s psyche.

To further expand the idea of ‘hollow men’ explored in ‘Heart of Darkness’ rather than simply just applying it to the cannibals of ‘The Road’ the Man himself could be considered hollow. In their battle with the environment, the Man and Boy are able to avoid succumbing to the animalistic tendencies of other survivors showing their true moral integrity. They are able to look in Nietzsche’s abyss and hold their ground. However, the Man’s world revolves around his son; he lives only for him. Without the Boy, it is arguable that the Man would have become just like the cannibals they fear. His insistence in ‘carrying the fire’ may be metaphorical for protecting the Boy; one of the last to have a soul and carry the spark of real, true humanity. This idea is shared by Weilenberg, who writes ‘to carry the fire is to carry the last seeds of civilisation’. The Boy is truly unique, a child of the apocalypse, born into this horrific environment and has nothing of the joys that the Man once experienced and because of this, he does not suffer in the same way as the Man. The Man is a shade of his former self; all that made up his identity has been ripped away from him and is almost stuck in state of purgatory as he struggles between the vividness of his dreams and the bleak reality. The Boy only knows one reality, and because of this he is much more grounded and the contrast in environment does not affect him. However, this doesn’t mean the past has no effect on him. When encountering the Man’s childhood home, even though the Boy has encountered numerous horrors, upon entry he says ‘I’m really scared’ and convinces the Man to leave. What is seen as source of comfort to the Man is not to him as he is accustomed to living a nomadic lifestyle and a stable home is a completely foreign concept to him. The Boy is also affected by the constant fear that surrounds him, which leads him to become depressed and yearn to join his mother, as well as wish for children his own age to play with.

However, what makes the Boy so different is that he finds purpose where the Man does not; in helping people. It is he who guides his father’s moral compass as he begs repeatedly in the case of the man struck by lightning ‘Can’t we help him, Papa?’ and sees Ely for what he is ‘He’s just scared, Papa.’ While the Man is focused on survival and believes there is little point in giving help (in his view they either don’t deserve it or die anyway) the Boy places morality over survival and insists on being the ‘good guys’. Critic Alan Noble states that ‘the boy authorises his father to live in a way that is consistent with the beliefs in God’ casting the Boy as a saintly figure as he keeps faith in a planet almost devoid of life. His optimism and hope for humanity truly casts him as what the Man believes him to be as he asks Ely ‘What if I said that he’s a god?’ Gods are made powerful by belief; and although not literal, the Boy is raised to an elevated status due to the Man’s belief in him, similarly to the native’s elevation in Kurtz. A significant contrast; a dying soulless corpse of man and a fragile boy and yet both are idolised due to belief. From this it can be inferred that when an environment becomes difficult, it is natural for others to look for a source of hope or strength, whether it be negative or positive, and this is where the battle stems from in choosing to descend into the strong but beastly ways of the cannibals and Kurtz or the more delicate but yet more powerful morals of the Boy, as they not immorality, are capable of saving humanity. This plays into Nietzsche’s philosophical concept of the ‘Übermensch’ where he believed that human evolution would someday result in an ‘over man’ capable and great enough to create new meaning in the world he inhabits. Another aspect that can be summarised about the Boy that can be applied to all of the characters is that it is not the drastic environment itself that causes unnatural behaviour (also seen by the natives) but rather the extreme change in environment which leads to rapid adaptation which varies greatly as those not used to it struggle to cope.

A final point to make regarding the affect the environment can have on the human mind is the nihilistic hopelessness that is felt by various characters. One such example is the character of Ely as the lonely environment which he inhabits has become a distorted result of an indistinguishable blending of reality and fantasy for him. His existence is now purely psychological as the physical world fades away and with that all meaning. What is perhaps most sad about the fate of Ely is that he has convinced himself that not only is humanity doomed but that ‘things will be better when everybody’s gone’ proving Nietzsche’s philosophy that the death of god (at least from his perspective) leads to the loss of any universal perspective and by extension any coherent sense of objective truth. This suggests that when you are exposed to a certain environment for so long, you not only begin to accept your circumstances but agree, and even to your perception, understand them. This is such with the character of the Russian Harlequin. He is infatuated with Kurtz, utterly devoted and accepting of his actions whatever they may be, casually noting that ‘he wanted to shoot me one day.’ The Harlequin justifies Kurtz’s actions by earnestly telling Marlow that ‘You can’t judge Kurtz as you would an ordinary man’. Like Ely, he has lost sense of the world outside of the jungle and deluded himself into viewing Kurtz as a godly, divine figure, separate from the rest of humanity, and wishes to protect and preserve this view despite whatever principles he may have had before going ‘so far that I don’t know how to get back’ in his words. Perhaps he is also a hollow man; the environment has reduced him to a shade as well, his meaning for living and soul now entirely dependent on Kurtz. However, the naivety of the Harlequin allows Kurtz to confide in him, and Marlow finds the Harlequin’s proclamation that they talked of ‘Everything! Everything!…Of love too,’ amusing. In this sense the Harlequin plays into the role of the ‘wise fool’ seen often in literary texts such as Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’ in that he is privy to information and exhibit behaviours that others cannot as he is simply dismissed as a result of his supposed madness, or in this case his infatuated naivety.

To conclude, the environment affects the minds of the characters in ‘The Road’ and ‘Heart of Darkness’ in various interesting and often damning ways. Some are utterly consumed by the wilderness such as Kurtz and the Cannibals, others defy it such as Marlow and the Man, others accept it, like the Wife, Ely and the Harlequin while others, namely the Boy, have the power to define it.

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart are both about colonial life and society in early Africa. However Achebe’s book is more so a response to Conrad than it is just a book talking about Africa. In both books, the subalterns are treated rather badly. The major similarities between these two is the colonization that’s portrayed throughout the books, whether spoken of or made into a part of the book, as well as their language and Igbo culture.

In Heart of Darkness, the subalterns are the African natives that were already around the island when Marlow and Kurtz arrive on the island. The natives then get put to work on the boat. However, Kurtz mistreats (colonizes) the subalterns just because of the color of their skin and because he believes that he has all the power and can control the natives (hegemony). One of the many ways colonization was portrayed in Heart of Darkness was through a man in uniform who was set and ready to shoot another man dead he had seen until he could identify the man’s race and see that he was the same race as him. This in itself could cause the natives to see the division (apartheid) being demonstrated between the races as soon as Kurtz and his crew showed up on this island.

Another example demonstrating the poor treatment of the subalterns in Heart of Darkness was Marlowe seeing a group of black men lying against some trees with a white string tied around their necks, sickly and diseased. Kurtz hadn’t fed them or given them any water to demonstrate their “uselessness” (or so as he seemed to think of them). He did this to show he believed he was above them/better than them. The white string was there to signify his power over them and let others know that as well. He mistreated the natives quite poorly because for some reason I think he believed his skin color and job title had greater significance over their lives.

The last example to demonstrate the colonial discourse in Heart of Darkness was the narrator talking about a shed he had seen light on fire. However, not too far from the fire, a black man was beaten up for somehow causing the fire. He also described that black man as being the only one screaming for his life, insinuating he was afraid and hurt, possibly petrified of what had just happened to him. Without there being any proof or witness to speak for that man setting the fire, people (most likely Kurtz as his name was mentioned) just assumed it was him because, in the back of their minds, they see the color of his skin and assume he started the trouble. But Kurtz wants them all to see how much power he has and what he’s capable of, making these men fear him.

Things Fall Apart is mostly known as a response to Heart of Darkness. Once again the subalterns in Achebe’s book are the Nigerian natives, otherwise known as the Igbo people. However, it’s the men in that culture that treated the local women (most specifically with Okonkwo, it was his wives) as subalterns. The women are perceived as lesser and weaker sex than the men, as if they can’t do what the men can do and that they’re meant to just stay at home and take abuse from their husbands/partners. Okonkwo was the offender in the case of all his wives, as he was violent with all three of his wives, instilling fear in all of them. He treated his wives, and women in general as if they were below him and he was the ruler. The women were inferior to the men, although they shouldn’t have been but that’s how they were portrayed and that’s what they became due to the way society worked back then, or that could have just been how the Igbo culture was at that point in time.

I believe that Achebe’s anti-colonial stance is fair to Conrad because Achebe’s book talks about how brutal the culture was at that point in time. He wanted and still wants people to know how things were back then for the natives and his culture. He talked about how the natives were colonized and how they struggled with colonial discourse. Achebe seemed to have a strong opinion that Conrad was racist. Conrad’s entire book was about the natives being mistreated by the higher up people who so happened to be white. Everything that went wrong in the book defaulted as the result of something one of the natives did. Some examples that depict this are Conrad’s story talking about a shed fire and a black person nearby being blamed for it and beaten up for supposedly causing it without there being any proof or witnesses. A group of men were laid dying against some trees with white rope around their necks signifying the whites power, as I mentioned earlier. Conrad was a very inhumane person and his book depicted just that. Therefore I believe that Achebe’s anti-colonial stance is fair because he was only trying to point out to his readers or readers of Heart of Darkness, just how hateful Conrad’s book was and wanted people to see the truth of the mistreatment his culture had faced.

What is psychological literary criticism? What is Freud’s Theories and how to apply in the novel Heart of Darkness? The psychological criticism: An approach to literary criticism that interprets writings, authors and readers through a psychological lens. Focus on expressing the subconscious at work, looking at psychology in the narration itself as well as in the author. It was founded in the late nineteenth century until the early twentieth century by Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory and treatment for depression and anxiety disorders. The purpose of analytical psychotherapy is to bring suppressed memories and emotions into light, or to make the subconscious into conscious thought. The theory states that our minds extend beyond conscious consciousness, and that the subconscious (or inner conscious) has a great influence on our actions.

The mind is divided into three parts:

• The Id: the pulsed part of our psychology, which responds directly and immediately to instincts.
• Ego: It works according to the principle of reality, which works to find realistic ways to satisfy our sometimes chaotic demands.
• Superego: It includes morals and values ​​learned from parents and other influences. A split in conscience and an ideal soul. Freud’s theories were considered shocking in origin, and they sparked more controversy and debate over time. Regardless of the controversy, these theories have remained highly influential in many areas, including psychology, sociology, anthropology, art, and literature.

Freud’s Theories In Relation to Heart of Darkness.

• Marlowe: Marlow identifies with Kurtz, because of the similarities between their identities. Marlowe struggles to keep himself from giving up his identity throughout the book, but he manages to keep his identity in harmony with the ego, while Kurtz is completely in control. This is the primary difference between Marlowe and Kurtz.
• Kurtz: Kurtz has been proven to be Marlow’s changing ego. Kurtz’s primary traits of greed and violence are revealed in an environment free of social constraints, which highlights a negative take on the unconscious mind. His identity gradually becomes very strong, leading Kurtz to go crazy, and ultimately to his death.
• Accountant: Since Marlow represents the powerful ego and Kurtz represents a strong identifier, the accountant that Marlow meets is a strong Superego. Upon seeing anyone else’s greedy acts, the accountant adjusts himself and does what he knows is right.

As a whole, looking at the heart of darkness from a Freudian perspective, we can see that Marlow’s journey to Africa can also be seen as a journey into his unconscious mind. We can also see the importance of each of Freud’s three elements in the unconscious mind, and how a balance between ego, Id, and superego is necessary. Dreams and nightmares ‘They were behind, in my opinion, the wonderful suggestion of words heard in dreams, and the phrases spoken in nightmares.’ ‘No, it is impossible; it is impossible to pass on the sense of life of any particular era of one’s existence – what makes its truth and meaning – its penetrating and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, and we dream alone.’ The Spirit ‘But his soul was crazy. He looked into himself, and through the heavens that I tell you, he has become crazy. ‘He also struggled with himself. I saw him – I heard it. I saw an unimaginable secret from a spirit that knows no restraint, faith or fear, but blindly struggles with itself.’ Mind ‘I remembered the old doctor’, it would be interesting for science to immediately monitor the mental changes of individuals, ‘I felt that I became scientifically interesting.’ ‘The human mind is capable of anything – because everything is in it, all the past and also the future.’

In conclusion, Heart of Darkness highlights Sigmund Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis, on more than one front. The debate about inner consciousness is highlighted by Conrad’s own experiences and by his description of Marlowe, Kurtz, and others. This novel shows us a dark, crooked journey into the unknown, forcing us to realize that the darkest of the unknown may be within us . Psychological disturbances and internal moral conflicts are the basis of the novel because the internal evil struggle is the human struggle with their morals and their battle with their hidden evil. Through Marlowe, Conrad can express his feelings towards a man in the dark and how we can quickly turn dark in the opposite direction.

From analysing both novels it is clear to say that both show a negative correlation to the environment and the characters rapid decline in mental health. It is easy to see that in The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, the deeper Marlow travels along the Congo River, deeper into the heart of Africa, the more the men display a more primative nature. Similarly in The Road, due to it being set in a post apocalyptic world, we see no society to enforce laws and authority and so we see people resort back to a very primitive nature. Overall, both show very similar connotations, however the context and reasoning behind both novels may allow us to understand why the authors portrayed certain characters and events the way they have.

The Road was released in 2006 by American writer, Cormac Mccarthy. It shows the journey of a young boy and his father travelling across America in a post-apocalyptic world, witnessing the horrifying sights that humanity has succumbed too. Members of the environmentalist movement, such as George Monbiot, have claimed The Road as a valuable tool in warning about the dangers of pollution and climate change, especially the fact that without plants and animals, humans will inevitably die off too. It can be said that there are also fragments of mystery throughout the novel such as the failure of obtaining the man and the boy’s name and also the disaster leading to civilisation’s collapse is never explained. McCarthy has purposefully done this as to not distract the reader from what he wants us to focus on the most, this being the overall relationship between the man and his son.

When submerged into this new environment, the man takes on a more protective role for the boy than before and tries to preserve his innocence for as long as possible, however in this world, that is very challenging in itself. To help protect the boy, the man carries a pistol with them throughout their journey, this can be seen as ironic because a gun typically represents corruption and impurity, symbolic to the new environment they have been exposed to. After discovering a cannibal trap house, the man says “If they find you you are going to have to do it.” “it” being committing suicide as the man does not want the boy to be killed in a horrific way by the others; which is ironic. It is also important to mention that the man cannot say the word suicide to his child, because obviously this is a disturbing thought for him. To clarify with his child, he repeatedly asks “Do you understand?” to which the boy eventually replies “Yes I do papa.” which the man sees is a lie and then says “No you don’t”. This can be interpreted as again showcasing the boy’s innocence to his current situation, which allows the reader to further develop sympathy for his character. The boy does still hold some child like qualities such as curiosity when they approach the dam. The man explains that “it will probably be there for hundreds of years. Thousands, even.” meaning that it will eventually turn into a relic of humanity. This emphasises the fact that is it a post apocalyptic environment and that eventually, all of humanity will cease to be. The boy asks if there are “fish in the lake?” which shows his naivity and childlike nature. Another place the boy shows curiosity is when they scout a supermarket. The man “withdrew his hand slowly and sat looking at a Coca-Cola.” which is an iconic American image. When the boy asks “what is it, Papa?” we start to see the reality that divides them; the boy was born after the apocalypse so only knows the world in its apocalyptic state whereas the man has grown up in the time before the apocalypse and so has experienced a normal childhood unlike the boy, meaning he knows what the world was like when it was civilised. This will always be a difference between them that neither of them can change.

McCarthy’s continuous lack of punctuation, such as the refusal to use speech marks, was abandoned to keep his prose remaining simple; For example, when analysing dialogue between the man and the boy. It can be argued that this was done to correspod with the environment the man and the boy are now in; with the lack of libraries and the breakdown of literature, it can be said this is why McCarthy chose to use minimal puncuation. Thus all thoughts turn to survival. Semeikis writes, ”McCarthy manages to communicate these things briefly, in an almost unspoken way… emphasising fact and action, how things are done.” However, another interpretation of McCarthy’s style can be seen from critic Michael Madsden as he defends McCarthy’s style, adding that The Road ”could become a target for some of the criticism because very little happens on this journey toward an unknown future. But…the lack of action or plot movement is important to the story. The nothingness of the landscape is all-consuming.” It can be said that because of this, McCarthy can be compared to novelists such as Steinbeck or Hemmingway.

McCathy’s work can also be compared to that of Joseph Conrad’s, in particular his novel The Heart of Darkness which he began working on in 1898. He later signed on to an English ship in 1878, and eight years later he became a British subject. In 1889, he began actively searching for a way to fulfil his boyhood dream of travelling to the Congo. He took command of a steamship in the Belgian Congo in 1890, and his experiences in the Congo came to provide the outline for The Heart of Darkness. Conrad’s time in Africa caused severe damage to his health, consequently, he returned to England to recover. Many of Conrad’s works, for example, Heart of Darkness in particular, show examples of Victorian ideals. Women are shown as the idealistic person for home life and for having a sense of right and wrong, yet they are almost never present in the narrative; instead, the concepts of “home” and “civilisation” exist as hypocritical ways of thinking. While the threats that Conrad’s characters face are concrete ones such as, illness, violence and conspiracy, they nevertheless obtain a philosophical character, which can be seen by Marlow who explores these ideas.

In The Road, understandably, when left with very little hope, the man turns to express his beliefs in God in hopes of receiving some guidance and answers as to what has caused the apocalypse and what they should do. With the distortion of the new environment and the breakdown of communities, the man also, at points, questions God’s existence, however, he contradicts himself here as he believes his son is a miracle, saying “If he is not the word of God God never spoke.” capturing just how angelic and pure his child is. It can also be argued that the boy is the only hope the man has left at restoring his faith in humanity, which is why throughout the novel, he teaches the boy important principles and how to tell right from wrong. In the book of genesis it depicts God as creating through speech, thus meaning the man’s declaration is that either his son is the word of God, or, that the universe is a godless one. When analysing The Road, the boy’s holiness is apparent. When the man and boy find the bunker, the two get to experience how life was before the apocalypse occurred. The man cooks them hams, scrambled eggs, and baked beans along with coffee for breakfast. Before eating, the child wants to thank the forgotten people for preparing the bunker. “Dear people, thank you for all this food and stuff. We know that you saved it for yourself and if you were here we wouldn’t eat it no matter how hungry we were and we’re sorry that you didn’t get to eat it and we hope you’re safe in heaven with God”. Not only does the boy’s thanks to the people sound very much like a prayer, but it was also the child’s own idea to do so. The man had no influence in the boy’s decision, and it has a righteous, holy quality. Furthermore, it shows the child acknowledges that there is a God somewhere. Therefore this could possibly be interpreted as the boy, who is seen as a symbol of purity, trying to restore society and order to the new environment in which ever way he can. Ely is the third character that also presents religious implications. Ely can be said to represent the prophet Elijah, a faithful Christian who foresaw the second coming of Christ. Like Elijah the prophet from the Bible, Ely tells the man ‘[he] knew [the apocalypse] was coming . . . [He] always believed in it’. When the man and boy first find Ely, he shirks away in fear and sits on the road. The boy approaches the stranger and ‘[puts] a hand on [Ely’s] shoulder,’ telling his father that Ely is only scared’. This resonates greatly with Revelations 1:17 in the Bible, further supporting the notion that the boy plays a critical religious role in the new world. However, Ely also deviates from the typical figure symbolising Elijah when he asserts ‘There is no God . . . There is no God and we are prophets’. He admits that he lied about his name and that it is not actually Ely, for the sake of protecting his identity. Ely reveals the religious views of The Road are not specific to a specific religion. Rather, it expands to all religious forms showing that with the absence of a society, the mind is free to roam, which can be interpreted as a positive or a negative.

In The Road we also see people revert back to a very primitive nature which involves things such as cannibalism, foraging and even slavery. Most critics see cannibalism as a symbol for something else, such as consumerism, or, like Jordon J. Dominy, present it mainly as a method of “othering”. In doing so, they forget important statements on morals and cannibalism. Most postcolonial discussion on cannibalism follows the ideas of William Arens, who suggests that Europeans created the idea of ritualistic cannibalism and imposed it on the newly discovered Americas at the time. Arens’ hypothesis is that “despite claims made by western explorers and anthropologists, there is no firm substantial evidence for the socially accepted practice of cannibalism”. This concept seems inadequate to describe The Road because McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic vision differs so greatly from the historical world of the Americas.

As stated, we are also reintroduced to slavery, as the man and the boy observe a group of people pass “Two hundred feet away”, followed by “wagons drawn by slaves in harnesses and piled with goods of war and after that the women, perhaps a dozen in number, some of them pregnant, and lastly a supplementary consort of catamites illclothed against the cold and fitted in dogcollars and yoked each to each.” This is a more organised group of “bad guys” than the party in the truck, and it shows the brutal societies being formed in this post-apocalyptic world. This is what the woman killed herself to escape – being captured by violent men and either murdered for food or used as a sex slave. We now see the true horror and violence that the man is risking by choosing to keep him and his son alive. We can compare this to Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad by noticing how the roles have reversed. In The Road, the man and the boy are prey to everyone they encounter, however, in Heart of Darkness, due to their ethnicity, Marlow and Kurtz are seen as the predators and dominators of the natives. Janet Maslin calls McCarthy’s novel a parable as she writes: ”This parable is also trenchant and terrifying, written with stripped-down urgency and fuelled by the force of a universal nightmare.”

The environment is a very significant symbol in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness because it allows us to see it’s effects on the mind or civilised people compared to primitive. The harshness of the environment contrasts with the simpleness of the pilgrims, and the wilderness also shows the greed and brutality that lie in man’s heart.

The environment continuously watches the arrival of the colonists. The activities of them are viewed throughout the book as meaningless and pointless. The men spend their time scavenging for ivory or competing against each other for a position of power within their own community, such as becoming captain of a steam boat. Their whole society seems to have an sense of falseness about it. Marlow comments: ‘The word ‘ivory’ rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it…I’ve never seen anything so unreal in my life’. In contrast to the ordered, cyclic community, the wilderness appears intimidating, immovable, and increasingly threatening. During Marlow’s stay at the Central Station, he describes the surrounding wilderness as a ‘rioting invasion of soundless life, a rolling wave of plants, piled up, crested, ready to…sweep every little man of us out of his little existence’. It is difficult to say, however, what the intentions of the environment actually are. We see the wilderness entirely through Marlow’s eyes, and it is always depicted as somewhat of an enigma.

Another interpretation of the environment is that it can be seen to reflect the true nature in the characters hearts, for example, the deeper into the jungle the white men travel, the more they abandon their restraints from society. The natives, however, seem to be immune to this. This is because they are simple, like-minded individuals who already exert a primative nature as they are from the uncivilised continent of Africa. In many places in the novel their voices can be considered to be the voices of the jungle, for example, when they are crying out in grief to the thick fog, “to me it seemed as though the mist itself had screamed’. The natives reflect the wilderness and this can be seen through Marlow’s description of the natives in the canoes on the coast, “they had bone, muscle, a wild vitality, and intense energy of movement, that was as natural and true as the surf along their coast. They wanted no excuse for being there’. The environment of the jungle forces no restraints upon an individual, unlike the European society from which Marlow has come from, thus allowing the characters to have a more wild nature. The Congo can be seen as a harsh environment that tests the white men’s ability to hold onto sanity without the structure of society. As long as the men keep themselves distracted, they cannot hear the whispers of the jungle, and the darkness in their hearts remains buried. For example, the chief accountant of the government station avoided falling victim to the environment by maintaining a tidy uniform and appearance. Marlow says of him, ‘in the great demoralisation of the land he kept up his appearance. That’s backbone. His starched collars and got-up shirt-fronts were achievements of character’. Marlow himself must also face the truth that the environment reveals to him. When he sees the wild dancing and chanting of the natives, he says at first that the idea is unimaginable to him, upon reflection he admits that he feels a slight urge to join the ‘passionate uproar.’ Marlow says, ‘[The earth] was unearthly, and the men were-No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it-this suspicion of their not being inhuman’. But, like the chief accountant’s clothes, Marlow’s work repairing the steamboat distracts him.

Overall, the white men are successful in fighting the influence of the environment. They are either too greedy or dull to realise that they are potential victims, for example, the pilgrims who are hunting ivory have managed to distract themselves through work, enabling them to stay sane. There is, however, one notable exception. Kurtz, the ubermensch that succumbs to the savagery of the wilderness. He sets up his own society under his own domain, and consequently, the environment brings out the darkness and brutality in his heart. All the principles of a European society are stripped from him, unleashing the greed hidden in his heart. The full effect of the environment can only be seen through Kurtz, because it is he who most succumbs to its powers. Through the influence of the environment, basic, primitive human nature is revealed in him. We can see the effect the environment has over Kurtz when Marlow says, “The wilderness…seemed to draw him to its pitiless breast by the awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts, by the memory of gratified and monstrous passions…this alone had beguiled his unlawful soul beyond the bounds of permitted aspirations.” The loss of pride from Kurtz also has implications for more than just himself. It can be interpreted as a representation on all of humanity when greed takes over and there is no society to help restore you. At his death, he is able to see the true state of mankind. His gaze is ‘piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness’. His final statement of ‘The horror! The horror!’ can be interpreted as his judgement on all of life. The environment brings Kurtz to the point where he has a full awareness of himself, and the atrocious acts white men will carry out when left with no restrictions. Thus, in the novel the environment is more than just a setting. It is a ruthless force that constantly tempts the characters to shed the restraints of civilisation and to persue the darkest desires of their hearts.

To conclude, the environment can be said to influence the characters greatly in both The Road by Cormac McCarthy and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. From analysing both novels we see that the environment does not effect the protagonists in the same way it effects the supporting characters. From reading the story through the protagonists point of view, we are able to see first hand how exactly the environment effects the characters; in The Road we see civilisation deconstruct and see people resort back to a barbaric nature and in Heart of Darkness we see people lose control or their mannerisms and become the dominating figure man was once depicted to be before the introduction of civilisation. Ultimately, by taking this view into consideration, “The values we hold to be permanent are only as permanent as the society that disciplines them.” and from what we can conclude from the two novels, we can fairly say that without the permanence of society, civilisation as we know it would crumble.