Colonization_And_The_Heart_Of_Darkness

Colonization And The Heart Of Darkness In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness he tells the story of a young man who gets involved in the ivory trade for the money. Marlow, the main character, recounts his experiences to a group of men he is sailing with and tells of a man named Kurtz and of the native people to Africa. He gives many visual images of the Congo, relates the impacts of colonization on the colonizers and those of the colonized. The entire novel is dark and almost depressing in a way. Marlow describes the Congo around him and almost always it is dark and seemingly scary. The first image Marlow describes is that of the first place he lands in Africa. There are slaves there, making a railroad. He says, “a rocky cliff appeared, mounds of turned-up earth by the shore, houses on a hill, others with iron roods, amongst a waste of excavations, or hanging to the declivity…[I] found a path leading up the hill. It turned aside for the boulders, and also for an undersized railway-truck” (Conrad 23). The image of a cliff gives the image of a dry, desert life place, which is what I would imagine Africa to be. Later he marlow, man, kurtz, describes, image, gives, very, people, mad, conrad, think, russian, picture, out, obsessed, little, just, idea, colonizers, africa, way, time, station, quite, place, one, novel, much, money, life, going, first, even, driven, colonized, became