Heart_Of_Darkness

Heart Of Darkness Where is The Heart of Darkness' In the typical novels written by many known authors, colors and objects tend to symbolize the same things in each. Light stands for knowledge and the color white symbolizes purity and innocence while darkness signifies evil and the color black represents death. In Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, however, these colors and images symbolize almost the opposites of what the reader usually perceives them to signify. In Conrad’s novel, the White man dehumanizes the Black man in the Congo. In order to elaborate on the cruelty of the White men from the Western world, Conrad changes the symbol of white from corresponding to purity, to representing death. The darkness signifies the unknown and the primitive which stems from Western civilization and creates an evil. The darkness conquers the light and does not allow it to expand. In order to emphasize the power of the darkness, even the white becomes an evil and conquers with the darkness. The novel begins in the Thames River in England. As the passengers of the Nellie become trapped in the river, the passengers marvel in the light that the Thames shines onto heart, darkness, white, black, marlow, western, light, congo, world, men, civilization, knowledge, man, instead, evil, torch, thames, shine, river, order, one, novel, death, conquers, another, sit, seas, same, represents, reader, purity, primitive, painting, own, out