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HEART OF DARKNESS
Light and Darkness
The symbolic value ascribed to light and darkness in Heart of Darkness is hard to miss. ... Darkness is associated with mystery and death – and the whole task at hand for Marlow soon resembles a quest into the realm of the dead, to bring back a lost soul from the place where you do not normally return – the old doctor in Brussels never sees them again. ... ” This clearly ironically positive description of a man partly responsible for the conditions of the dying black workers just encountered shows that it is not enough to keep up appearances to cover for a heart of darkness. In fact, the whole traditional set of values associated with light and darkness is undermined in the course of the narrative; Marlow finds no moral darkness with the natives while the white fortune hunters are greedy, sadistic, and unscrupulous. ... What has happened to him would happen to any man taken out of the protective light of a civilised environment and left to be corrupted from within by the normally dormant darkness. ... Marlow does not tell the vidow the truth but at least he himself knows the reality about the false security of civilisation and darkness lurks a little closer now, even the Thames seems “to lead into the heart of an immense darkness”.
Approximate Word count = 1064
Approximate Pages = 4.3
(250 words per page double spaced)
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