Heart of Darkness:  The Blacks in the Book and the Blacks Today
by Lisa, Lorenzo, and Andrea

Negroes or niggers, like they are often called by whites, didn’t and still don’t lead an easy life. For many centuries they got persecuted and exploited- in their own native country. White settlers intruded in their land and took everything they got; it didn’t matter if that were women and children or just some important animals or plants the blacks could have needed for survive. Nobody cared about them- the whites just wanted their best, to be the best, they wanted to have a lot of land, they wanted to expand. But the sad at that expansion is, that it didn’t matter to them who the victim was and what happened to them.

In this paper, we want to explain Marlow’s changes with respect to his consideration of the “blacks” during his journey. While we were reading the first section, we were almost “disgusted” by the words that Marlow uses when he speaks of the “blacks”, we mean by the violence and cruelty of their living conditions.

However, after he meets other people, both blacks and whites, and better knows the world of the blacks, we can say that his words change and it seems to me that he expresses a sort of admiration for the mystery of Africa and his inhabitants.

At the beginning of Heart of Darkness Marlow describes the blacks in terms of how they are treated one hundred years ago: as slaves. But we think that Marlow does not do this because he agrees with the slavery, he simply acts like the society of the ending of the 19th century: he sees the blacks with the eyes of an English white man, a settler.

But before we start giving examples we want to tell you our opinion: Whites do not have the right to exploit any other people, because strictly speaking we are all the same- we have all the same rights, and nobody is allowed to create their own right!

Now some examples:
“A horn tooted to the right, and I saw the black people run. A heavy and dull detonation shook the ground, a puff of smoke came out of the cliff, and that was all. No change appeared on the face of the rock. They were building a railway.”
A mass of bodies, not persons, who work for the Company – for the whites.
This is an example of what I said: the Company exploits the blacks to build a railway and forces them to live in misery and poverty.
Conrad, through Marlow, describes what he knows very well, because since the oldest times every imperialistic power was allowed to do everything during the colonization of a country.

“Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees leaning against the trunks, clinging to the earth, half coming out, half effaced within the dim light, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair. … The work was going on. The work! …”
“They were dying slowly -- it was very clear. They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now -- nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the legality of time contracts, lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away and rest. These moribund shapes were free as air -- and nearly as thin.”
In this fragment from the book supports what I said before: the blacks are treated as slaves and they live and work in sub-human living conditions.

“ I began to distinguish the gleam of the eyes under the trees. Then, glancing down, I saw a face near my hand. The black bones reclined at full length with one shoulder against the tree, and slowly the eyelids rose and the sunken eyes looked up at me, enormous and vacant, a kind of blind, white flicker in the depths of the orbs, which died out slowly. The man seemed young -- almost a boy -- but you know with them it's hard to tell.”
On the contrary, in this second fragment, I find the hints of the first change of Marlow’s consideration of the blacks’: he begins to consider better the “shapes” that are around him and he speaking about them he uses some adjectives and nouns worthy of a person: he mentions the parts of a person’s body “…the gleam of the eyes…”,” …black bones…”, “… one shoulder against the tree…”; he speaks of them no more as shadows but as men: “The man seemed young-- almost a boy”.

This is the point where Marlow completely changes his opinion of the blacks and from that moment on his point of view will depend on his desire to get to know what he ignores about the world of the blacks.

While the story goes on, Conrad makes Marlow think, and explain his thoughts about the mystery of that continent, about those people, with their own traditions, their own customs.

In the third section of the book, there aren’t negative thoughts about the blacks, better still, we can find some appreciation towards some particular persons who appear in the third section.

“She walked with measured steps, draped in striped and fringed cloths, treading the earth proudly, with a slight jingle and flash of barbarous ornaments. She carried her head high; her hair was done in the shape of a helmet; she had brass leggings to the knee, brass wire gauntlets to the elbow, a crimson spot on her tawny cheek, innumerable necklaces of glass beads on her neck; bizarre things, charms, gifts of witch-men, that hung about her, glittered and trembled at every step. She must have had the value of several elephant tusks upon her. She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress. And in the hush that had fallen suddenly upon the whole sorrowful land, the immense wilderness, the colossal body of the fecund and mysterious life seemed to look at her, pensive, as though it had been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul.”
I think that this is the best description of somebody in this book; how Marlow describes this black woman in front of him, so detailed, with something mysterious in her personality, something that just a person who has “a thirst for knowledge” concerning the mystery that surrounds him can describe. She is just magnificent. I use this adjective because it is the only word able to wrap a mix of elegance, neatness, finish, pride, and mystery. Neat and fine when : … “She walked with measured steps”, elegant for the beautiful and precious ornaments she wore, proud of herself as a black woman, mysterious for being at the same time “…savage and superb…”, …” wild-eyed and magnificent”. She embodies the same mystery of Africa.

“Some, I heard got drowned in the surf; but whether they did or not, nobody seemed particularly to care. They were just flung out there, and on we went.”
That sentence shows us, that the whites were not interested at all in what would happen/ what happened to the blacks. In this case their only target was ivory and Mr. Kurtz.

“They shouted, sang: their bodies streamed with perspiration; they had faces like grotesque masks – these chaps; but they had bone, muscle, a wild vitality, an intense energy of movement, that was as natural and true as the surf along their coast.”
Here we can see, that in the first half of the sentence Marlow does not respect other cultures yet, but afterwards he looks closer to the blacks and starts thinking about their apparition. Maybe he even envies them because of: an intense energy of movement. However: here his changing takes place.

“I could see every rob, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck and all were connected together with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking.”
Now we see, that the blacks really were treated like slaves. Connected by a heavy chain the had to go their workplaces, the whites made for them. Marlow starts already thinking: Is that ok?…..

“They were dying slowly- it was very clear. They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now- nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation.”
In this sentence we can see, that Marlow is sure, that the treatment of his accomplices is not right at all. Now he knows, that the blacks are neither enemies nor criminals- they just haven’t done anything!


Nowadays the situation has got better, but is still not perfect.
Nowadays some of the blacks are lucky, because they have a profession.
Nowadays blacks are able to live- without getting haunted or persecuted.
Nowadays black children are allowed to go to school.

Here- in Europe or North America, because they were allowed to join our society.

In their homeland they do not have so much money like we have.
In their homeland there are often little wars between different cultures.
In their homeland they do not have enough water, because of their geographical location.

In their homeland it is not as easy to live as in a developed country.

By Lisa, Lorenzo, and Andrea