The meaning of  darkness
by Stephanie and Giovanni

The importance of “darkness”, as a metaphor in this book, starts with the title: “Heart of Darkness”. For me, it makes no sense to analyse this title, because I am sure that absolutely everything is wrapped up in this metaphor.

“The Thames seemed to lead me into an immense darkness”.
On this river Marlow starts his personal story which reminds him of his journey through the Congo, and of all the terrible things he has seen. I also think that this is the right way for him to digest all that he has suffered, and at the end of this novel that is what rescues him out of his immense darkness.

Our opinion is that the whole life of the main character Marlow, is a real big darkness and he describes everything that happens around him, all the events and ideas, in terms of light and darkness. He describes every place, where he has been, no matter if it is Africa, England or Brussels, as somehow dark, even if the sun is shining brightly. I think this is the result of his attitude towards his own life, and towards the circumstances in which he is.

Marlow associates light with knowledge and darkness with mystery and savagery. When he starts narrating, he equates light with civility, believing it to be natural, but when he gets deeper into “the heart of darkness” which is one of the most important metaphors in the book for the African jungle, he begins to understand, that savagery is a primitive form of civilisation. So at the end the metaphor of darkness corresponds also with Marlow’s opinion, that the only reality and truth about civilisation is that it is unreal and unworthy.

For doing this we have chosen different parts of book that helped us to understand:

1): “It had got filled since my boyhood with rivers and lakes and names. It had ceased to be a blank space of delightful mystery -- a white patch for a boy to dream gloriously over. It had become a place of darkness.” (part.1 p..77);

“The reaches opened before us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to bar the way for our return. We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. It was very quiet there.” (part.2 p.104-105)
In these parts of the text the basic topics of African continent are expressed. It’s a mysterious and hidden land, an unknown and unexplored continent. This condition of mistery creates in the white men fear and disdain towards the blacks, a sort of xenophobia that brings the whites to fear African darkness.

2): “He sealed the utterance with that smile of his, as though it had been a door opening into a darkness he had in his keeping.” (part 1 p. 88)
Marlow has arrived, at the first station and that is the place, where the horror but also the fascination starts growing. But the situation there is horrible: The inhabitants were ill-treated, and the Europeans are ill. A door opens into the darkness: His journey starts. He can’t turn around and go back; he is not even thinking about that, he has to face his duty.

3): “We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness.” (part 2 p..105)
After repairing the steamboat, Marlow, the manager and some pilgrims, were on the way to the inner station. In this part, darkness means the uncivilised area, which they had to get through, but also the uncertainty, in which they are, because they do not know, where they will get next and what would happen to them. The silence and the thick jungle caused a feeling of fear in them. If they want to turn back, they are not able to, because behind them, there is an iron veil.

4): “'It is the gift of the great,' she went on, and the sound of her low voice seemed to have the accompaniment of all the other sounds, full of mystery, desolation, and sorrow, I had ever heard -- the ripple of the river, the soughing of the trees swayed by the wind, the murmurs of the crowds, the faint ring of incomprehensible words cried from afar, the whisper of a voice speaking from beyond the threshold of an eternal darkness. 'But you have heard him! You know!' she cried. "'Yes, I know,' I said with something like despair in my heart, but bowing my head before the faith that was in her, before that great and saving illusion that shone with an unearthly glow in the darkness, in the triumphant darkness from which I could not have defended her -- from which I could not even defend myself.(part 3 p.155) 

In this extract, that for me is very expressive,many meanings of darkness are gathered:
- Spiritual: in the sense of new conception of paradise and hell, where Kurtz is and is not.
- Musical: in the sense of mystery, hidden, mystic sounds of the voice of Kurtz.
- Unreal: always referredto spiritual topics;
- Magic: this topic is referred to Kurtz’s soul.
- Sentimental: it recalls memories, beautiful and ugly, of far and unfortunate sensations.
- Mystic: a sensation that the soul experiences in particular moments of human existence.

5): “Thus he could see and enjoy as long as he could see, because the appreciation of this favour had remained with him to the last. You should have heard him say, 'My ivory.' Oh, yes, I heard him. 'My Intended, my ivory, my station, my river, my -- ' everything belonged to him. It made me hold my breath in expectation of hearing the wilderness burst into a prodigious peal of laughter that would shake the fixed stars in their places. Everything belonged to him -- but that was a trifle. The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own.” (part.2 p.121)

“We broke down -- as I had expected -- and had to lie up for repairs at the head of an island. This delay was the first thing that shook Kurtz's confidence […]"His was an impenetrable darkness. I looked at him as you peer down at a man who is lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines.” (part.3 p.147)


These parts of the text are very important because describe the charism, the magic and the power that the figure of Kurtz releases, his relationship with darkness. We can understand the Kurtz has become part of the darkness. For Marlow, Kurtz is a personality that has gained wisdom in his experience in the African land. It is from this experience that Kurtz becomes a real leader. He is object of adoration from the “pilgrims” that are enchanted by his charism, that has changed Kurtz in an entity similar to god, an African god, a black god.

6): “The brown current ran swiftly out of the heart of darkness.” (part 3 p. 145)
This is the part, in which Kurtz is dying soon. The current could be the Congo River, which is running out of the African jungle, but my opinion is that Marlow means that Kurtz’s life is near the end. Maybe, with brown current, he means Kurtz’s infected spirit with hypocrisy, greediness and brutality. The life of the man, which has lost his humanity in the jungle, is swiftly running out.


7):“I could not tell her. It would have been too dark- too dark altogether…”(part 3 p. 157) 
After the return back to London, Marlow is asked by many different people about the legacy of Kurtz, but Marlow decides to give Kurtz’s fiancée the papers, which he got from his friend. The woman has really loved him and because of that, Marlow does not tell her the true, horrible story about Kurtz. He lied and did not say that his last words were “the horror, the horror”, he told her that the last that Kurtz said were her name. Did Marlow really think that she could not bear the truth?

So in the end Marlow has to use what he hated: Lies. He became a victim of the darkness, by using the bad aspects of it, that he hated so much, when he discovered them at first. But in the darkness its self there is no other way of getting through life without getting mad.

After this analysis of some parts of books, we have understood two things: ones is that, in the first part of the texts that we have reported, the word “darkness” is used to describe the African nature while in the following ones “darkness” is used to define and deepen Kurtz’s personality; the second, and this is a personal comment, is that the figure of Kurtz has been transformed in a emblem, a life model, in which the feelings cohabit with the emotions of the African land contemporary of Conrad, mysterious and dark, that only full men of courage could understand and enjoy.

By Giovanni and Stephanie