Marlows Transformation in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness Essay

Marlow's Transformation in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness After returning from a voyage in the Congo of Africa, Joseph Conrad said "Before the Congo I was a mere animal," and implied that only a select few of the rest of society have risen above the animal state. Conrad had a bout with malaria, and while recovering went through radical changes in thinking. He began to despise his fellow Belgians, and for a time he was furious with them for their very existence. Leonard Dean's collection of Conrad's letters show the writer's scorn of regular society after his journey: "Everything is repellent to me here. Men and things, but especially men...all have a gift for getting on my nerves." (103) Conrad eventually accepted himself as one of these people, and began to work on Heart of Darkness, a cathartic novel based on his journal written in the Congo. He wrote about Marlow, who will take a journey into the Congo and into his own soul, in an attempt to discuss the evil he experienced in Africa. Conrad presents a situation that he and Marlow both know, and that the average listener can't comprehend. Conrad was appalled and shaken by what he saw being practiced in the Congo, and by his statement cements his belief that a man cannot truly understand, sympathize, or feel anything significant on the emotional level unless he has also experienced the dark and the diseased side of himself. Everything up to that point is only scratching the surface of human nature. A human being needs suffering and experience with depravity before he is able to appreciate and embrace what is good in himself. He is only an animal up until that point. Marlow goes to Africa on a quest, though he isn't aware of it. Jerome Thale compared Marl... .../DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v407/n6800/full/407025a0_fs.html Evans, Robert O., "Conrad's Underworld". Cambridge: Purdue Research Foundation, 1956. Guerard, Albert J., "The Journey Within", 1958. Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press. Hewitt, Douglas, "Reassessment of Heart of Darkness". Cambridge: Bowes & Bowes Publishers Ltd., 1952. Modern Fiction Studies, IX, No. 4 Winter '63-64. Cambridge: Purdue Research Foundation Reid, Stephen A., "The 'Unspeakable Rites in Heart of Darkness," Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, "What I Learned in the Gulag." Excerpted and abridged from The Gulag Archipelago http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/4942/gulag.html Telgen, Diane, Novels for Students. 2 vols. Detroit: Gale Researcher, 1997. Thale, Jerome, "Marlow's Quest," 1955. Toronto: University of Toronto Quarterly, XXIV July.