For Writergrrl101

Conrad introduces the metaphor of the 'whitened sepulcher.' Review the source of this image (Matthew 23:27-32). How does it suit the theme of exploitation? The journey to self-knowledge? The theme of the need for civilization?

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness mocks the idea that whiteness brings civilization to nonwhite lands. Instead, whiteness is shown as being corrupted by native life. It also suggests, conversely, that whites' quest to enter the Dark Continent is inherently corrupt. By going into Africa desiring to be a god and not wanting to 'carry the white man's burden' as the Christian pro-imperial rhetoric suggests, Kurtz's own savageness and lack of civilization is revealed. Kurtz 'finds himself' in the Congo: he finds that he does not desire to Christianize the natives and to bring the light into a dark world, but instead to wallow in his desires. He is, like colonialism itself, a hypocritical as Jesus says: "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside is [are] full of dead men's bones and everything unclean." (Matthew, NIV, 23:27). Civilization and the desire to civilize the world may look beautiful and white on the outside, but inside white civilization is full of the stench of rot, decay, and baseness.

The Congo becomes Kurtz's tomb, in which he is interred. But the solution or cure for Kurtz's illness is unclear. Should he merely have remained in civilization? The figure of the pale, ghostly and foolish fiancee whom Marlowe lies to at the end of the novel does not suggest that civilization is a truthful alternative, even if colonialism ends. Her foolish idealism suggests a lack of knowledge about the world. But Conrad's portrait of Africa is far from sympathetic as an alternative to white civilization. The reason that Heart of Darkness often provokes "horror" in the hearts of readers is because of its atmosphere of total nihilism. Other than the narrator Marlowe, the world, rather than one class of people, seems to be full of the 'hypocrites' and evil-doers condemned in the Gospel of Matthew.

There is a fantasy-like quality to the beginning of Marlow's journey. What creates it? What is the importance of work to man? What does Marlow mean by a surface reality?

Marlowe is on a familiar 'type' of folkloric narrative: the archetypal quest narrative, where the holy innocent must go into the heart of darkness, the labyrinth, and bring back something pure to the civilized world. However, when Marlowe enters the world of the Congo, he discovers that Kurtz is just as corrupt as the supposed savages with whom Kurtz dwells. To Marlowe, the Congo is like a foreign, fantasyland because it is so different from the ordinary, constrained world of England. He portrays a place that is governed by primitive mythology, which Kurtz has used to make himself into a god who can do what he pleases. This mythological texture and the fact that even members of Kurtz's own crew seem to regard Kurtz with a strange kind of awe intensifies the unreal atmosphere of Heart of Darkness. Kurtz's intended back in England seems completely possessed with the man's charisma: "And you admired him,' she said. 'It was impossible to know him and not to admire him. Was it?'" she asks Marlowe.