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¶ … Conrad's description of vegetation at the central station prepares for the journey into the heart of darkness

Marlowe claims that as a boy he was fascinated with maps and travel, as befits someone who chooses to make his living traveling upon the sea. Yet when Marlowe views 'the dark continent' even from afar he does not express any affection for it: "The edge of a colossal jungle, so dark-green as to be almost black, fringed with white surf, ran straight, like a ruled line, far, far away along a blue sea whose glitter was blurred by a creeping mist. The sun was fierce, the land seemed to glisten and drip with steam. Here and there greyish-whitish specks showed up clustered inside the white surf, with a flag flying above them perhaps. Settlements some centuries old, and still no bigger than pinheads on the untouched expanse of their background."

The jungle, even viewed from a distance, seems colossal and overwhelming in Marlowe's eyes. Instead of green, African vegetation looks as black as darkness itself. It is blurry and indistinct, and even the land seems to sweat with heat, as if it is also suffering from the sickness that the natives are suffering from, the illness that will take the life of Kurtz. Most striking are the settlements with white flags waving in them: these white flags are evidence of the white settlers, but the areas are mostly abandoned, indicating the killing nature of the land. The white flags seem like pathetic pinheads in the great landscape of the jungle. White, as well as a reference for white colonists' determination to carry the 'white man's burden' also suggests surrender. The white settlements have surrendered to the heart of darkness, just as Kurtz has surrendered to the lawless land and abandoned his own civilization.

Discuss the various significances of the title Heart of Darkness.

Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness refers to a common European name for Africa, the 'dark continent.' The continent was dark because of the skin of the people who lived there -- but also because it was assumed to be immoral, dark, and clouded in nature. To Europeans it was a cipher, and thus Conrad's decision to call his book Heart of Darkness also refers to the unknowing view of the colonists. Although Marlowe's view of the Africans he meets is troubling and often racist in nature, Conrad's title alerts the reader to the fact that Marlowe's view is inherently biased and subjective. The inability of people in the book to see one another clearly in a cross-cultural fashion is manifest in the African submission to Kurtz but also in Marlowe's disgust with Africa. Africa is impenetrable to the Europeans, and Europe is impenetrable and dark to Africans. The heart of darkness is the heart of incomprehension, of utter cultural polarization: "We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. It was very quiet there. At night sometimes the roll of drums behind the curtain of trees would run up the river and remain sustained faintly, as if hovering in the air high over our heads, till the first break of day. Whether it meant war, peace, or prayer we could not tell."