post colonial literature

1. THEMES IN HEART OF
DARKNESS
Presented by
Presented By:
Mahnoor Shabbir
Ayesha Afzal
Faryal Shahbaz
Samia Munawar

2. Subject to discussion
• Introduction of Heart of Darkness
• Theme of Racism
• Theme of Deception
• Theme of uncertainty
• Theme of religion
• Theme of darkness
• Theme of Sanity and Insanity
• Theme of Alienation and Loneliness
• Theme of violence and cruelty
• Theme of duty and responsibility
• Theme of illness
• Theme of Evil

3. Introduction
• Heart of Darkness is one of the masterpieces of Joseph Conrad (1857-
1924), which shows the author’s great humanity and his unreserved
horror at the crimes committed by the colonists and imperialists all
over the world.
• Kurtz, the main character in the novel, is characterized by his greed
for material gain and power. The dark side of human nature is
reflected in Kurtz’s cruel behaviour towards the natives, his sense of
superiority to the marginalized, and his dominance in discourse over
the colonial people. Along with the colonists’ crazy behaviours , there
is disillusion with the modern civilization.

4. Definition
• Theme is a term that describes the main idea or message of a poem,
story or book.
• A theme is usually more than one word, but is a brief description
about the message that the author wants to get across.

5. Racism
• Conrad does not exactly want to buy the world a Coke, but he does
seem to have some unconventional ideas about race -- at least,
unconventional for the late nineteenth century.
• He seems to be suggesting that there really is not so much difference
between black and white -- except that this vision of racial harmony
becomes more complicated when you consider that he seems to be
suggesting that black people are just less evolved versions of white
people; the black natives are primitive and therefore innocent while
the white colonizers are sophisticated and therefore corrupt.

6. Conti…
• Kurtz is writing a treatise for something called the “International
Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs.” This implies the
existence of a worldwide movement to subjugate all non-white races.
Kurtz bestows a kind of childlike quality upon the Africans by saying
that white people appear to them as supernatural beings. The natives
do, indeed, seem to have worshipped Kurtz as a god and to have
offered up human sacrifices to him. This innocence proceeds, in
Kurtz’s view, from an inferior intelligence and does not prevent him
from concluding that the way to deal with the natives is to
exterminate them all.

7. Deception
• Deception, or hypocrisy, is a central theme of the novel and is
explored on many levels. In the disguise (camouflage) of a “noble
cause,” the Belgians have exploited the Congo. Claiming to educate
the natives, to bring them religion and a better way of life, European
colonizers remained to starve, mutilate (destroy), and murder the
indigenous population for profit.

8. Conti...
• Marlow has even obtained his captaincy through deception, for his
aunt misrepresented him as “an exceptional and gifted creature.”
• Marlow engages in his own deception when he tells Kurtz’s fiancé the
lie that Kurtz died with her name on his lips.

9. Uncertainty
• Marlow is obsessed with Kurtz before he even meets him, without a
clear idea why. A sense of danger pervades the entire trip, and it is
mostly dictated by uncertainty.
• The natives do not seem inherently threatening. On one occasion,
they let fly a series of arrows, but these even look ineffectual to
Marlow. They are threatening because they might be poisoned.

10. Conti…
• Similarly, Marlow has no clear idea of what the natives might do to
him if Kurtz gave them free rein. Kurtz himself is an uncertain figure,
ruled as he is by two separate impulses, the noble and the
destructive. Above all, the idea of "darkness" expresses the theme of
uncertainty.

11. Religion
• Although there is controversy over whether Conrad is critiquing
colonialism or not, it is clear that he is critiquing religion.
• The two groups in the novel, the pilgrims and the natives, are linked
by having religious beliefs, and the pilgrims seem at least as
bloodthirsty as the natives.
• The rite in the woods that Marlow describes seems alien but certainly
no more dangerous than the ambush. One of the seemingly
admirable characteristics of Kurtz, as presented by Conrad, is that he
seems just as compelled by African religion as by Christianity but
seems beholden to neither.

12. Conti…
• Marlow genuinely admires his ability to independently critique
religions. He may not agree with Kurtz's evaluation, but he respects
Kurtz's ability to have his own opinions in the face of the various
religious traditions he encounters.

13. Pervasiveness of Darkness
• Perhaps the strongest theme in the novel is that of darkness. Indeed,
darkness seems to pervade the whole work.
• Marlow's tale begins and ends in literal darkness; the setting of the
novel is often dark, such as when the steamboat is socked in by fog or
when Marlow retrieves Kurtz; dark-skinned individuals inhabit the
entire region, and, of course, there is a certain philosophical darkness
that permeates the work. But within the tale darkness operates in
several ways.

14. Conti…
• Moreover, darkness creates fear and conceals certain savage acts. It is
too enveloping. The character who most fully embraces the darkness
is, of course, Kurtz. This theme suggests that the light of civilization
will someday return to darkness.

15. Sanity and Insanity
• Madness, given prolonged exposure to the isolation of the
wilderness, seems an inevitable extension of chaos.
• The atmospheric influences at the heart of the African continent play
havoc with the un adapted European mind and reduce it either to the
insanity of thinking anything is allowable in such an atmosphere or, as
in Kurtz’s case, to literal madness.

16. Conti…
• Kurtz, after many years in the jungle, is presented as a man who has
gone mad with power and greed. No restraints were placed on him—
either from above, from a rule of law, or from within, from his own
conscience.
• Kurtz speaks of “my ivory … my intended … my river … my station,” as
if everything in the Congo belonged to him. This is the final arrogant
insanity of the white man who comes supposedly to improve a land,
but stays to exploit, ravage, and destroy it.

17. Alienation and Loneliness
• The themes of alienation, loneliness, silence and solitude predominate
in Heart of Darkness. The book begins and ends in silence, with men
first waiting for a tale to begin and then left to their own thoughts after
it has concluded.
• Prolonged silence and solitude are seen to have damaging effects on
many characters in the book.
.

18. Conti...
• Marlow’s predecessor, who was transformed from a gentle soul into a
man of violence, and the Russian, who has been alone on the River
for two years and dresses bizarrely and chatters constantly.
• But loneliness and alienation have taken their greatest toll on Kurtz,
who, cut off from all humanizing influence, has forfeited the restraints
of reason and conscience and given free rein to his basest and brutal
instincts

19. Violence and Cruelty
• Conrad suggests that violence and cruelty result when law is absent
and man allows himself to be ruled by whatever brutal passions lie
within him. Consumed by greed, conferring upon himself the status of
a god, Kurtz runs amok in a land without law.
• Under such circumstances, anything is possible, and what Conrad sees
emerging from the situation is the profound cruelty and limitless
violence that lies at the heart of the human soul.

20. Conti…
• Kurtz (representing European imperialists) has systematically engaged
in human plunder. The natives are seen chained by iron collars about
their necks, starved, beaten, subsisting on rotten hippo meat, forced
into soul−crushing and meaningless labour, and finally ruthlessly
murdered

21. Duty and Responsibility
• As is true of all other themes in the book, those of duty and
responsibility are glimpsed on many levels.
• On a national level, we are told of the British devotion to duty and
efficiency, which led to systematic colonization of large parts of the
globe and has its counterpart in Belgian colonization of the Congo,
the book’s focus.
• On an individual level, Conrad weaves the themes of duty and
responsibility through Marlow’s job as captain, a position that make
him responsible for his crew and bound to his duties as the boat’s
commander. There are also the jobs of those with whom Marlow
comes into contact on his journey.

22. Conti…
• In Heart of Darkness, duty and responsibility revolve most often
about how one does one’s work. A job well done is respected; simply
doing the work one is responsible for is an honourable act. Yet Conrad
does not believe in romanticizing the worker. Workers can often be
engaged in meaningless tasks.
• The Company’s Manager would seem to have a duty to run his
business efficiently, but he cannot keep order and although he is
obeyed, he is not respected.

23. Illness
• Illness is a major factor in this novel. It appears in physical and mental
forms.
• Marlow is hired to replace a man who committed suicide, and
another instance of suicide is announced by a sombre Swedish man.
The first thing that Marlow does upon being hired is to the doctor,
who checks both his mental and physical health and provides a very
gloomy prognosis.

24. Conti…
• The mental health issue is particular to "Heart of Darkness", while
the issue of wider health continues in the tradition of Victorian
novels, in which men often travel to Africa only to come down with
exotic diseases. In the end, it seems that Marlow is more mentally
than physically taxed, while Kurtz is clearly both.

25. The Absurdity of Evil
• The novel is an exploration of hypocrisy, ambiguity, and moral confusion. It
explodes the idea of the proverbial choice between the lesser of two evils.
• As the idealistic Marlow is forced to align himself with either the
hypocritical and malicious colonial bureaucracy or the openly malevolent,
rule-defying Kurtz, it becomes increasingly clear that to try to judge either
alternative is an act of folly.
• The number of situations Marlow witnesses act as reflections of the larger
issue: at one station, for instance, he sees a man trying to carry water in a
bucket with a large hole in it. At the Outer Station, he watches native
labourers blast away at a hillside with no particular goal in mind. The
absurd involves both insignificant silliness and life-or-death issues, often
simultaneously.

26. Conclusion
• Heart of Darkness is a mixture of adventure story, psychological case
study, political satire, black humour comedy.
• Conrad has not been able to completely shake off the influence of the
European centrism and racist consciousness. That is to say, when
Heart of Darkness is attacking colonialism and exposing colonialist
greed and hypocrisy, it also reveals the Western racial discrimination
unconsciously.

27. References
• Greiner, D. J. (1989). Heart of darkness: Out of Africa some new thing
rarely comes. Journal of Modern Literature, 15(4), 461-474.
• https://gladcanlit.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/major-themes-in-
heart-of-darkness

28. Thank you