The Light-dark Metaphor in Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad Essay

Throughout his narrative in Joseph Conrads bosom of Darkness, Charlie Marlow characterizes events, ideas, and locations that he encounters in terms of electric arc or dimness. Embedded in Marlows idiomatic expression is an ongoing metaphor equating light with knowledge and civility and darkness with mystery and savagery. When he begins his narrative, Marlow equates light and, therefore, civility, with reality, believing it to be a clear expression of mans natural state. Similarly, Marlow uses darkness to depict savagery as a vice having absconded with nature. But as he proceeds deeper into the heart of the African jungle and begins to understand savagery as a primitive constitute of acculturation and, therefore, a reflection on his own reality, the metaphor shifts, until the fibber raises his head at the end of the novel to discover that the Thames seemed to lead into the heart of an extensive darkness. The alteration of the light-dark metaphor corresponds with M arlows cognizance that the only reality, truth, or light about civilization is that it is, regardless of appearances, unreal, absurd, and shrouded in darkness. Marlow uses the contrast between darkness and light to underscore the schism between the seemingly disparate realms of civility and savagery, repeatedly associating light with knowledge and truth darkness with mystery and deceptive evil. When Marlow realizes that his aunts acquaintances had misrepresented him to the psyche of the Inner Station, Marlow states, Light dawned upon me, as if to explicitly associate light with knowledge or cognizance. It is significant then, that Marlow later associates light with civilization. He describes the knights-errant who went out from the Thames to conquer... ... October 2002. Available http//www.lawrence.edu/johnson/heart. Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness, New York Dover, 1990. Hayes, Dorsha. Heart of Darkness An Aspect of the Shadow, Spring (1956) 43-47.. Levenson, Micha el. The Value of Facts in the Heart of Darkness. Nineteenth-Century Fiction 40 (1985)351-80. McLynn, Frank. Hearts of Darkness The European geographic expedition of Africa. New York Carol & Gey, 1992. Mellard, James. Myth and Archetype in Heart of Darkness, Tennessee Studies in Literature 13 (1968) 1-15. Rosmarin, Adena. Darkening the Reader Reader Response upbraiding and Heart of Darkness. Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness A Case Study in Contemporary Criticism. Ed. Ross C. Murfin. New York St. Martins, 1989. Watt, Ian. Conrad in the Nineteenth Century. San Diego U. of California P, 1979. 168-200, 249-53.