Electrified:
The Destructive Power of Light in Heart of Darkness
by Jenny (Walicek) Clendenen
San Jose State University, 2006
In literature the images of darkness and light can connote the two extremes of luminosity, hue, enlightenment, spirituality, intelligence, morality, awareness, understanding, countenance, perspective, intentions, ideals, and attitude. Sometimes these connotations overlap, as in Joseph Conrad’s 1902 novel Heart of Darkness, in which European imperialist forces ravage the African interior for power and profit. The story’s profusion of dark and light images (including gloomy blends of both) produce multiple possibilities for interpretation, contributing to the tale’s reputation for ambiguity. But considering that Conrad’s world had been converted from the flame-light of sun and gas to electricity just a few years before the novel’s publication, and the influence that this remarkable change had wrought upon his landscape, the ambiguity dissipates. The demystification of electricity had turned light into a controllable, repeatable, predictable force -- a force seen as both dominant and potentially dangerous. As Dr. Iwan Morus of Queens University, Belfast writes:
Electricity at the [end] of the Victorian era was [still] hailed as a power that "far exceeds even the feats of pretended magic and the wildest fictions of the East." It was a "spirit like Ariel to carry our thoughts with the speed of thought to the uttermost ends of the earth." It offered the promise of being able to "annihilate time and space." (Morus Session 4)
That Conrad held this Victorian perspective on the fatal power of light is evident in his novel Chance:
[…] man has captured electricity too. It lights him on his way, it warms his home, it will even cook his dinner for him--very much like a woman. But what sort of conquest would you call it? He knows nothing of it. He has got to be mighty careful what he is about with his captive. And the greater the demand he makes on it in the exultation of his pride the more likely it is to turn on him and burn him to a cinder . . . (Chapter 4)
This idea of “playing with fire and getting burned” is a major motif of Heart of Darkness, wherein Conrad often juxtaposes the images of light and darkness to demonstrate light’s intrusive flare, and other times merges them to demonstrate its degrading effects. These demonstrations culminate in the metaphoric exposition of Marlow and Kurtz as distorted personifications of the degradation caused by the overbright light of idealism.
Light is power, not only in the electrical sense, and those who can control it can control its effect on the pure state of darkness. Conrad was no doubt aware of a similar premise put forth in the popular book The Golden Bough,written by Sir James Frazer in 1890 just as electricity was flooding the London streets. Frazer claimed that modern science and ancient religions share an assumption of predictable, calculable laws -- and that anyone who understands those laws can use them to control events to their advantage. Those who do not understand these laws are at a disadvantage, and this is the idea that permeates Heart of Darkness. Frazer also claimed that we can learn from “savages,” and that the study of primitive institutions can throw light on our own society -- an implicit idea in Conrad’s own book. Perhaps his characterization of Kurtz was even drawn from Frazer, who had “set out to eliminate myths but ended up being caught up in them by his secret desire to be re-connected to, rather than separated from, the past” (Schama 208).
As Kurtz learned, light and darkness cannot coexist in their pure forms. Darkness exists only in the absence of light; it is light that invades and corrupts, diminishing the purity of both. This is aptly demonstrated by the varying degrees of gloom present within Heart of Darkness, beginning with five references in the first three pages. The narrator notes that the air above London “seemed condensed into a mournful gloom” (17), and that “the gloom to the west…became more sombre every minute, as if angered by the approach of the sun” (18). When the sun finally sinks it goes out “suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of that gloom” (18). Yet London is still “a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars” (19). This, of course, is due to the advent of electricity. Conrad is making the point that even at its source, light -- physical and symbolic -- has already degraded its immediate surroundings.
Next, the narrator narrows his focus to the gloom within the men on the boat. He tells us that he and his companions are sitting behind a Director of Companies whose work is “behind him, within the brooding gloom” (17). This is commonly assumed to refer to London, but the gloom there has already been addressed. Now he is talking about the gloom present within the four men who sit behind the Director, an interpretation bolstered by the ensuing image of the Accountant playing with “the bones” of a box of black-and-white dominos, then made of ivory (18). It is no coincidence that the word domino is from the Latin “dominus,” for master.
Dominos not only demonstrate the “off-shore, at-hand and on-board” domination of light over darkness, but set up a key metaphoric structure in Heart of Darkness: domino effects, or chain reactions of light. The boat on which the tale begins, for instance, is named the Nellie, which is a nickname for Helen, which is the Greek word for Light (“Helen”). The narrator describes Marlow as finding meaning not in the light, and not even in the light’s glow, but in the haze produced by the glow of the light -- as in “the spectral illumination of moonshine” (20). The moonlight is really earthlight, which is really sunlight, and it would not even be observable if not for the darkness that surrounds it. This twice-reflected light burns a great hole in the black night, and in that image we can see the European imperialism reflected on Leopold’s Belgium and redirected to the Congo, where the impact on the darkness exposes the destruction caused by this invading light. The domino effects continue when Marlow says that he got his job because a white man was killed because he killed a black man over two black hens.
The profuse juxtapositions of light and darkness symbolize the domineering effects of light, or idealism. Marlow’s tale includes two white women knitting black wool (24), a black jungle hemmed with white surf (28), black images drowned by blinding sunlight (30), and white cotton around a black man’s neck (32). There is a white accountant “barred from neck to heels with narrow strips of sunlight [and shadow] (33)” -- an image which conjures up thoughts of prison or a hanging by the neck or heels. There are white men walking with Zanzibaris (35), a dark figure in a lighted doorway (45), and a contrast between the “sunlit face of the land” and the “profound darkness of its heart” (48). Kurtz’s words are a “pulsating stream of light” (63), which implies alternating bouts of darkness, and Marlow’s tale is interrupted by the flare of a match (64). His reaction to Kurtz’s memo of extermination is that it was “luminous and terrifying, like a flash of lightning” (66). The jester’s face is like “sunshine and shadow,” alternating between overcast and bright, and there are black Africans assigned to guard the white ivory (80). Marlow mentions lightlessness and sunshine when he explains why he would rather look at Kurtz’s shrunken heads than hear about the natives’ deference to him:
“After all, that was only a savage sight, while I seemed at one bound to have been transported into some lightless region of subtle horrors, where pure, uncomplicated savagery was a positive relief, being something that had a right to exist -- obviously -- in the sunshine” (75)
His reaction indicates that what exists in the light of idealism -- even barbarity -- is excused. It is the subtleties of darkness that frighten him, a fear indicative of European reasoning and the ostensible motivations behind the invasion of “light.” “[Man] has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible,” Marlow had told the crew of the Nellie earlier, “which is also detestable. And it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination -- you know” (21). It is darkness by which humans are horrified, and which we are so intent upon destroying with our powerful lights, both literal and metaphorical. And yet it is darkness that is the natural state, a concept that Conrad must have considered when his nights became electrified.
No light, however, is allowed to glare permanently; even the earth, by rotation, takes respite from the sun. Kurtz had worked so hard at destroying the darkness with his powerful light of idealism that he had burnt himself out. When Marlow looks into Kurtz’s cabin on the boat and sees that “a light was burning within, but Mr. Kurtz was not there” (81), the message is, as previously stated, that light and darkness cannot coexist in their pure forms. Kurtz is now “an impenetrable darkness […] where the sun never shines” (86). The incompatibility of light and darkness is the reason he cannot see the light that is just a foot from his eyes as he lies waiting for death (86). When he dies, Marlow takes refuge in the galley because there was “a lamp in there -- light, don’t you know -- and outside it was so beastly, beastly dark” (87). Outside, where Kurtz lies, is the epitome of darkness.
Marlow says he understands the meaning of Kurtz’s stare “that could not see the flames of the candle, but was wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness” (87). This is a reflection of King Leopold’s statement that he wanted “to open to civilization the only part of our globe where Christianity has not yet penetrated and to pierce the darkness which envelopes the entire population” (Hennessy 13).
Conrad’s juxtaposed and merged images show us the piercing of the darkness and its gloomy results, but it is in the two characters of Kurtz and Marlow that we see the divisive action and destructive impact of “enlightenment” personified. (In fact, the corruptive and corrupted idealist Kurtz is often perceived by critics to be the fallen angel, Lucifer, and the name Lucifer is Latin for “bearer of light.”(Watts 77, “Lucifer”).) Both men share ideals, intelligence, and imagination; both are members of the imperialist structure in Africa and seem to stand out from the crowd of “pilgrims” who work for the Company. Marlow is irresistibly drawn to Kurtz, with whom he feels a kind of complicity, and though Kurtz has become corrupt, Marlow is fascinated by the corruption (Watts 82). This is in keeping with other postcolonial literature, as detailed in Revathi Krishnaswamy’s discussion of Kipling’s works about India, adapted here to apply to Conrad’s works about Africa:
Indeed, his tales of transgressions and breakdowns, of slips and confusions of [darkness and light], display the colonial body revolting against imperial technologies of discipline and surveillance through impermissible, freakish, behavioral excess such as [unEnglish] hysteria and unacceptable sexuality. These narratives often blur, overflow, or even undermine the boundary between the rational, restrained West and the irrational, excessive [Africa]. In these stories the White Man emerges not as an omnipotent embodiment of imperial authority but, rather, as a deeply divided, culturally [ambiguous] figure torn between the opposing demands of imperial [idealism] and [savagery], between “going native” and being [restrained]. (102)
In Heart of Darkness, this division of ideals and culture occurs when Kurtz “finds that the very elevation of his thinking, when exposed to the native environment, becomes twisted to its opposite, a cult of manic despotism and exploitation” (Land 67). His and Marlow’s idealism has been confronted with a hostile force that actively seeks to degrade it (Wright 149) -- a force that eventually takes Kurtz’s mind and life. Had Marlow remained longer it would have taken his, too; even so, his image now matches his own description of Kurtz as hollow, emaciated, and gaunt. In fact, Kurtz seems to to haunt Marlow, staring at him “out of the glassy panel” ( 91) on the Intended’s front door, implying a reflection and therefore a resemblance (Watts 83). The hostile force that has degraded these two characters is not the impotent darkness of the native environment itself, but the powerfully destructive light of idealism. Having degraded so much of the surrounding darkness, they have lost the light within themselves. The idealists have self-destructed, destroyed by the very ideals that they themselves brought into the jungle.
Though Marlow survives physically, the degradation of his idealism is further evidenced when he returns to visit the Intended, who personifies the Good Intentions known as Idealism, and betrays both her and himself by telling a lie. His continuing integration with his Doppelgänger, Kurtz, is demonstrated in more physical images of juxtaposed darkness and light, some African and some European: a dark mahogany door with a reflective glassy panel, a dark grand piano with ivory keys, a white woman shrouded in black. The latter is described just as the “spectral moonshine” of meaning was described earlier: “this pale visage, this pure brow, seemed surrounded by an ashy halo from which the dark eyes looked out at me” (91). In the person of the Intended, Conrad is returning to his original claim that all meaning/lighting is deferred and is, at best, discovered through secondary effects. In the end the room gets so dark that “only her forehead, smooth and white, remained illumined by the unextinguishable light of belief and love” (92) -- a “great and saving illusion that shone with an unearthly glow in the darkness, in the triumphant darkness from which I could not have defended her -- from which I could not even defend myself” (93).
As he finishes his tale Marlow becomes, like Kurtz, a charismatic voice in the dark -- the dark drawing room of his past, and the dark Thames of his present. But in his description of the Intended’s face we cannot help but see the moon again, radiating its reflected light to tear a hole in the darkness -- a darkness which, no matter how many times it is invaded by the light, will always return to itself.
Bibliography
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. Ed. Ross McMurfin. Boston: Bedford Books, 1996.This edition is the source of my quotations from the novel.
Frazer, Sir James Gordon. The Golden Bough. Abr. Robert Temple. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996. Frazer asserts that ancient magic and modern science share an assumption that there are calculable laws that can be controlled to advantage.
“Helen.” BabyNames.com. Accessed 5/9/04. <www.babynames.com>
Hennessy, Maurice. Congo: A Brief History and Appraisal. New York: Praeger, 1961.13. Hennessy surveys the historical situation in the Congo in Conrad’s time, including King Leopold’s statements about Christianity penetrating darkness.
Krishnaswamy, Revathi. Effeminism: The Economy of Colonial Desire. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998. 102. Dr. Krishnaswamy comments on stories which blur the boundaries between Western restraint and [non-Western] irrationality, wherein the White Man emerges as a deeply divided figure.
Land, Stephen K. Paradox and Polarity in the Fiction of Joseph Conrad. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984. 67. Land argues that Kurtz tries to deliver enlightenment but his idealism, exposed to the native environment, becomes twisted to manic despotism and exploitation.
“Lucifer.” Behindthename.com. Accessed 5/9/04. < www.behindthename.com>
Morus, Iwan. “Electricity on Show: Spectacular Events in Victorian London.” Science
Museum. Fathom.com through partner Columbia University. Accessed 4/25/04.
<http://www.fathom.com/course/21701713/session4.html.> Morus discusses the reaction of late Victorian London to the advent of electrical light.
Schama, Simon. Landscape and Memory. Toronto: Random House, 1995. Schama’s interpretation of Sir Frazer is that he set out to eliminate myths and ended up
becoming absorbed by them.
Watts, Cedric. The Deceptive Text. Sussex, UK: The Harvester Press Ltd., 1984. 78-84. Watts sees Kurtz as a Satan figure, a “Lucifer,” which means bearer of light, and sees that light and others as being engulfed by obscurity; he also sees Marlow and Kurtz as doubles who express aspects of one being or entity.
Wright, Walter. Romance & Tragedy in Joseph Conrad. New York: Russell & Russell, 1966. 149-159. Wright suggests that spirituality must struggle not just against apathy but against a hostile force that seeks to degrade it. He also discusses the idea that “The Lie” lets the two extremes of idealism and reality both exist, which means that they are both reality.
San Jose State University, 2006
In literature the images of darkness and light can connote the two extremes of luminosity, hue, enlightenment, spirituality, intelligence, morality, awareness, understanding, countenance, perspective, intentions, ideals, and attitude. Sometimes these connotations overlap, as in Joseph Conrad’s 1902 novel Heart of Darkness, in which European imperialist forces ravage the African interior for power and profit. The story’s profusion of dark and light images (including gloomy blends of both) produce multiple possibilities for interpretation, contributing to the tale’s reputation for ambiguity. But considering that Conrad’s world had been converted from the flame-light of sun and gas to electricity just a few years before the novel’s publication, and the influence that this remarkable change had wrought upon his landscape, the ambiguity dissipates. The demystification of electricity had turned light into a controllable, repeatable, predictable force -- a force seen as both dominant and potentially dangerous. As Dr. Iwan Morus of Queens University, Belfast writes:
Electricity at the [end] of the Victorian era was [still] hailed as a power that "far exceeds even the feats of pretended magic and the wildest fictions of the East." It was a "spirit like Ariel to carry our thoughts with the speed of thought to the uttermost ends of the earth." It offered the promise of being able to "annihilate time and space." (Morus Session 4)
That Conrad held this Victorian perspective on the fatal power of light is evident in his novel Chance:
[…] man has captured electricity too. It lights him on his way, it warms his home, it will even cook his dinner for him--very much like a woman. But what sort of conquest would you call it? He knows nothing of it. He has got to be mighty careful what he is about with his captive. And the greater the demand he makes on it in the exultation of his pride the more likely it is to turn on him and burn him to a cinder . . . (Chapter 4)
This idea of “playing with fire and getting burned” is a major motif of Heart of Darkness, wherein Conrad often juxtaposes the images of light and darkness to demonstrate light’s intrusive flare, and other times merges them to demonstrate its degrading effects. These demonstrations culminate in the metaphoric exposition of Marlow and Kurtz as distorted personifications of the degradation caused by the overbright light of idealism.
Light is power, not only in the electrical sense, and those who can control it can control its effect on the pure state of darkness. Conrad was no doubt aware of a similar premise put forth in the popular book The Golden Bough,written by Sir James Frazer in 1890 just as electricity was flooding the London streets. Frazer claimed that modern science and ancient religions share an assumption of predictable, calculable laws -- and that anyone who understands those laws can use them to control events to their advantage. Those who do not understand these laws are at a disadvantage, and this is the idea that permeates Heart of Darkness. Frazer also claimed that we can learn from “savages,” and that the study of primitive institutions can throw light on our own society -- an implicit idea in Conrad’s own book. Perhaps his characterization of Kurtz was even drawn from Frazer, who had “set out to eliminate myths but ended up being caught up in them by his secret desire to be re-connected to, rather than separated from, the past” (Schama 208).
As Kurtz learned, light and darkness cannot coexist in their pure forms. Darkness exists only in the absence of light; it is light that invades and corrupts, diminishing the purity of both. This is aptly demonstrated by the varying degrees of gloom present within Heart of Darkness, beginning with five references in the first three pages. The narrator notes that the air above London “seemed condensed into a mournful gloom” (17), and that “the gloom to the west…became more sombre every minute, as if angered by the approach of the sun” (18). When the sun finally sinks it goes out “suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of that gloom” (18). Yet London is still “a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars” (19). This, of course, is due to the advent of electricity. Conrad is making the point that even at its source, light -- physical and symbolic -- has already degraded its immediate surroundings.
Next, the narrator narrows his focus to the gloom within the men on the boat. He tells us that he and his companions are sitting behind a Director of Companies whose work is “behind him, within the brooding gloom” (17). This is commonly assumed to refer to London, but the gloom there has already been addressed. Now he is talking about the gloom present within the four men who sit behind the Director, an interpretation bolstered by the ensuing image of the Accountant playing with “the bones” of a box of black-and-white dominos, then made of ivory (18). It is no coincidence that the word domino is from the Latin “dominus,” for master.
Dominos not only demonstrate the “off-shore, at-hand and on-board” domination of light over darkness, but set up a key metaphoric structure in Heart of Darkness: domino effects, or chain reactions of light. The boat on which the tale begins, for instance, is named the Nellie, which is a nickname for Helen, which is the Greek word for Light (“Helen”). The narrator describes Marlow as finding meaning not in the light, and not even in the light’s glow, but in the haze produced by the glow of the light -- as in “the spectral illumination of moonshine” (20). The moonlight is really earthlight, which is really sunlight, and it would not even be observable if not for the darkness that surrounds it. This twice-reflected light burns a great hole in the black night, and in that image we can see the European imperialism reflected on Leopold’s Belgium and redirected to the Congo, where the impact on the darkness exposes the destruction caused by this invading light. The domino effects continue when Marlow says that he got his job because a white man was killed because he killed a black man over two black hens.
The profuse juxtapositions of light and darkness symbolize the domineering effects of light, or idealism. Marlow’s tale includes two white women knitting black wool (24), a black jungle hemmed with white surf (28), black images drowned by blinding sunlight (30), and white cotton around a black man’s neck (32). There is a white accountant “barred from neck to heels with narrow strips of sunlight [and shadow] (33)” -- an image which conjures up thoughts of prison or a hanging by the neck or heels. There are white men walking with Zanzibaris (35), a dark figure in a lighted doorway (45), and a contrast between the “sunlit face of the land” and the “profound darkness of its heart” (48). Kurtz’s words are a “pulsating stream of light” (63), which implies alternating bouts of darkness, and Marlow’s tale is interrupted by the flare of a match (64). His reaction to Kurtz’s memo of extermination is that it was “luminous and terrifying, like a flash of lightning” (66). The jester’s face is like “sunshine and shadow,” alternating between overcast and bright, and there are black Africans assigned to guard the white ivory (80). Marlow mentions lightlessness and sunshine when he explains why he would rather look at Kurtz’s shrunken heads than hear about the natives’ deference to him:
“After all, that was only a savage sight, while I seemed at one bound to have been transported into some lightless region of subtle horrors, where pure, uncomplicated savagery was a positive relief, being something that had a right to exist -- obviously -- in the sunshine” (75)
His reaction indicates that what exists in the light of idealism -- even barbarity -- is excused. It is the subtleties of darkness that frighten him, a fear indicative of European reasoning and the ostensible motivations behind the invasion of “light.” “[Man] has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible,” Marlow had told the crew of the Nellie earlier, “which is also detestable. And it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination -- you know” (21). It is darkness by which humans are horrified, and which we are so intent upon destroying with our powerful lights, both literal and metaphorical. And yet it is darkness that is the natural state, a concept that Conrad must have considered when his nights became electrified.
No light, however, is allowed to glare permanently; even the earth, by rotation, takes respite from the sun. Kurtz had worked so hard at destroying the darkness with his powerful light of idealism that he had burnt himself out. When Marlow looks into Kurtz’s cabin on the boat and sees that “a light was burning within, but Mr. Kurtz was not there” (81), the message is, as previously stated, that light and darkness cannot coexist in their pure forms. Kurtz is now “an impenetrable darkness […] where the sun never shines” (86). The incompatibility of light and darkness is the reason he cannot see the light that is just a foot from his eyes as he lies waiting for death (86). When he dies, Marlow takes refuge in the galley because there was “a lamp in there -- light, don’t you know -- and outside it was so beastly, beastly dark” (87). Outside, where Kurtz lies, is the epitome of darkness.
Marlow says he understands the meaning of Kurtz’s stare “that could not see the flames of the candle, but was wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness” (87). This is a reflection of King Leopold’s statement that he wanted “to open to civilization the only part of our globe where Christianity has not yet penetrated and to pierce the darkness which envelopes the entire population” (Hennessy 13).
Conrad’s juxtaposed and merged images show us the piercing of the darkness and its gloomy results, but it is in the two characters of Kurtz and Marlow that we see the divisive action and destructive impact of “enlightenment” personified. (In fact, the corruptive and corrupted idealist Kurtz is often perceived by critics to be the fallen angel, Lucifer, and the name Lucifer is Latin for “bearer of light.”(Watts 77, “Lucifer”).) Both men share ideals, intelligence, and imagination; both are members of the imperialist structure in Africa and seem to stand out from the crowd of “pilgrims” who work for the Company. Marlow is irresistibly drawn to Kurtz, with whom he feels a kind of complicity, and though Kurtz has become corrupt, Marlow is fascinated by the corruption (Watts 82). This is in keeping with other postcolonial literature, as detailed in Revathi Krishnaswamy’s discussion of Kipling’s works about India, adapted here to apply to Conrad’s works about Africa:
Indeed, his tales of transgressions and breakdowns, of slips and confusions of [darkness and light], display the colonial body revolting against imperial technologies of discipline and surveillance through impermissible, freakish, behavioral excess such as [unEnglish] hysteria and unacceptable sexuality. These narratives often blur, overflow, or even undermine the boundary between the rational, restrained West and the irrational, excessive [Africa]. In these stories the White Man emerges not as an omnipotent embodiment of imperial authority but, rather, as a deeply divided, culturally [ambiguous] figure torn between the opposing demands of imperial [idealism] and [savagery], between “going native” and being [restrained]. (102)
In Heart of Darkness, this division of ideals and culture occurs when Kurtz “finds that the very elevation of his thinking, when exposed to the native environment, becomes twisted to its opposite, a cult of manic despotism and exploitation” (Land 67). His and Marlow’s idealism has been confronted with a hostile force that actively seeks to degrade it (Wright 149) -- a force that eventually takes Kurtz’s mind and life. Had Marlow remained longer it would have taken his, too; even so, his image now matches his own description of Kurtz as hollow, emaciated, and gaunt. In fact, Kurtz seems to to haunt Marlow, staring at him “out of the glassy panel” ( 91) on the Intended’s front door, implying a reflection and therefore a resemblance (Watts 83). The hostile force that has degraded these two characters is not the impotent darkness of the native environment itself, but the powerfully destructive light of idealism. Having degraded so much of the surrounding darkness, they have lost the light within themselves. The idealists have self-destructed, destroyed by the very ideals that they themselves brought into the jungle.
Though Marlow survives physically, the degradation of his idealism is further evidenced when he returns to visit the Intended, who personifies the Good Intentions known as Idealism, and betrays both her and himself by telling a lie. His continuing integration with his Doppelgänger, Kurtz, is demonstrated in more physical images of juxtaposed darkness and light, some African and some European: a dark mahogany door with a reflective glassy panel, a dark grand piano with ivory keys, a white woman shrouded in black. The latter is described just as the “spectral moonshine” of meaning was described earlier: “this pale visage, this pure brow, seemed surrounded by an ashy halo from which the dark eyes looked out at me” (91). In the person of the Intended, Conrad is returning to his original claim that all meaning/lighting is deferred and is, at best, discovered through secondary effects. In the end the room gets so dark that “only her forehead, smooth and white, remained illumined by the unextinguishable light of belief and love” (92) -- a “great and saving illusion that shone with an unearthly glow in the darkness, in the triumphant darkness from which I could not have defended her -- from which I could not even defend myself” (93).
As he finishes his tale Marlow becomes, like Kurtz, a charismatic voice in the dark -- the dark drawing room of his past, and the dark Thames of his present. But in his description of the Intended’s face we cannot help but see the moon again, radiating its reflected light to tear a hole in the darkness -- a darkness which, no matter how many times it is invaded by the light, will always return to itself.
Bibliography
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. Ed. Ross McMurfin. Boston: Bedford Books, 1996.This edition is the source of my quotations from the novel.
Frazer, Sir James Gordon. The Golden Bough. Abr. Robert Temple. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996. Frazer asserts that ancient magic and modern science share an assumption that there are calculable laws that can be controlled to advantage.
“Helen.” BabyNames.com. Accessed 5/9/04. <www.babynames.com>
Hennessy, Maurice. Congo: A Brief History and Appraisal. New York: Praeger, 1961.13. Hennessy surveys the historical situation in the Congo in Conrad’s time, including King Leopold’s statements about Christianity penetrating darkness.
Krishnaswamy, Revathi. Effeminism: The Economy of Colonial Desire. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998. 102. Dr. Krishnaswamy comments on stories which blur the boundaries between Western restraint and [non-Western] irrationality, wherein the White Man emerges as a deeply divided figure.
Land, Stephen K. Paradox and Polarity in the Fiction of Joseph Conrad. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984. 67. Land argues that Kurtz tries to deliver enlightenment but his idealism, exposed to the native environment, becomes twisted to manic despotism and exploitation.
“Lucifer.” Behindthename.com. Accessed 5/9/04. < www.behindthename.com>
Morus, Iwan. “Electricity on Show: Spectacular Events in Victorian London.” Science
Museum. Fathom.com through partner Columbia University. Accessed 4/25/04.
<http://www.fathom.com/course/21701713/session4.html.> Morus discusses the reaction of late Victorian London to the advent of electrical light.
Schama, Simon. Landscape and Memory. Toronto: Random House, 1995. Schama’s interpretation of Sir Frazer is that he set out to eliminate myths and ended up
becoming absorbed by them.
Watts, Cedric. The Deceptive Text. Sussex, UK: The Harvester Press Ltd., 1984. 78-84. Watts sees Kurtz as a Satan figure, a “Lucifer,” which means bearer of light, and sees that light and others as being engulfed by obscurity; he also sees Marlow and Kurtz as doubles who express aspects of one being or entity.
Wright, Walter. Romance & Tragedy in Joseph Conrad. New York: Russell & Russell, 1966. 149-159. Wright suggests that spirituality must struggle not just against apathy but against a hostile force that seeks to degrade it. He also discusses the idea that “The Lie” lets the two extremes of idealism and reality both exist, which means that they are both reality.