Heart of Darkness Essay: First Body

-When Marlow decides to venture into the darkness of the African Congo, he is convinced his reasons are only for profit, despite his Aunt’s ideas. Marlow’s Aunt believes that Marlow will go to Africa to spread knowledge and kindness to the savages of Africa. Throughout Marlow’s journey, the reader begins to see signs of Marlow shifting more from a standpoint of profit, to truly caring and wanting to understand more about the peoples of Africa. Marlow states, as he rambles on about how the Africans are good crewmembers on his ship: “Fine fellows – cannibals – in their place” (Conrad 395). Although Marlow’s statement is still extremely racist and objectifying, there are signs of his conscious thoughts shifting from the majority of the racist Europeans, to a view of equality. This is radical thinking for a European of the time, which explains why Marlow’s thought process takes so long to shift. Marlow begins to realize that the African people are just trying to survive in the best way they can. He also realizes that they are extremely motivated and hard working individuals, which he admires. It is necessary to understand that Marlow still has an extremely skewed and racist view, but the deeper he travels both into the jungle and into his unconscious, he begins to break the ties with his unconscious European ideas of the Africans. Marlow indeed does have a breakthrough and dismisses his un-original, unconscious thought that the Africans are savages when he is the deepest into the darkness he will ever be. Once Marlow has found Kurtz and is ready to head back down the river, many of the savages who knew Kurtz gathered on the bank of the river near the boat just staring. The other Europeans get the idea that it would be fun to take target practice at the Africans, as if they were animals. With Marlow’s newly acquired knowledge and understanding, he is disgusted by their actions and does the best he can to stop them. Marlow blows the steamboat horn to scare away the Africans, and to much success the Europeans are angry with Marlow because they cannot shoot the Africans. “’Don’t! don’t you frighten them away,’ cried someone on deck disconsolately. I pulled the sting time after time” (421). Marlow’s actions prove his compassion and understanding that the Africans are just as much of people as the Europeans are. Marlow cannot be at fault for not coming to this realization sooner due to the fact that the society he grew up in unconsciously affected his perception of the African theory. Freudian theory can explain this phenomenon and outline Marlow’s journey from a psychoanalytic outlook.