The Heart of Darkness: Two Sides of the Same Story One About Violence
As time goes by, the African (black) race suffered a lot because of the racism and many horrible stereotypes, African people never had their own land it always was property of an empire o used to extract natural resources. Nevertheless, the worst part of all was the slavery, in the book the heart of darkness it is explained what was the situation and the brutality and hate between the conquerors and the Congo’s natives and how Kurtz treated them. The purpose of this essay is to show two sides of the same story one about violence and another one about love.
Marlow started a trip in which we was supposed to find Kurtz, during his trip lots of incidents happened making him made a lot of stops, eventually he arrived to the place he was supposed to be, but Marlow and his men weren´t able to find him. That same night Congo natives attacked the killing one of Marlow’s men, this event provoked a lot of anger and sadness to Marlow and his men, after this, they carried on with the expedition. Everybody, even Marlow thought that Kurtz was dead, but after going through the Congo´s River Marlow and his men, found Kurtz in a very bad mental state and with many physical diseases.
During his whole life, Kurtz was well known for having a huge ambition and this lead him to great opportunities but, no one knew him, he had no friends, his own fiancé said that she didn´t knew him, she said that he was a cold ambitious man she had to marry. Kurtz arrives to Africa because an enterprise send him to the ivory extraction, his numbers where the highest, he was the best in his work, but when he arrived the Congo natives saw him as a kind of “god” so he convince them that if they work for him they will became evangelized and finally liberated from their sins. But of course Kurtz fool the natives in order to have them working for him for free, but his ambition was so big that he started to treat the natives in a very violent and brutal way. He even cut the heads of some of them and put them in sticks to scare and to show the insane things Kurtz was capable to come up with. Natives lived in a horrible hell without food, water, shelter and a violent and brutal boss, which was anything more than a liar was.
Marlow had the chance to observe how much hate and anger between the conquerors and the native and after saving Kurtz from the native, Marlow noticed that Kurtz had fall into a massive level of craziness but on top of that, he had serious diseases. Marlow and his men reached the boat in which they were supposed to take Kurtz away but when they were getting there, Kurtz died, he died alone and crazy, he told his last words to Marlow “the horror, the horror”.Marlow had interesting thoughts that were evolving about Kurtz, first not caring about who he was, but after knowing the story, Marlow had a fascination, he sees Kurtz as a brave white man that lived and learned how to control black people. Marlow is so afraid of natives and the jungle, that hearing about one man that could survive and lives like a god makes Marlow think that Kurtz is a hero, as an idol. And this is the reason why Marlow decided to support Kurtz and to disobeyed the company, but this changed after meeting him in the jungle, Marlow gets disturbed by the cult and the way Kurtz was seen by the native in the Congo.
After dying Kurtz gave some papers to Marlow and asked him to give them to his fiancée that was in England, he was asked to give away those papers but he refuse to, when he got back to England he found Kurt’s fiancée and gave to her the papers in that was supporting Kurtz and not the ivory company.To conclude I think that this novel is the proof about how cruel and brutal a human being can become, it is almost art, the way it is explained that Kurtz became crazy but was already mentally damaged. I liked the way in which the author make the point that Kurtz didn’t become crazy at all, that he had a bad soul since the beginning and found that specific job that would take his craziness to the limit. This is an example of what really happened during the imperialism era and how the berlin conference and the conquerors affect Africa, the Congo is the heart of Africa and how Marlow had to descend to a hell slowly is interesting how the author explains Marlow’s behavior and posture to racial issues and the Brutality
I think that the explorations lead by Europeans in Africa were one of the most brutal episodes in human history because of how the conquerors treated the natives, I felt almost anger reading how the European could treat a human being that way. I liked the reading and I liked how they explained how insane a person can become in the jungle, how one person can do so much physical and mental damage to hundreds of people.
