Alex DeRue Heart of Darkness Essay

10/19/10 Final Draft

The most minor of characters can possessed a great deal symbolic meaning in literature, far greater than their role would suggest, lending another layer of purpose and depth. Joseph Conrads novel, Heart of Darkness is no exception to this, with the cannibals that manned the steamer, as a characterization of what little separates the sophisticated Europeans from the uncivilized savagery of the continent. Aboard the ship, the cannibals reveal an unnatural resilience to their own nature and needs when faced with encroaching starvation, resilience that only can be discerned as something of humanity. Consequently the humanity and discriminating difference clung to by those Europeans in their feigned superiority fades before Marlow as he observes their devastation of the African continent in light of the cannibals decorum. The cannibals bring to question the true nature of humanity as the unity of and belief in mankind or simply savagery, the dark hearts of men tamed and bound by civilization, and liberated beneath the fog of the jungle.

The actions of the cannibals hired to man the steamer, or lack there of suggests a level of humanity within them, undermining the moral ascendancy of the belligerent Europeans in their civilizing of the continent. As Marlow noted there was no apparent barrier between these men fulfilling the Europeans savage perception of them. The pilgrims aboard the steamer were pathetic specimens of the iron fist of Europe, their fleshy condition falsely empowered by the technological armaments they knew not how to use. They were

outnumbered and would have been overtaken with ease by the cannibals, who could then have taken all that they were going to be paid and then feasted after having been forced to throw their rotting food store overboard. The cannibals did not however lay waste to the steamer. With no expedient reason for forestalling their payment or quenching their hunger, the cannibals inaction acknowledges a sense of seemingly unjustified camaraderie with the men coming to conquer their lands. Its a camaraderie so strangely pure in these simple natives that it could be nothing less than humanity. If they were truly so savage as they were believed to be, why then should these men have spared their treacherous employers if not out of recognition of humanitys bond. Perhaps it was situational, the steamer acting as a sundered shard of European moral nobility, taming the savages upon contact, but they still drool and hunger upon encountering the other savages and with the death of the helmsman. Clearly they are not saints, nor even fit for paupers in Europe, but they do possess humanity and proper obedience of that humanity, albeit it ironic for man-eaters, to bond them to these strange white men and their foreign concept of service and payment. Observation of this commonality however would have proven ruinous for the European companies in their brutal crusade upon the continent, when not all its denizens are the demonic heathens they are considered to be.

The humanity exhibited by cannibals contrasted with the European companys brutal conquest of the jungles blurs the line of distinction between the two. On the outset of Marlows journey it is a clearly defined difference between the dark and wild savages of

Africa and nobility of Europe. The other men of Europe are likely gentlemen when upon her cobblestone streets or before her grand, marble edifices, but the same cannot be said for their actions along their journey into the interior of the African contient. It begs the question; when do the necessary evils for routing savagery and spreading civilized humanity become just as savage? At the first stop along Marlows journey the Europeans still appear nearly civilized, simply working the savages to death, but as he travels deeper into the interior the authority and moral guidance of civilization withers with distance. Eventually the hostility of the land, with them chaotic firing their guns feverishly at the howling shores, leaves the pilgrims on the boat as equals with the apparently less-savage savages theyve hired. To say the least there exists enough respect and kinship between the white men and the cannibals for the former not to be feasted upon, and the later to be allowed to man the ship and be paid for it, albeit the pay be pieces of wire. Certainly the Europeans still think themselves superior having convinced the cannibal tasked with stoking the ships boiler, that it is a ravenous, confrontational spirit. However do the Europeans not worship the steamers motion and the distance it places between them and dreadful shore? The differences between them are few now beyond the hues of their skin. In one final uniting act the native assault upon the steamer possess all the men aboard with belligerent agitation out of a common lust for blood and will to survive. In time these attacking natives will too become as equals to the European visitors, neither factions wanting to leave without liberating their deified Kurtz from his blood and ivory adorned temple. In the end only sight can distinguish these men from one another, now bound by their will to survive by any means.

These cannibals challenge the concept of humanity as the moral authority backing the European foray into the African continent defines it. Humanity in this sense is the belief in man, and his united front to survive and prosper in this world, together. How then can it be that these mindless, savage man-eaters, expected to be without conscience, can suddenly be so tame, humane even, aboard the steamer? The truth is that they cannot be, not without the Europeans acknowledging that the humanity to which they cling, the humanity which empowers and drives them, is too possessed by the men they seek to control or slaughter in greed. Who then would be more human, the savage who bares his primal urges as one might their skin, or the sophisticated European who conceals them in his heart, but pursues them nonetheless. Without the binding laws of civilization, only a mans heart can decide what is right and what is wrong. In light of avarice that propelled the Europeans to the land and the savagery that has allowed these cannibals to survive at the expense of one another, one cannot deny it is a dark heart that drives the survival of man. The cannibals by this standard almost appear less savage than their European counterparts aboard the boat, but to see a savage in a savage environment is akin to an alcoholic with his drink, the effect of it is less acute and apparent, but none the less potent in the end. If there is humanity to be possessed by the cannibals or the Europeans, it is but self-control, an ability within the grasp of every man that chooses to exercise it. The trick of civilization is to extend that humanity, that control, over others, until it is but one savage heart in a thousand that still decides the survival of mankind.

The humanity of Europe fades to savagery no different than that possessed by the cannibals, when removed from the safety of sophisticated society. With the dark hearts of men, why should humanity, the belief and natural bond of these men, be triumphed? Is the civilized world not bound by laws and regulation established by intelligent men, recognizing the potential to tame the world and mold it in their favor, to control it? Ultimately that is all that separated the Europeans from the cannibals at the beginning. The cannibals were not yet bound to the will of another, not yet possessed by a false sense of humanity.