Winning essay gets to the heart of the matter

By Rebecca Lizarraga

“The horror,” an iconic line from Joseph Conrad’s "Heart of Darkness," is a phrase that captures the general sentiment of the novella as a whole: horror, darkness and the unspeakable atrocities committed against man by man. Despite this bleak tone especially present in the beginning and the end of novel, Conrad uses ironic humor and satire to emphasize the absurdity of imperialism, almost a comical effect. Conrad uses characters like the African natives to convey this idea of comedy that can be found in the midst of the deadly seriousness of the Congo.

Europe’s motivation for imperializing Africa was not only economic gain but also a sense of superiority to the native peoples which gave them inherent obligation to attempt to “civilize” them and enlighten them of the glorious virtues of European culture. So, a major aspect of "Heart of Darkness" is the antithesis of European colonizers vs. the native peoples. The former was supposed to represent civilization, education, religion and superiority while the natives were merely caricatures of European perceptions, simple savages. Yet, Conrad shows that a European man is as likely to slip into savage, animalistic nature and with that shows how flimsy the façade of civilization is. In fact, he often presents the savages, the natives, as the civilized ones. On the steamship on the way to the Inner Station, Marlow meets a group of cannibals, to whom he refers to as “fine fellows.” This statement is hilariously ironic because according to European sentiment, these cannibals are vicious, evil, and uncivilized. The cannibals themselves are disgusted at the wastefulness of throwing a perfectly edible body overboard, looking at their European invaders with the same disdain the latter feels for them. Yet, despite their protests, they refrain from eating anyone, in their eyes a show of taste and self-control. The cannibals are portrayed as the civilized people, ironic because the European consensus was that they were superior.

Also used to show humor is the native’s use of pidgin English. “Mistah Kurtz – he dead” was the phrase used to inform Marlow of Kurtz’s death. The statement is funny because of its unapologetic directness, devoid of all European sentiments. This instance relates to the novellas theme of natives vs. colonizers, evil vs. good in the sense that the natives’ simple command of English shows that the attempt to “civilize” the native peoples of Africa has not made them model Europeans rather a hybrid of European influence peeking beneath the more dominant African heritage. It almost renders the colonizers crusade fruitless and futile, stripping it of its proposed goal that the European people believed was justification for the exploitation and abuse of the African people.

Lastly, used as a comic interlude, is the harlequin. The harlequin is dressed in a hodgepodge of patchwork, ridiculous like a clown. Conrad used him to be representative of the European people. He ventured into the wild in pursuit of adventure and wealth and rather found a dark, harsh world that he was unprepared for. In the same manner, European colonizers penetrated Africa with their illusions of grandeur and were met with an unforgiving climate, disease, and a hostile people and they looked like the harlequin, ridiculous. To offer a contrast to comedy, Conrad portrays the cruelty of the Europeans motivated not only by greed and pride but also by fear and the will to survive.

Despite the small comedies used to highlight the absurdity of evil, Conrad mostly focuses on man’s capacity for evil. And though he as an author finds irony in the behavior of the characters, the characters themselves still commit heinous acts that reflect a fairly accurate depiction of the dark realities of the European conquest of Africa.