Motifs In Heart Of Darkness

In the novel Heart of Darkness, the author Joseph Conrad uses the motif of darkness and the words “heart of darkness” to represent the unknown. For example, as our framed narrator travels via boat down the coast of Africa to begin his work with the company, he observes the ‘“edge of a colossal jungle, so dark-green as to be almost black, fringed with white surf, ran straight, like a ruled line, far, far away along a blue sea whose glitter was blurred by a creeping mist’” (Conrad 18). Here, darkness is attributed to the vast jungle beyond the coast to embody its mystery. Marlow describes the coastline as white, shrouding the internal jungle, an enigma of darkness. This reflects a central concept in the novel that things are not as they seem,
When Marlow’s ideas of Kurtz are merely about his voice and influence, our framed narrator praises the ivory-obsessed tradesman’s ‘“ability to talk, his words–the gift of expression, the bewildering, the illuminating, the most exalted and the most contemptible, the pulsating stream of light, or the deceitful flow from the heart of an impenetrable darkness’” (71). The reader has not yet been explicitly informed of Kurtz; everything known about him has been conveyed from numerous layers of people’s perspectives on him. Conrad portrays Africa as a heart of darkness, the savagery of its existence, but Kurtz is the enlightened source of influence that radiates out of the supposedly impermeable darkness. Kurtz collects ivory in the center of Africa, but he sends it outward, a stream of not just the white ivory, but of Kurtz’s noble image. Reflecting (literally in terms of light) the romantic perception of imperialism at the time, Kurtz’s impression on his people is in fact a manifestation of what they want him to be, not his true qualities. This is again the idea of an outward appearance that, as Marlow is about to find out, conceals a darker