Another is a more ancient that it’s allegorical counterpart which is Plato’s ‘Allegory of the Cave’. ‘The Heart of Darkness’ is a psychological masterpiece, revealing the relationship between subconscious life and conscious motivations. In the text, Conrad through Marlow reviews the memories of his journey to the Congo: personal nightmare is mixed with his own psychological complexities. He is looking for self-understanding, and showing his own mental picture of the conflicts between savagery and civilization. Many critics have called it the best short novel written in English.
The text involves the reader in dramatic and decisively difficult moral judgements, which are in parallel with the central characters: Marlow and Kurtz. It is a dramatic, layered, paradoxical and problematic novel: a mixture of autobiography, adventure story, religious drama and a symbolic text, thus making it an allegorical text. It is a book about the discovery of an unknown Africa and the vagueness hidden in the human soul. It emphasizes the interface of personal and social experiences in different conditions: conflicts between personal and public codes.
It is about Kurtz, a sophisticated and civilized man whose work in Africa has led him to insanity. Africa is responsible for mental disintegration as well as for physical illness. This is used to outline Conrad’s theme of madness as a result of imperialism. On the other hand, it is a story of identity and voyage to the inner self. The story is divided into two journeys: a journey into the heart of the Congo, and a journey into the soul of man (Marlow’s); implying ethical and psychological darkness. Darkness thus seems to operate metaphorically and existentially rather than specifically.
The Essay on The Night Journey In Heart Of Darkness
The Night Journey in Heart of Darkness Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, has been illustrated as a night journey or a story of initiation, in which man proceeds to experience preceding from innocence and deeply appreciates goodness as he becomes acquainted with the nature of evil. The conception of darkness, which is symbolic of evil, is presented metaphorically, literally, and notably ...
Darkness is the inability to see: this may sound simple, but as a description of the human condition it has profound implications. Failing to see another human being means, failing to understand that individual and failing to establish any sort of sympathetic communion with him or her. Although this story sounds frightening to readers of the twentieth century compared to Conrad’s time, it has an exciting adventure atmosphere in the centre of an unexplored continent. This is the most famous of Conrad’s personal short novels Plato explores the idea that the real world is an illusion in the allegory of the cave in The Republic.
Plato, imagines a cave in which people have been kept prisoner since birth. These people are bound in such a way that they can look only straight ahead, not behind them or to the side. On the wall in front of them, they can see flickering shadows in the shape of people, trees, and animals. Because these images are all they’ve ever seen, they believe these images constitute the real world. One day, a prisoner escapes his bonds. He looks behind him and sees that what he thought was the real world is actually an elaborate set of shadows, which free people create with statues and the light from a fire.
The statues, he decides, are actually the real world, not the shadows. Then he is freed from the cave altogether, and sees the actual world for the first time. He has a difficult time adjusting his eyes to the bright light of the sun, but eventually he does. Fully aware of true reality, he must return to the cave and try to teach others what he knows. The experience of this prisoner is a metaphor for the process by which rare human beings free themselves from the world of appearances and, with the help of philosophy, perceive the world truly.
