Beauty of Ambiguity in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

In contemporary literature, novels such as The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas or The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander depict the cycle of oppression among African Americans. A book from the perspective of a Caucasian police officer advocating white privilege or racism is rarely seen on the shelves of bookstores, much less debated or cherished for its literary merit.

Set in the 20th century, Heart of Darkness by author Joseph Conrad is a largely controversial work of well-crafted literature that has been banned and brought back to many school libraries. Despite its disturbing portrayal of native Africans, Heart of Darkness should be taught in schools for its ambiguous, yet valuable, viewpoint on European colonialism and racism. Through Conrad’s well-crafted literary techniques such as creating unreliable characters and frame narration, Heart of Darkness lends itself to many diverse interpretations and raw and necessary discussions in order for students and readers to reassess their own racist bias.

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Firstly, Heart of Darkness forces students to critically analyze not just the character’s perspectives, but also the author’s perspective in the context of the time period he lived in. Through this process of assessing cultural and social norms of 20th century England, students will further understand why Conrad’s racism is so shocking and appalling, especially in the modern 21st century where books such as Heart of Darkness are rarely written. However, suggesting that Heart of Darkness should be taught does not equate to advocating and looking over Conrad’s racism. Through the unnecessary usage of the n-word, the author quite clearly establishes his racist intent for shock value. Indeed, as professor Lennard J. Davis comments in The Value of Teaching From a Racist Classic, “when I did some research into this issue, I found an article that claimed, with some authority, that Conrad used the N-word long after it had become a term avoided by sensitive people in British culture” (Davis). The professor points out that Conrad’s use of the n-word was uncommon even for the era that he lived in, indicating that the author’s inclusion of the n-word was not a character trait of the main character, Charles Marlow, in order to represent him as a synecdoche for a typical 20th-century British man. Thus, even among his target audience in the 1900s, Conrad’s racist portrayal of Africans was never widely promoted to be true. It can be assured that in this modern era, it is rare for a student to pick up Heart of Darkness and believe its inhumane representation of Africa to be factually accurate.

While Heart of Darkness is undoubtedly a beautifully written piece of literature, the actions of Marlow are shrouded in uncertainty, hypocrisy, and contradictions. Along with comparisons between “light” and “dark” as well as “sanity” and “madness”, Conrad uses the contrast of “truth” and “lies” to further create skepticism on the honesty of Marlow’s narration. Early on, Conrad creates Marlow as an exception to his environment because he is one of the few ship passengers that embarks on his journey with a yearning for adventure rather than wishing to profit off of African ivory in exchange for deceitfully cheap goods. Conrad establishes a world around Marlow riddled in irony and oxymorons. For instance, this contrast between idealistic perception and the corrupted truth can be seen through the selfish pilgrims, the exploitation of the company’s Congolese employees, and the establishment of the weak and helplessly mad Kurtz as a deity amongst the local indigeneous community. The honest truth that Marlow so deeply values is negated behind the lens of his rose-tinted glasses. For instance, a character trait that Marlow establishes in the beginning of the book is that he absolutely detests lies. He complains, “There is a taint of death, a flavor of mortality in lies - which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world - what I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do” (Conrad 64). However, it is not often in the literature that authors purposefully make their main characters unreliable as well, causing confusion and ambiguity. Throughout Marlow’s journey to the Congo, his seemingly unbendable moral compass is often tested but never reversed, creating a sense of trust and authenticity. This bond is essentially destroyed in the last few scenes of the novel. Marlow announces to the young African woman, the Intended, that the commander Kurtz’s last few dying words were that of her name, rather than the warnings of the horrors of European colonization. Immediately after, Marlow is consumed with guilt and regret, believing that he had committed a grave sin. “The house would collapse before I could escape, that the heavens would fall upon my head” (Conrad 124). Nevertheless, Marlow’s contradiction of his morals is irreversible and only encourages the Intended’s faithful perception of Kurtz as a brave and honest man. Marlow ends the novel by creating a powerful chain of misleading lies and deception, causing a reassessment of the reliability of his previous actions and behaviors. Through Conrad’s contradiction of Marlow’s steadfast morals, the retelling of his entire journey is thus entirely open to interpretation.

Additionally, Conrad employs literary techniques such as complex frame narration between himself, the narrator, and Marlow. The layers of narration add ambiguity on whether Conrad himself was racist, or if he used Marlow to criticize racist European impressions on the African people. In critic Chinua Achebe’s commentary, An Image of Africa, he notes “Certainly, Conrad appears to go to considerable pains to set up layers of insulation between himself and the moral universe of his story. He has, for example, a narrator behind a narrator' (Achebe). Conrad’s usage of a retrospective frame narration was in order to protect himself as a separate individual from the problematic behavior of his fictional characters. On top of the entire book being subjective to Conrad’s own perspective, the narrator’s voice weaves in and out of Marlow’s tale, a recreation of the story Kurtz wanted him to spread so that the readers often have to switch back between one perspective and another. Thus, frame narration paints a coat of unreliability to Marlow’s recount of his story especially as he narrates with more emotion than fact, indicating that the readers should take his inauthentic narration with a grain of salt. The anonymous narrator even begins the novel with a beautiful illustration of the sunset shrouded in an ambiguous “haze” and “mournful gloom” (Conrad 37), foreshadowing the struggle for Marlow to describe the cryptic darkness of Africa. Conrad’s purpose of the primary narrator is to build a foundation of trust that forms a bridge between Marlow’s inaccurate and subjective viewpoint, to the reader. Further, the narrator heeds a direct warning to the reader in the beginning of the novel, explaining that “we knew we were fated, before the ebb began to run, to hear about one of Marlow’s inconclusive experiences” (Conrad 42). The primary narrator establishes that there should be no one, straightforward interpretation of Conrad’s book. Conrad hopes that his book is not to be categorized as a direct solution to European imperialism and racism, but as a psychological commentary on how complex, divisive and subtle an individual’s innate racism can be.

While Marlow’s retelling remains ambiguous, the purpose of the narrator’s voice is to provide a grounded, reliable point of relatability that mirrors the readers’ reactions. The narrator’s only actions throughout the book are listening and responding to what he is being told, similar to the readers as well. The readers are shown the profound transformation of opinion the narrator goes through once Marlow has finished his tale by providing an early foundation of his morals and values. In the beginning of the novel, the narrator boasts his country’s technological and naval advancements of exploration. It is clear that the narrator is ignorant and naive to the cruel way European colonialism has permanently destroyed cultural traditions and ways of life. The narrator admires bold knights such as Sir Francis Drake, a slave trader, and Sir John Franklin, whose expedition ship’s demise was widely blamed on the local Inuit tribes while thorough research proves that self-inflicted cannibalism, disease, and starvation had led to the ship’s disappearance. Through Marlow’s emotional depiction of anti-imperialism, the narrator is forced to reevaluate all he believes to be true and struggles with his conflicting pride for his country. The book begins and ends with the narrator looking out to the River Thames, the true source of evil. While he once believed his homeland was responsible for glorious accomplishments and revered heroes, he now recognizes it as “the heart of an immense darkness” (Conrad 124). Despite Marlow’s inconsistent and unreliable point of view, he has nonetheless caused the narrator to drastically transform his views on imperialism and racism, as well as to draw his own conclusion that the evil roots of social Darwinism and imperialism stem from the hypocritical Europeans. The narrator’s conclusion serves as an example for readers to do the same and interpret Marlow’s tale for themselves.

Rather than providing a direct answer for students, Conrad’s intentional, well-thought ambiguity allows for many interpretations of the book to be drawn by students, encouraging discussion and debate that would not have otherwise been brought up. Conrad could have easily written a book that clearly and decisively criticizes racism. However, the frame narration creates depth and puts the reader right in the shoes of an unsettling viewpoint. In literature, one must be prepared to confront different perspectives, no matter how racist or unconventional they may be. As uncomfortable as it may be, Conrad’s portrayal of institutional racism is just as important as a book on the other end of the spectrum that denounces racism. Works of literature such as Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs and Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup are brutally honest autobiographies of African American slaves, the result of European imperialism and the creation of the Atlantic slave trade. However, while these books do provide modern readers the important first-hand experience of discrimination, the readers never question the character’s motivations because they are captured so brilliantly and clearly. If Conrad had written a book that blatantly denies racism such as Frederick Douglass’ memoirs, there most likely would be no discussion of the various interpretations of the main character’s racism and intent, much less the author’s. In reading Heart of Darkness, students may come to a similar judgment to the narrator in that perhaps the Europeans are the true symbol of evil. Other students may perceive Marlow’s increasing madness as he deepens his journey into the Congo that nature knows no differences in race and unleashes a human’s true wild-like animal instincts.

Nevertheless, no two interpretations of the book will be tno two interpretations of perceptions of the book will be the same. Students broaden their literary thinking in further analyzing the context of the book, such as the author and the character's motivations and behavior, as well as the social norms of that particular era. Through this process, students are urged to come to their own conclusions while deepening their understanding through debate and differences of interpretation that the complex system of racism is neither black nor white, but inconclusive and ongoing.

To simply ban the book from classrooms and attempt to pretend that these racist interpretations do not exist is narrow-minded and ignorant. Furthermore, removing the book suggests that these stereotypes against native Africans didn’t exist in the past and equally don’t exist today. As Susan L. Blake argues in Racism and the Classics: Teaching “Heart of Darkness”, “Whether we teach such work or not, our students will encounter it, perhaps without the critical frame of reference, we would provide. Even if they never do encounter any particular classic, they live in the culture that has produced and applauded it” (Blake). In avoiding teaching Heart of Darkness, nothing is accomplished as these students will eventually encounter another text that is also problematically racist, if they haven’t already. Moreso, students will face these situations in real life as we live in a society that is based on the institutional racism that Heart of Darkness so carefully depicts. Students will only benefit from reading the book as they will be better equipped to recognize the effect the literary techniques Conrad uses has on social implications. Most students who read Heart of Darkness are well-educated enough to feel unsettled and uncomfortable with its racism. Thus, students then question their own inherent racism and bias. Teachers should then have open discussions with students on its racism and how it can connect to the continuation of institutionalized racism through current events that we see today, such as police brutality or incarceration rates among African Americans.

Referring back to Davis’ commentary on Heart of Darkness, he concludes that rereading the book has opened up lines of inquiry and indictments on how its perception towards the public has evolved throughout the years. “For me, there is no way I can forget what the book has taught me. But when I reread it next time, I will do so with the face of my student before me” (Davis). In allowing the book to be read in his classroom, he caused his student’s uncomfortable interpretation of the book to be deeply racist and refused to read it again. Davis was then confronted on his own teaching methods to minority students and his own potential racism, despite having read the book before. This is the most valuable lesson that the book inflicts on its readers, as it causes these honest discussions and unique reactions. Conrad himself had hoped he wrote with enough brutality and power that his book would “hang in the air and dwell on the ear after the last note had been struck” (Conrad). Through Conrad’s ambiguous writing techniques such as frame narration and analogies, Heart of Darkness forces the reader to reassess their own inherent racist bias. No matter if one is a professor at a prestigious university or a high school student, or whether one is reading the book for the first time or the hundredth time, Heart of Darkness’s beautiful ambiguity creates many diverse interpretations so that readers may be more careful and self-aware when handling situations when racial microaggressions or discrimination is involved.