Joseph Conrad and Henry Lawson use environment and setting to challenge the motivations and values of the characters in their texts. Specifically, Conrad uses the philosophical, independent-minded and sceptical character of Marlow to juxtapose the hypocrisy of 1890’s British imperialism in his novella, Heart of Darkness. Conrad typically embellished personal experience in his novels, with a specific interest in inter-cultural communication owing to his history as a multi-lingual refugee. This context heavily informs the tension between Marlow’s character and the imperialist ideologies present in his surroundings. Similarly, Australian poet Henry Lawson juxtaposes the motivations of the protagonist in his short fiction The Drover’s Wife, with the titular narrator finding her femininity ostensibly challenged by post-colonial Australia. Lawson uses a female perspective to convey the gender tensions of post-colonial Australia, effectively using the short story form to provide insight. Ultimately, both Conrad and Lawson use formal design to challenge the notions of their characters with the tumultuous environmental context in which they find themselves.
Heart of Darkness is centred around Marlow, an introspective sailor, and his journey up the Congo River to meet Kurtz, a man of great skill reputed to be idealistic. Marlow takes up a job with the Company as a riverboat captain, a Belgian business organized for Congo trade. As he voyages to Africa and after that up the Congo, Marlow encounters widespread wastefulness and brutality within the Company’s stations. The local occupants of the locale have been constrained into the Company’s benefit, and they endure horrendously from exhaust and sick treatment at the hands of the Company’s operators. The brutality and griminess of royal Endeavor contrasts strongly with the detached and magnificent wilderness that encompasses the white man’s settlements.
“The word ‘ivory’ rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from some corpse. By Jove! I’ve never seen anything so unreal in my life. And outside, the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion.”
This quotation, from Part 1 of the novel provides Marlow’s impression of the Central Station. The word “ivory” has taken on a life of it possess for the men who work for the Company. To them it is more than the tusk of an elephant, instead it represents financial opportunity and social progression. The word has misplaced all association to any physical reality and has itself gotten to be an object of revere. Marlow’s reference to a rotting cadaver is metaphorical: elephants and local Africans both pass on as a result of the white man’s interest in the ivory trade. To Marlow, this greed is symptomatic of a more prominent, ageless evil: the evil of imperialism, colonisation and cultural assimilation.
“The brown current ran swiftly out of the heart of darkness, bearing us down towards the sea with twice the speed of our upward progress; and Kurtz’s life was running swiftly, too, ebbing, ebbing out of his heart into the sea of inexorable time.”
This cite, which comes as the steamer starts its voyage back from the Inner Station within the third segment of Part 3, with Kurtz and his ivory on board, brings together the pictures of the river and the “heart of darkness” which it leads to. The waterway is something that isolates Marlow from the African interior whereas on the waterway he is outside to, encompassed by wilderness. Moreover, despite its “brown current,” the waterway unyieldingly brings him back to white civilization. This quote proposes that Marlow and Kurtz have been able to leave their “heart of darkness” behind, but Kurtz’s life appears to be subsiding at the side the “darkness,” and Marlow, as well, has been forever scarred by it, since he is presently ineradicably stamped as being of Kurtz’s party. Hence, it appears that the “darkness” is internalized. This demonstrates how Marlow’s own beliefs are challenged by the environment which he finds himself in. Following the formal design of the novel, Marlow’s character follows an arc that changes his preconceived notion of imperialism. In this way, Conrad challenges the beliefs of the audience, using the nuanced character of Marlow to confront the harsh, historical context of Heart of Darkness.
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Themes and Ideas in Heart of Darkness and The Drover’s Wife.
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