I NEED HELP ASAP!!!!! Heart of Darkness

I just finished reading the Heart of darkness which i had a lot of trouble with. Now i need to write an essay that answers the folowing question

Evaluate the “Heart of Darkness.” Does it legitimize the drive territorial expansion? Why or why not?

To tell you the truth i dont even know where to begin! i dont even compleatly understand the question. So as you can see i NEED HELP!!! it would be so greatly appreciated, if you could give me a few of your ideas and how you view the question.

Anything would be so helpfull!!!!

Thank you soo much

Chinua Achebe criticised Conrad’s novel for racism. You can read about this here:
caxton.stockton.edu/hod/achebe
and here:
books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,900102,00.html#article_continue

Conrad's novel is concerned with the horror, and potential for evil that lies at the centre of human life. Marlow says his journey up the African river is like 'going to the centre of the earth'. So it’s not just a physical journey. On his way he is repeatedly confronted by evidence of human brutality and barbarism in a landscape equally savage: “… in and out of rivers, streams of death in life, whose banks were rotting into mud, whose waters thickened into slime, invaded the contorted mangroves that seemed to writhe at us in the extremity of an impotent despair”. Life takes on the quality of nightmare and, like nightmare, must be endured alone. The natives whom he sees abused, starved and done to death by their colonialist exploiters, become also an image of life at the earliest beginnings of the world—barbaric and disordered.


The way Conrad views the behaviour of the Westerners exploiting the Congo would therefore, on the surface, appear to be very critical. He makes us aware of their hypocrisy, greed and lack of morality. In some ways the novel is about ‘restraint’ or rather, lack of restraint, about how we behave when the usual checks of society are removed. It’s a little like ‘Lord of The Flies’ in this respect. Kurtz succumbs to the ‘darkness’, a motif that occurs throughout the novel. From what I can remember, Achebe’s criticism is that Conrad views the native inhabitants as primitive, as part of the metaphysical darkness to which those without the necessary restraint succumb. At one point Achebe refers to a passage where Conrad “zeros in on a specific [African], giving us one of his rare descriptions of an African who is not just limbs or rolling eyes.” While Conrad makes it very clear that the native inhabitants are treated appallingly badly by the Europeans, he still views the former as ‘other’, as something uncivilised in some way. I suppose there are parallels today with the complaints from some people that the constant use by the West of images of starving Africans simply reinforces our perception of Africa as a continent of disease, famine and death.

The question appears to be asking about the extent to which Conrad could be accused of simply reinforcing the view of Africans that led to the exploitation in the first place. Put as simply as I can put it, he might be sympathetic to the natives and critical of the colonialists but he still sees the Africans as essentially uncivilised.


There is a useful (albeit quite difficult) book that explores a lot of this, which you might be able to get hold of from your library if you are a student. - 'Open Guides To Literature: Heart of Darkness " by Anthony Fothergill. The ISBN number is 0-335-15258-0. Good luck.

That sounds suspiciously like an assignment that a Block teacher gave out over break. I already turned in my essay.

I took the stance that HoD condemns the drive for territorial expansion and imperialism as a whole. Some reasons I cited were the motives behind the Company's actions, the hypocrisy evident in the Company (with the honesty of Kurtz in contrast), and the identification of the darkness in relationship to the characters.

That book certainly was a struggle; the essay was torture. But I think I enjoyed the overall feeling I took away from it.

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Originally Posted by sweetie360

Evaluate the “Heart of Darkness.” Does it legitimize the drive territorial expansion? Why or why not?

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Hope its not too late :)

Just some ideas... when teachers say 'evaluate' it usually means that you have to sum up what you think about it, what you think it is saying and the ideas it presents. When that's followed by the bit about legitimizing territorial expansion, you should probably pick out that theme and focus on writing what you think the book says about Europe (and other countries) taking over other countries.

Marlow talks at the start about how the Romans took over Europe and says "Land in a swamp, march through the woods, and in some inland post feel the savagery, the utter savagery, had closed round him--all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men. There's no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable. And it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination--you know, imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate."
You could take that as saying yes, it is ok to take over other countries because you see things that you think of as 'detestable' and wish to change them, thinking you are doing good.

But later Marlow sees how the natives are treated, you might want to look at when he visits the Central Station, and realises that taking over these places isn't as noble as it seems.

In some ways the novel does and some ways it doesn't legitimize territorial expansion, but my opinion (just mine, I'm no expert!!) is that Heart of Darkness shows the flaws in a so-called civilized empire taking over a country such as Africa - by the treatment of the natives as slaves and animals, the disease-ridden stations and the unsuitability of the Europeans to the climate and environment.

quick point on that one of the big points questions presented is what does it take to be called civilized. there the europeans, africans, us?