Heart of Darkness

 

In Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness the rulers that work to colonize Africa are described as "Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire." (Conrad, Heart of Darkness) Looking through a postcolonial lens, one can see the irony in how the colonists perceive themselves as greatness coming upon Africa and how they actually mistreat and dehumanize the Africans. The colonists are described as great pioneers pushing forth into the dark uncivilized world to bring civilization to the different African colonies. The irony present throughout this quote and majority of the book is that the colonist also bring fear, terror, enslavement, and death upon the Africans. As Marlow travels through the Congo he notices the mistreatment of the Africans through them being over worked and starving; he even sees piles of dead bodies lying along the walkway. He is caught off guard by all that is occurring in his surroundings, but doesn’t find it necessarily troubling. Marlow brushes off the horrifying scene and keeps along his merry way. The men of the upper class who are the ones mistreating the Africans find nothing wrong with what they are doing or how they are treating the Africans and their homeland. They believe they are there to help civilize the Africans, but the irony holds true in that they are the ones destroying their land, raping their women, taking their food, and killing them. The dehumanization that is at hand is described throughout Marlow’s arrival, showing Marlow what he has signed up for in his task to find Kurtz. He is exposed to this mistreatment but does nothing about it because it is seen as the way things are supposed to be done.