Symbols in Heart of Darkness

 Darkness

The symbol of darkness opens the novella, when Marlow is on the yacht on the Thames: "And this also," he says, speaking of England, "has been one of the dark places on earth." He meansthat the land and its peoples were primitive before the Roman

conquest, a parallel to European colonial control of Africa.Light and peace is here now, Marlow implies, but "darkness was here yesterday."Once Marlow's story is we ll under way, he says, "We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness" (Part 2, Section 2). There is literal darkness in the jungle and the waters of the river. But he also says that the suffering of the indigenous people and the evil in the hearts of the Company agents is a metaphoric darkness, a darkness of the unknown, of difference, and of blindness.

The most important metaphoric darkness is that revealed in Kurtz's heart and symbolized by the decapitated heads of native men displayed like decorative knobs on his fence posts. There, they are "black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids."These heads and the grisly fence stand as enduring symbols of Kurtz's depravity. Kurtz, then, symbolizes the darkness of the colonizers' lost morality, but there is also a sense in which Kurtz is the victim of the darkness of the jungle. Marlow comments on "how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own" in trying to explain his descent into depravity

Ivory

Ivory symbolizes the greed of the Europeans. It is a consuming passion for them, the lure that draws them to Africa. It has become like a religion to them: "The word 'ivory' rang in the air," Marlow says when he is at the Outer Station. It "was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it." Ivory, which is white, is the one thing of value that the Europeans in Heart of Darkness find in dark Africa. But ivory is also equated with darkness and corruption. Marlow muses that Kurtz had been captivated by the wilderness, which had "taken him, loved him, embraced him, consumed his flesh" until he had lost all his hair, his bald head now looking like an "ivory ball." When Kurtz is on the verge of dying, just before he says his last words, Marlow notes his "ivory face." Ivory no longer has value; it is a thing of evil, which is what Kurtz became.

Harlequin

When Marlow arrives at the Inner Station, he is greeted by a young Russian man dressed in clothes that are covered with bright blue, red, and yellow patches. The young man looks as if he is escaped from a troupe of mimes. Marlow compares him to a harlequin, something that does not fit in the African jungle. The harlequin's presence ironizes the tragedy of the situation and suggests another literary convention: the wise fool, although the Russian seems more naive than wise.

Drums

As Marlow pilots the steamboat up the river, he hears drums, which he finds unsettling but intriguing, calling it a sound through his racist character, Marlow, he reveals the racist viewpoints of Company agents and of imperialism more broadly. Others, including the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe (1930–2013), disagree. Achebe argues that, because Conrad rarely provides native characters with speech or other human traits, he—the writer—does not view Africans as human. A major point in support of the position that Conrad was racist is the fact that the book's central focus is Kurtz and his fate in Africa. In this view, by focusing on one white man's fall from grace—indeed, by presenting him as in some sense the victim of Africa—Conrad overlooks the terrible tragedies colonization wreaked on millions of African people. Another important issue is the question of who should speak for the oppressed. Is Conrad, as a white man, capable of speaking for the oppressed? Or must one be oppressed to tell the story of oppression? Readers of Heart of Darkness must form their own answers to this question and how Conrad's work reflects on that issue.