The Venerable Stream and the Immense Snake Uncoiled: How Leaving Home Can Show One to be Uncivil
Joseph Conrad enjoys a revered position within the canon of English literature. Around one’s junior or senior year of high school a serious student is bound to be introduced to and unalterably impressed by Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The language, imagery, and unorthodox form of that novella inspire an emotional and intellectual attachment that is unique and attractive. Serious scholars around the world respect it as a work of genius. Recently, however, Heart of Darkness has been revisited with more critical eyes. Rhetorical analyses expose racist undertones within the text: Africans are not to be poorly treated, but are not equal to white men, any civilization but British civilization is underdeveloped, subsistence cannibalism is common in the Congo, et cetera. Conrad, or at least Conrad’s narrator, seems to be saying that outside of British civilization is a dark landscape, not a dark people, in which even the best discover the darkness within themselves.
From the first page, Conrad emphasizes the importance of lightness and darkness. The unidentified narrator, who begins the tale, informs the reader that we are on a ship, The Nellie, waiting out a calm in the estuary between the river Thames and The North Sea. The ship and its crew seem to be about to set out on a voyage with the “luminous estuary” behind and the “interminable . . . brooding gloom,” of the sea ahead (1955) . Immediately we are given a stark contrast: the “still and exquisite brilliance,” the “benign immensity,” the “luminous space,” the “tranquil dignity,” of London, “the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth,” and the “haze,” the “vanishing flatness,” and the “brooding gloom,” of, “an unknown earth” (1954-1956) . In the crucible of such a contrast, the principle speaker of the novella, Marlow, cannot but observe, “this also . . . has been one of the dark places of the earth” (1955) . Such an observation, so early in the text, and so obviously loaded with emphasis, is a key to the meaning that Conrad intends by the word “darkness”. One definitely can infer that, if he is not stating that dark places are places outside of England, he is at least stating that England is no longer a dark place. It was before, but it is no longer now. So one might rightly question what the difference was between England’s past and its present. For Marlow it was the contrast between “civilized man,” and, “the savagery, the utter savagery,” of the, “wilderness . . . the forest . . . the jungles . . . the wild men” (1957) .
Darkness is not a geographic or racial status in this text. Conrad’s opening makes it clear that the same cosmic features of a landscape, and the same people that inhabit it, can progress from lightness to darkness, and back again. To demonstrate this fact one need only consult the contrast between the Congo and the Thames rivers within Heart of Darkness. The Thames is portrayed as a, “venerable stream,” that is “after ages of good service . . . spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth” (1955) . The Congo, on the other hand, resembles, “an immense snake uncoiled,” an, “implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention,” not leading to the ends of the earth, but, “to the earliest beginnings of the world” (Conrad 1958; 1978) . The goodness of the Thames and the badness of the Congo is due to the plenty or scarcity, and the nature, of the people that depend upon each river. The Thames evokes the exploits and the success of the British Empire. “It had known and served all the men of whom the nation is proud . . . it had borne all the ships whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of time,” the Thames transported, “bearers of a spark from the sacred fire . . . The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires” (1955-56) . The Congo has no such glorious tradition of service for Conrad. It is not surrounded by “a crowd of men,” it does not run through an immense city with, “an idea at the back of it . . . something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to” (1955; 1957) . It is instead one of the “blank spaces of the earth,” a locality, “in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream . . . amongst the overwhelming realities of this strange world of plants, and water, and silence” (1958; 1978) .
Yet this distinction of goodness and badness, lightness and darkness, is not consistent. At least it is not so with regard to the Thames. Far from the civilized and serviceable picture painted at first, the Thames is also portrayed as, “a sea the color of lead,” beneath, “a sky the color of smoke . . . at the very end of the world” (1957) . In a time before the Roman conquest, “nineteen hundred years ago – the other day,” the Thames was far from tame. It was full of, “cold, fog, tempests, disease, exile, and death” (1957) . Conrad shows the Thames, and, by extension, British civilization, to be changeable and in flux. The present state of enlightenment, “is like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker – may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling!” (1956) The contrast Conrad makes between the Congo and the Thames, then, is not to show preference between cultures, races, or localities. It is to show a particular culture in the crucible. It is to make a distinction between the normalcy and peace of hometown London with the brutality and strangeness of acts on the fringes of the empire.
A scene in which this distinction is made apparent is Marlowe’s final encounter with his patron aunt before setting out to Africa. Conrad goes out of his way to tell us that it is a quintessentially British, an absolutely normal calm before the storm. He begins the encounter by saying, “I had a cup of tea – the last decent cup of tea for many days – and in a room that most soothingly looked just as you would expect a lady’s drawing-room to look” (1961) . Nothing so evokes British comfort as a cup of tea, and in the warmth of this fireside comfort the idealized British view of the situation in Africa is presented. It is the view of Marlowe’s aunt that Marlowe is setting out as, “something like a lower sort of apostle,” sent to, “wean those ignorant millions from their horrid ways” (1961-1962) . Those in Britain view those setting out to Africa as bearers of that, “spark from the sacred fire” (1956) . Marlowe cannot see things so simply. Such a view is “too beautiful altogether,” and bound to, “go to pieces before the first sunset” (1962) . Such a view is irreconcilable with the actions of his predecessors. His direct predecessor had been killed because he had beaten a native chief nearly to death over “a misunderstanding about some hens. Yes, two black hens” (1959) . Right from the start, then, Marlowe cannot help but express, “the queer feeling . . . that I was an impostor” (1962) . Europeans in this text are not going into a savage world, armed with benign civility, to redeem it. They are, or at least Marlowe is, going out of blind comfort to see the real strength of civility, and being disappointed at its failure.
This emphasis on the failure of British ideals to stay true to themselves does not excuse Conrad from the legitimate accusations of racism that are flung at him. It does, however, help him to survive them. There is something beautiful about Conrad that is worth preserving in reverence. It is granted that his rhetorical purpose of showing us the darkness within ourselves, and the dangerous over-simplicity of ethnocentrism, is weakly accomplished. That Heart of Darkness exhibits weak notions of race cannot be denied. That does not change the fact that Conrad’s intended, larger, moral purpose is laudable, if not fully realized. His principle critique was of “a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut” (1956) . He critiqued the simple assumption that the goodness of normalcy cannot be taken for granted. If Heart of Darkness is flawed in proving that, at least he should be praised in showing us that the answers are, “outside, enveloping [his] tale” (1956) .
Works Cited
Conrad, Joseph. "Heart of Darkness." The Longman Anthology: British Literature. Ed. Kevin J H Dettmar. Fourth. Vol. 2C: The Twentieth Century and Beyond. New York: Pearson Education, Inc, 2010. 1954-2010. Print. 1 May 2013.
Comments