I believe that the title "Heart of
Darkness" can mean a number of things to any person who reads the novel.
The most predominant idea I have relates to the ivory and the companies’
motives as too have they go about getting this ivory. The company goes to almost
unrealistic measures to get the ivory for the consumers of the business. That
could explain that darkness part of the titles but also leaves the heart. I
believe that this is referring to Africa and all of the travels. I interpreted
the literal meaning of the heart being “the heart of Africa”. In the novel, Africa is portrayed as a dark
place because of all of the differences between societies. This also brings back the idea of
ethnocentrism as talked about in class.
Marlow shows signs of this because of the ways the natives were acting
and behaving. To him, these ways were different and out of the ‘norm’. This could
represent the darkness stated in the title. It could mean that the “heart of
darkness” symbolizes the heart of Africa and the dark people surrounding the
path to find and retrieve Mr. Kurtz. Also, it could be decided that Mr. Kurtz
is in the ‘heart of darkness’ which would mean that he is lost in isolation and
the darkness of the places around him cause him to go mad.
No comments:
Post a Comment