Heart of Darkness: Imperialism, Human Nature, and the Descent into Savagery

In Heart of Darkness, the heart of darkness seems to be this kind of unknown to the Europeans, African place at first, but the heart of darkness has multiple kinds of levels of meaning, in the story.

Even though Congo is the heart of darkness, too, in one sense since nobody knows very much about it, and in Marlow’s view, it’s an uncivilized, mysterious and frightening place; the heart of darkness is not Congo in the story. The heart of darkness is not a geographical place. It’s really inside people, and their feelings and how they behave.

The real darkness is imperialism, the way they treat people. Kurtz is the symbol of this darkness, empire and imperialism. He thinks that everything, even the river belongs to him— which is very imperialist of him. We see that Kurtz behaves in a primitive, evil way, and he does savage things. His behavior relates to the general enterprise of Empire.

It’s safe to say that heart of darkness is inside him. The idea of Kurtz is that the Congo has destroyed all his values and ideas of civilization— he became a brutal, nasty, tribal leader. He becomes worse than everybody.

Kurtz has been left alone and this place has affected him. It's significant because it implies it can happen to anyone once the idea of civilization and behaving in a civilized way is removed. The heart of darkness lies under that.

He has no restraints and he doesn't hold back, he's given in to his dark desires. He has gone over the edge and become this horrible man. Marlow hasn't, but it could have happened to him. He believes in restraint, though. The idea is that we all could go over the edge, and do terrible things—given the right circumstances, and that's the point. We get corrupted by society, and society also protects us from ourselves, from the heart of darkness inside us.