Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness is a short novella by Joseph Conrad. It follows a narrator’s journey up a river into the African interior. While it appears as a tale of adventure, it is a critique of imperialism. The passage where the narrator describes a black man as 'The horror-stricken, one of these creatures rose to his hands and knees, and went off on all-fours towards the river to drink. He lapped' (search_quotes) shows how the language of empire turns people into ‘creatures’ and objects of scientific fascination. This dehumanizing rhetoric is the ideological foundation of colonial power. Conrad does not provide redemption; he leaves the reader with the unsettling realization that the ‘darkness’ is not confined to a distant continent but lies within the heart of empire itself. The work is a clear, honest exposure of how power masks itself in the rhetoric of civilization.