Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad Essay

Juxtaposition is iodine of the musical compositiony literary element used in emphasis of a concept or an idea. In the sassy Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad juxtaposes the motifs of light and moody to emphasize the wickedness present throughout the book. Through juxtaposition, Conrad not scarcely emphasizes the night in Africa but likewise intensifies the dark lifes of the Europeans. The major(ip) vileness in the novel is the land of Africa itself. When Marlow foremost makes his government agency upstream with his crew, he describes the land of Africa as a dark place, assigning that the river was an hollow stream, a great silence, an punishing forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no happiness in the brilliance of sunbathe fluttering (30). He uses lightness words handle brilliance and sunshine to intensify this darkness. Also, Conrad even depicts Africa as the warmness of darkness.He says, we penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of dark ness. It was very quiet there. At night virtuallytimes the roll of drums behind the curtain of trees would run up the river and remain bear on faintly, as if hoering in the air high over our heads, till the first break of day (31). Africa is full of darkness and it all happens at night, ahead the sun rises and slickens up the world again. I looked around, and I dont know why, but I assure you that never, never in front, did this land, this river, this jungle, the very arch of this blazing sky, appear to me so hopeless and so dark, so thick to human thought, so pitiless to human weakness (51), describes Marlow. Here, the darkness is portrayed as gloom, not the darkness of evil. Even the blazing sky looked hopeless.By juxtaposing the words blazing and dark, Conrad emphasizes that the glum of the land defeated its shimmery and sunny sky. Through the use of juxtaposition, the darkness of the land of Africa is emphasized and intensified. Conrad also uses juxtaposition of the cha racter of the accountant to emphasize the darkness not merely in the Africans but also in the Europeans. When Marlow meets the accountant, he states I met a white man, in such an unexpected elegance of getup that in the first moment I took him for a sort of vision. I byword a high starched collar, white cuffs, a light alpaca jacket, white trousers, a clear necktie, and varnished boots (15). Marlow describes the white accountant as some kind of a miracle. The white man was elegant and had decent array among all the madness happening around them.However, from how Marlow describes what happened in the accountants office, this accountant is not a kind man. Marlow accounts that when a truckle recognise with a sick man was put in there, he exhibited a gentle annoyance. The groans of this sick person, he said, distract my attention. And without that it is extremely difficult to concord against clerical errors in this climate. (15). He complains about the dying sick man and how this m an is distracting him from his work. By juxtaposing the white European with his dark behavior, Conrad shows the evilness of humans. Mr. Kurtz is a mysterious character in the novel, containing both the dark devil and the hearty Kurtz. The first verbal description of Kurtz occurs in the part where Marlow describes the outlook of a brochure. He says, it was very simple, and at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying, like a flash of lightning in a serene sky Exterminate all the brutes (46).This is a description of the brochure Kurtz is writing for the International Society for the Suppression of Savage customs (45). The first part of the brochure, the part written before Kurtz have gone mad, is typed up with the use of a typewriter. Then on the potty of the page, the words Exterminate all the brutes was scribbled on hastily. Even when Kurtz was on the verge of death, he was living immersed in darkness. His was an impene trable darkness. I looked at him as you match down at a man who is lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines (64). Conrad straight up uses the words impenetrable darkness to describe Kurtz. At the end of the quote, he said where the sun never shines. The sun is used to emphasize the darkness of Kurtzs heart because it never shines. It was dark, it is dark, and will be dark unless a miracle occurs and causes the sun to shine down in the precipice.The character of Kurtz is probably the darkest character in the novel and this is shown by the juxtaposition. Marlow, the frame narrator, starts and ends his story by saying that the darkness isnt just in Africa. In the beginning of Marlows story, he negotiation about how we are living in a constant waver of lightness among the darkness. By starting the story with Light came out of this river since you say knights? Yes but it is like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the fl icker may it last as long as the old worldly concern keeps rolling But darkness was here yesterday (3), it can be seen and foreshadowed that there are darkness no matter where you go. This is even before he describes Africa, showing that Africa isnt the only heart of darkness. These flickers intensifies the darkness when it drapes over us.The nameless narrator ends the novel by saying, the offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the end ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness (72). After starting out the story with a description of the darkness in the world, the nameless narrator ends the novel with the descriptions of the darkness in Europe. This narrator describes that there was a storm when the Nellie made its way down the Thames River, not only literal but also metaphoric. The metaphorical storm reflects the darkness of the hearts of the Europeans. By using light and bright words, Conrad intensifies the evil and the despair in the novel Heart of Darkness. 2nd sentence. tertiary sentence.