Skull Hearts

Skull Hearts

The central irony of Heart of Darkness

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Heart of Darkness is a tale by Joseph Conrad. Conrad had been a seaman and had had the opportunity of exploring many places in Africa as part of his job. He had seen the vacuous attempts of Europeans to civilize Africa and has satirized such attempts in many of his tales. An Outpost of Progress, Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim are among such tales.

In Heart of Darkness, Conrad speaks through his favorite narrator Marlow. Marlow is Conrad's 'surrogate author'. In this tale, Marlow tells us how he traveled deep into the heart of Africa along with a small company of white and black men in order to meet a certain Kurtz. Stories of Kurtz's success in Africa had traveled to his homeland. 'You show them you have in you something that is immensely profitable, and then there will be no limits to the recognition of your ability.' Kurtz's outpost was the largest collector of ivory in the region. Kurtz had also written a report on 'The Suppression of Savage Customs' in which he extolled the need of Europeans to bring the light of civilization to dark Africa. Kurtz propagated how the natives of Africa looked upon white men as gods and how therefore, it was very easy to make the black man obey the white man.

Marlow had heard so much of the success of this Kurtz in Africa that to him Kurtz had acquired a legendary stature. Marlow was desperate to meet Kurtz.

The story however reaches an anticlimax, when Marlow does get to meet Kurtz at the end. Kurtz does not prove to be any of the super hero he was made out to be. Instead, he seems deranged. He is shown to have adapted many of the savage customs he had set out to suppress. The fence of his dwelling is decorated with human skulls- trophies of his conquests in Africa. Kurtz is adulated by the natives but for all the wrong reasons. Kurtz has not taught the natives any civilized trait but has attained his Godhood through reckless bullying.

The irony of Heart of Darkness is thus twofold. At one level it shows us the sham of Europeans in professing their purpose of invading Africa- their motive is really only commercial. At the other level it shows how these European emissaries, instead of 'suppressing savage customs', actually succumb to those very customs.

About the Author

Ashmita Saha is a regular reviewer of popular literary books. Her reviews feature on www.book-review-circle.com

You can view a similar review of Conrad's Lord Jim on this website.Click Here

How can I get a skull in my Myspace display name?

Like people have hearts and stars, but I want a skull. Is there a code for that??

there is not.

the character must exist in the font that is being used, so even if a particular font has a character that is a skull this is of no use if the webpage you want to use it in is using a different font - plus you're limited by the height of one line of text.

you can generally see which characters/shapes are available for nearly all webpages by clicking the 'start' menu, then clicking 'run', typing charmap and click 'ok'.

the window that appears displays all characters that the selected font can display, the font 'arial' is a pretty safe choice to look for characters that will work on sites like this and myspace.

double click one of the squares to copy that character to the windows clipboard - you can then go to a text entry box in myspace (or literally any text box) and use 'edit' > 'paste' to put that character into the box.

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