This review is part of a re-reads series; My friends and I are reading classics we had read in our youth and reviewing them. Readers should also be aware that this review makes important plot points explicit.

“The only real feeling was a desire to get appointed to a trading-post where ivory was to be had, so that they could earn percentages. They intrigued and slandered and hated each other only on that account,—but as to effectually lifting a little finger—oh, no. By heavens! there is something after all in the world allowing one man to steal a horse while another must not look at a halter.15 Steal a horse straight out. Very well. He has done it. Perhaps he can ride. But there is a way of looking at a halter that would provoke the most charitable of saints into a kick.”

Beneath the sledge of the imperialist control of Africa, beneath the beatings and the slavery and the blood and sweat and pandered religion for the sake of profit, there is still the very real pursuit of profit. A profit demarcated in the late capitalistic fuel that drives our societies deeper and deeper into the river of despair. While Conrad is purely criticizing the vicious cycle of imperialist enslavement, the themes of Heart of Darkness in fact remain untouched by the historical and social vacuum that he was writing therein. Companies will still sell out your soul for a larger profit margin; we need only point to Facebook’s handling of data, of Google’s illegal data tracking… on goes the list. Furthermore, it is worthwhile to keep track of the “ranks” in the work. The Manager is in fact inept at his job, not knowing much about anything and not being able to foresee potential problems. That is, rather than solve the problems plaguing his “company,” he simply blames those under him. Down the ladder we go, where the labourer is beaten for merely doing his job. In capitalism you are “let-go” for making mistakes by lifelong upper and middle managers who are just as inefficient and inept as their bosses who fumbled into their positions because they married the right person or shook the right person’s hand. This is the reality of our world, and mirrored almost to a perfection in the immortal and eerie atmosphere of HOD. Yet the true horror remains the treatment of those not in the elite cabal of these so-called companies. And while the class-warfare is very real (I refer again to the importance of ranks), it is Conrad’s most effective tool in demarcating for his real the personal and real pain of oppression.

“We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. It was very quiet there. At night sometimes the roll of drums behind the curtain of trees would run up the river and remain sustained faintly, as if hovering in the air high over our heads, till the first break of day. Whether it meant war, peace, or prayer we could not tell. The dawns were heralded by the descent of a chill stillness; the wood-cutter slept, their fires burned low; the snapping of a twig would make you start. We were wan on prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet.”

Now while the mysticism of man versus nature is impeccable; what still gives this novel its force is the seamless blending of man versus man. This duality, though manifested throughout, is most prevalent in the descent. As the crew penetrates deeper and deeper into the jungle, it symbolizes the descent into the existential dread and endless abyss of colonialism while at the same time illustrating that man is fighting nature by subjugating his brethren. However, the mysterious force commanding the village is Kurtz — a man. Thus man versus nature becomes man versus man. I would go as far as to argue that it is actually man versus himself by the end of the novel..

“Only in the very last moment, as though in response to some sign we could not see, to some whisper we could not hear, he frowned heavily, and that frown gave to his black death-mask an inconceivably sombre, brooding, and menacing expression. The lustre of inquiring glance faded swiftly into vacant glassiness…”

The slow, careful movements of the Nellie serve as Marlow's reflections on the power of words.

“They were common everyday words—the familiar, vague sounds exchanged on every waking day of life. But what of that? They had behind them, to my mind, the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, of phrases spoken in nightmares. Soul! If anybody had ever struggled with a soul, I am the man.”

Conrad is careful never to explicitly mention anti-war or anti-colonialism sentiments — it is indeed implied and cleverly hidden throughout the whole novel. However, it is more an anti-deception manifesto more than anti-colonialism manifesto. If we honest about our goals, then the horrors of war can be dealt with. Killing Iraqi villagers make no sense if we are meant to be liberating them. Yet it makes perfect sense when we know that we are not liberating them, but oppressing them for their resources and using liberation as a justification of those murders. This is why Kurtz is seen as a great man by the villagers, the defectors, the generals who are trying to kill him, etc. Everyone is jealous of him. He is very specifically against the rationalizations and deceptions employed in war. He is not against war persay. (I am using the Apocopylse Now clips for the clear imagery. It is based on HOD). He is a man who enjoys war and chaos, and his whole character is an attempt to portray the duality of man: we like war (to kill each other) even though it is detrimental to us as a species, but we go through all these steps and loopholes to deceive ourselves and others that it is necessary and in fact a requirement feature of civilization. This is why his will survives even though he is ill throughout the novel and we never get to witness the extent of his awesome power.

"There were no practical hints to interrupt the magic current of phrases, unless a kind of note at the foot on the last page, scrawled evidently much later, in an unsteady hand, may be regarded as the exposition of a method. 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!’”

Conrad uses Kurtz as an allegory for colonialism in the purest form, while the jungle serves as an allegory for the ugly and dark side of colonialism. This duality teaches us that colonialism is in fact as much an internal battle as it is an external one with the forces of oppression.