Introduction
A major influence of Heart of Darkness can be seen in literary works that explore the conflict between individual desires and ambitions versus the norms and constraints of society. Failure of the responsibility to protect in the context of the Congo, the Character of Kurtz is an example of an individual who escapes from the civilization’s moral bounds and norms in his endeavors to obtain ivory and power. His final words, “The horror! The horror”, convey his confrontation with his inner savage and with the horrors of European colonial exploitation at the same time.
Novelists such as William Golding in his book “Lord of the Flies” or film directors in “Francis Ford Coppola’s” movie apocalypse now portray Kurtz as an imaginative symbol of declining into immorality and moral insanity once they separate themselves from the norms of society (Hassan and Sharif 127). For instance, Lord of the Flies depicts a group of schoolboys stranded on an island; their regression into primitivism and brutal violence without any other authority figures is symbolic of Kurtz’s case (Mogea 179). On the other side, Captain Kurtz of the Apocalypse Now movie also succumbs to ruthlessly seizing power using the most barbaric and darkest means during the Vietnam War. Using Conrad’s ideology of the duality of man’s nature, which is the civilized side and cruel one, writers tend to attract one towards darkness when social constraints are removed. The quote, “Mind, none of us would feel exactly like this…What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valor, rage…who can tell?” (Conrad 29) brings the tension between the brutal savagery and the high human attributes.
Influence of Works Exploring Individual vs Society
The castaways in William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies have their morals and codes of conduct represented in the rules and the hierarchy they set at the beginning, which are the traits of civilized society (Hassan and Sharif 130). Moreover, the leader of the Boys, Jordan, being a Jack-like character, tends to isolate himself from conformity and behaves in an uncivilized manner, including cruelty, violence and the setting of weird rituals to get rid of the weak and gain power, for example, in the case of Kurtz in Heart of Darkness who loses himself and becomes despotic on his way towards ivory wealth without moral boundaries. For instance, “The Africans were dehumanized and degraded, seen as grotesques or as a howling mob (Watts 27). Jack also commences to act disturbed and loses all human values. The colonization of the island is the same as the overtness of the colonial Conradan.
Likewise, in Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now, the character of Colonel Kurtz portrays the way that people can leave moral boundaries and reject accepted norms when they are away from the basic duties that society provides them. With the fact that he has abandoned his American military in the Vietnam War, he takes power like a god in an indigenous tribe by means of inflicting horrible torment and pain, much like the Kurtz in the Heart of Darkness surrounded by severed heads (Watts 24). The quote “What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valor, rage…” succinctly captures the wide range of potential within humans – for good and evil – when unrestrained from society’s ethical codes. The way these stories employ Kurtz from Heart of Darkness as a symbol additionally points to the manner in which one can regress to a barbaric and immoral nature when unshackling themselves from society’s laws, and civil ethics of conduct persists. They express the seemingly opposite elements of human characteristics and nature. These two works take Conrad’s Kurtz metaphor even further by directly associating the descent into savagery with the context of racism and cultural supremacy.
In the Lord of the Flies logic, boys remaining “civilized” still become “the others” to Jack’s tribe, which bears the image of European colonial powers relating the non-European peoples to savages. Apocalypse Now’s Kurtz sees himself as an almost godlike character who is dominating the Vietnamese people and reminds them of the burden of leading colonial times as white people in the colonial period. Ritual sacrifices, primitive behavior, and the exact image of power and morality of Kurtz, as seen in Heart of Darkness, are present in both stories and based on the horrors committed in Congo (Watts 23). Nevertheless, transferring these to contexts of cultural clash, such as the islands and jungles, the authors realistically portray Kurtz’s ultimate anti-colonial sentiments that represented some internalized pig-headedness and white superiority, insinuating that the “civilizing” ethos of the colonial times was based on arrogance and racism. The extra dimension is given to the Kurtz metaphor itself, turning it into a more painful and insightful indictment.
Influence on Works About Racism and Colonialism
Many well-known literary pieces in the past depicted the racism and colonialism ideology of the time, as portrayed in the novel Heart of Darkness by Conrad in the way he described Africans as being savage people (Watts 20). The Nigerian author Chinua Achebe’s well-known novel Things Fall Apart has in the background a dialect that is reflective of the complex traditions and humanity of the Igbo people before the Europeans’ aggressiveness and missionaries destroyed their civilization. Achebe distanced himself from Heart of Darkness, as he viewed the book as disrespectful to Africans and presented the whole continent from a European perspective.
A favourite theme of E.M. Forster in the novel A Passage to India is not only the colonial rule in India by the British Empire but also its tragic consequences like friction and prejudices on both sides. The literary works mentioned above are the answer to the quote, “Whether they (European colonizers) wanted it or not, their role in those lands ‘was conquerors,’ relying on ‘brute force.” Such an approach entailed deviations from any attempts at intercultural exchange. Kurtz, with an archetype of a brutal colonial attitude, is the carrier of this view, as seen in his awful acts of disrespect to local lives just for the sake of his demands.
This novel by Achebe and others certainly questions the universality of this perspective. It offers an original view on the humiliating influence of colonization, which the narrator is already accepting since he is just a Russian man who colonized Africa. Through their works, these artists present the multi-levelled human qualities that the European colonizers had not observed during their behavior of seizing and enslaving. This inability to see beyond the preconceived racial prejudices by Achebe, Forster and others through their counter-narratives is what challenges the deep-rooted racism that is presented in Heart of Darkness and the autonomy and dignity that was stolen away from the colonized beings. Partly as a result of his parents’ political struggle against Russian oppression…” (Watts 22). The European colonizers ignored the restoration of the human aspect as the novelist beautifully captured savage barbarism through the realistic portrayal of the various customs, religious beliefs and intricate social structures of the native population. The audience can now see how those very foreign powers caused such serious cultural damage and subjugation.
Moreover, the books portray the biases and misinformation on both sides, which fuelled the tragic cycles of conflict and oppression under colonial rule. Through those visuals, it reveals that the beginning “civilizing” cause of the self-justifying colonizers was the pretext for the economic exploitation and domination of the indigenous people. The well-founded portrayals of his work in these works bring down the brutal conduct of Kurtz and the authoritative colonial mindset exhibited in the story by Conrad. Finally, these novelists write on behalf of the voiceless victims of European colonialism.
Influence of Psychological Explorations on Humanity
Although the works of 20th-century existential novels and plays borrow answers to some of the philosophical troubles discussed in Modernist Marlow’s narration in Joseph Conrad’s story Heart of Darkness, none came close to the level of the Scott story. Examples of plays and novels like Albert Camus, The Stranger and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot depict this empty isolation of the human condition (Sood et al. 228). Eventually, pleasure and understanding become replaced by unawareness and disregard. Marlow finds himself voyaging deeper along the course of corruption and making his moral certitude disappear, similar to how Meursault comes to face the indifference of life. Emotionally, it is as strong as the irrational core of the soul. All of these actions of the main character show the moral and the philosophy degradation with the hunger and animal lift.
Like Waiting for Godot, existential angst in Lord of the Flies has been delineated in the two tramp-like characters, which symbolize the meaninglessness of behaviour pattern clinging and faith when awaiting for escape from solitary uncertainty presented in colonialism under the “politeness” disguise, reflecting what has been confessed by Marlow (Abid 18). Such novels venture on penetrating further into the mythical undertones of the novella’s darkness inherent in the very depths of the individual’s self-perception into the ultimate isolation and abandonment. The renowned novella of Conrad was the start of what became the theme of all other existentialist literature. Since journeying to the interior of the human mind was widely examined in his story, it became a symbolic decoration for all subsequent literature narratives. The talismanic madness characterized by Kurtz and the raw truths discovered in his trips to the Congo dispels the European belief that human rationality was the cornerstone of victorious colonialist expansion. Such scepticism of human rationality as a primary value is reflected in the literature of the 20th century, which was characterized by the creation of the absurdists. Through the heart of darkness, this piercing through of the philosophical void undergoing civilization was a path-breaking way to open a dynasty of literature which enhances the extraordinary doubts about human supremacy. It came to carry even farther than its colonial birthplace.
Conclusion
Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is greatly impactful and spreads to and across many genres, periods and cultural backgrounds. The work has shown itself in masterpieces of literature and cinema, such as films that take Kurtz as a metaphor for the savagery that man carries inside when social constraints are lifted. Also, various racial and mental obstacles in the book have been analyzed differently. Among contemporary works, this story is a perfect example of existential questions of loneliness and wandering. This repeated stand, for the most part, confirms the unique value of the novella as the subject of research and reflection. This essay aims to elucidate, through textual quotes and analysis, that Conrad’s richly terminative novella, a Journey to Congo, resonates in many aspects of the major works of literature. Such intricate legacy, in the end, appears as much as a reflection of the changing circumstances and the different ideologies of those writers and the readership as any other thing about the actual book itself. The staying power of Heart of Darkness is the continuing discourse and revaluation of the works and ideas across diverse genres and perspectives.
Works Cited
Abid, Shazia. “The element of time in waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett.” Journal of World Englishes and Educational Practices 3.4 (2021): 16–22.
Hasan, Mariwan, and Diman Sharif. “William Golding’s Lord of the flies: A reconsideration.” NOBEL: Journal of Literature and Language Teaching 11.2 (2020): 125-136.
Mogea, Tini. “Character of Ralph as Seen in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.” Journal of Creative Student Research 1.2 (2023): 171–188.
Sood, Akshay, et al. “The precision prostatectomy: “waiting for Godot”.” European Urology Focus 6.2 (2020): 227–230.
Watts, Cedric. “Heart of darkness.” Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (2008): 19–35.
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