Heart of Darkness Analysis Essay

The hoagyic journey. This is a familiar feature of many stories. From Odysseus of antiquated Greece to Harry Potter of popular culture, this archetype trunk a frequent feature of a myth. From gypsies sitting around campfires telling tales of magic and wonder, to ordinal century audiences crowding around their television screens, stories that we tell atomic number 18 to enlighten, instruct and enroltain. The structure of creating tales with archetypes composes an enthr eithering piece of work and a story by-line that keeps readers engaged and interested.These archetypal patterns are woven into Joseph Conrads story shopping center of Darkness. The novella encompasses the frames of the ancient myths and the heros myth along with the archetypes which soften the heros inner world. Symbolically, the Heros journey represents the rakehell into the unconscious. In nitty-gritty of Darkness, the hero is delineated in Marlow and his individualised unconscious is represented by th e jungle, or the forest the forest is traditionally bluish, kindred a labyrinth. The approximately developed stage of Marlows journey is to realize his Shadow.When he r apiecees the jungle, he recognizes it. In the story the fag end character is Kurtz. The new(prenominal) archetypes arent quite as well developed nevertheless, their meaning is precise important in the under(a)standing of the story. A hero is character that remains almost exactly the same throughout the ages as it has distinct qualities and characteristics that each adhere to. As Campbell distinguishs, the Hero must feel that something is missing in life (Campbell) and it should evoke his desire to leave the familiar space and enter the unkn possess.For Marlow, a spur to go on a quest was his, the holes, non cosmos on a voyage for long generous and desire to visit the place he had precious to go since puerility(Conrad Pg. 21). His desire to go to Congo was so sinewy that having failed by himself, Marlow asked his relatives to aid him take a path appointed for a job there as that ruling drove him. Marlow was eager to go to the jungle because there was a river which resembling an massive snake uncoiled had charmed him (Conrad Pg. 22), when he had looked upon a map.A strong impact of the idea on Marlows onscious reveals that it was ca employ by the hero which typically creates either outwards or inward necessity for changes. Being a wonderer he could do without traveling. Therefore, the longing for voyages implies that the hero got tired of the surround of the land and bespeaked an escape to the sea or a river. However, the need for a change in surroundings may be symbolically viewed as a need of a change in 1s mind. Campbell claims that the hero has to cross the threshold of consciousness and adds that the entrance is not free and is protected.The guardians mark the point of no return (Campbell). In Heart of Darkness the symbolic threshold is the Continental Concern Marlow wo rked for. Here Marlows first entering the company should be considered. He entered the building of the caller-out through an immense double gate ponderously ajar (Campbell Pg. 45). The door shares its meaning with the threshold. It is a transitional point from one place to an opposite, from insouciance to darkness. What concerns Marlow was that he was invited to affect from the conscious to the unconscious and discover the different realms.Nevertheless, the personal manner of his entrance was of great importance he, the hero slipped through one of these cracks (Campbell Pg. 47). The contradiction of the immense double door ponderously ajar and the crack suggests that the separate realm is entered through a narrow passage a hiding which creates the feeling of danger. Campbell claims that when the hero reaches his unconscious, another realm, he is overwhelmed with doubtful thoughts and sometimes despair.This is all considered to be a part of the process during the journey of t he hero and climax to a realization and understanding, as well as obtaining the elixir non only does Marlow feel uncomfortable, moreover the reader finds him doubtful, too. When he signed the contract, he began to feel slightly uneasy and there was something ominous in the halo (Campbell Pg. 49). Marlow tried to justify his eerie feeling and explained that in the following representation A queer feeling came to me that I was an impostor.Odd thing that I, who used to clear out for any part of the world at twenty-four hours notice, with less thought that most men give to the crossing of a street, had a moment I wont say of hesitation, but of startled pause, before this commonplace affair. The best way to explain it to you is by saying that, for a second or cardinal, I felt as though, instead of red ink to the center of a continent, I were about to lap off for the center of the earth. (Conrad Pg. 93) The truly position that Marlow felt as if going to the center of the earth sharpens its geographical double with the human psyche.The movement in the geographical space represents the movement in the heros unconscious. angiotensin-converting enzyme of the key elements in the Heros journey and self-acceptance is the realization of the hind end. However, the shadow may contain some positive features if a person under certain conditions boil downes his positive side and lives out the cast out. The shadow embodies the qualities the person dislikes in others and therefore represents the opposite side of the hero. In Heart of Darkness, the man of dark mystery is Kurtz.He is the Shadow figure of the hero Marlow. The first parallel between the hero and his shadow is that these deuce characters are the only two in the story who are given names. All the other are addressed by their profession, with the exception of the Russian. If the shadow is the opposite of the hero, Kurtz and Marlow respectively, it means that they twain have the positive and negative aspe cts of the character. On the assumption that the hero assumes his shadow as a remarkable person it may be say that the shadow possesses some good qualities.Consequently, Kurtz as the shadow encompasses both the negative and the positive. Kurtz, archetypally the heros Shadow, presented himself as a voice (Conrad Pg. 92) and all the other characters were so little more than voices (Conrad Pg. 92). The fact that the characters were no more than voices reveals their nonphysical nature. It may be faux that the unconscious communicated with the conscious self development voices and the strongest of them was the voice of the Shadow. Kurtz ability to talk was the main characteristics he was adored for by other people.Among all his talents Marlow distinguishes the gift to express himself The point was in his being a gifted creature, and that of all his gifts the one that stood out preeminently, that carried with it a intellect of real presence, was his ability to talk, his words the gi ft of expression, the bewildering, the illuminating, the most exalted and the most contemptible, the pulsating stream of light, or the deceitful flow from the heart of an impenetrable darkness. (Campbell Pg. 61) Although, Marlow is presented as a perfect story teller, it whoremaster be assumed that until he integrated his shadow he was an introvert.Marlow recalled that when he was going to the jungle he felt the idleness of a passenger, my isolation amongst all these men with whom I had no point of contact (Conrad Pg. 67). Due to his reserved nature, the heros shadow appeared as an eloquent person implying the quality the conscious needed. The outward look or the hero may help one to repress the shadows drives and impulses. The hero can be defined as an inner guiding factor that is different from the conscious personality and that can be grasped only through the investigation of ones own dreams (Conrad Pg. 8). However, the shadow may possess valuable, vital forces, they ought to be assimilated into actual experience and not repressed (Conrad Pg. 83). In such a case the hero must live out what initially seems to be dark, but authentically is not. In Heart of Darkness the archetype of the mentor is symbolically represented by the character of the Russian whom Marlow met at Kurtz station There he was before me, in motley, as though he had absconded from a caller of mimes, enthusiastic, fabulous. His very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and altogether bewildering.He was an insoluble problem. It was insufferable how he had existed, how he has succeeded in getting so far, how he managed to remain wherefore he did not instantly disappear. The glamour of youth enveloped his parti-colored rags, his destitution, his loneliness, the essential loneliness of his futile wanderings. Glamour urged him on, glamour kept him unscathed. He surely wanted nothing from wilderness but space to breathe in and to wedge on through. His need was to exist, and to move on wards at the greatest doable risk, and with a maximum of privation. (Conrad Pg. 72)The mentor is an archetype pointing to the wholeness of psyche. It is a state when an individual does not have any secret wishes. The Russians need to exist with a maximum of hardship shows that the mentor is not obsessed by the wishes, opposed to the shadow who is greedy. The mentor urges the hero to move forward and often suggests the ways how the hero should act in target to overcome the obstacles. In the story, it was the Russian who had helped Marlow to face Kurtz. other archetype of which is idealistic in the novella is that of a woman, the temptress and destroyer of man.In Conrads story, the archetype of the temptress is a complex one, since it is represented by the two distinctive women characters and is not directly connected with the hero, but is rather viewed in relation to the shadow embodied in the figure of Kurtz. One is the indigene woman whom Kurtz met in the jungle and another is her opposition his fiancee in Europe whom Kurtz called My Intended (Conrad). Nevertheless, the two women have an indirect impact on Marlow, since to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a burden but outside(Campbell Pg. . Thus, it may be assumed that, according to the archetypal pattern of the Heros journey, Marlow happens to recognize the possible variations of the two-fold temptress. After confronting Kurtz in the jungle and persuading him not to join the aboriginals in their rites, Marlow brought him on the deck of the steamboat and saying the native woman who was Kurtz mistress She walked with measured steps, draped in mark and fringed cloths, treading the earth proudly, with a slight jingle and flash of venomous ornaments.She carried her head high her hair was done in the shape of a helmet she had brass leggings to the knee, brass wire gauntlets to the elbow, a crimson spot on her tawny cheek, innumerable necklaces of glass beads on her neck funny things, charms, gifts of witch-men, that hung about her, glittered and trembled at every step. She must have had the value of vii elephant tusks upon her. She was wildcat and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress. (Conrad Pg. 102) The description shows the native woman as fascinating and abominable.Marlow appoint her superb and magnificent, self-assured by her femininity as she walked proudly and with measured steps. But at the same time she was savage, wild-eyed and ominous. Since the savage woman is related to Kurtz and represents the wilderness where he resided, it should be noted that Kurtz both desired and hated all this and someway couldnt get away (Conrad Pg. 99). Marlow described the state of Kurtz as the trance of abomination you know, imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate (Conrad Pg. . The blackamoor woman embodies the negative temptress.The temptress kept Kurtz by her charms, however, he strived to get back to his fiancee. He was tempted by the wilderness which was embodied by the native woman. She had taken him, loved him, embraced him, got into his veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his soul to its own by the inconceivable ceremonies of some devilish initiation (Conrad Pg. 102). Marlow wasnt lured into temptation since he acknowledge the danger of temptation with its devastating effects through his contemplation on Kurtz life.Her appearance suggests an element of a female warrior ready to fight for the possession of Kurtz. When seeing her, the Russian said that if she had offered to come aboard I in reality think I would have tried to shoot her (Conrad Pg. 89). Since the figure of the Russian represents the very determination of the mentor, and tries to not allow the temptress to approach the hero, it suggests that the temptress was eager to draw the Shadow, manifested in Kurtz, back to the jungle.Therefore, it may be a ssumed that she tried to prevent the integration of the shadow, but failed as Kurtz had stayed on the steamboat and leave for Europe. The temptress, try as she may, was unable to keep Kurtz in the jungle with her. Another representation of the temptress is shown through the figure of Kurtz fiancee. Marlow describes her in the following way She struck me as fine I mean she had a beautiful expression. She seemed ready to listen without mental reservation, without suspicion, without a thought for herself.She came forward, all in black, with a pale head, floating towards me in the dusk. I noticed she was not very young I mean not girlish. She had a progress capacity for fidelity, for belief, for suffering. This fair hair, this pale visage, this pure brow, seemed surrounded by an ash-grey halo from which the dark eyes looked out at me. Their glance was guileless, profound, confident, and trustful. She carried her wailing head as though she were proud of her sorrow. (Conrad Pg. 12) As the passage shows, for Kurtz, his fiancee represents an ideal woman in every way possible.She represents the capacity for personal love in mans psyche. She claimed that it was impossible to know him Kurtz and not to admire him (Conrad Pg. 116). Moreover, when Marlow kept hesitating to tell her the last words of Kurtz since they were very heavy ones The Horror The Horror she cried dont you understand I loved him I loved him I loved him (ibid, 204). In her case, the fact that she repeated it three times suggests the spiritual nature of her love.