Joseph Conrad's Heart of darkness

Heart of Darkness: Discuss its value and relevance to a modern audience. Do these works have anything to teach us about modern life?

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness shows the ugly side of colonialism in the Congo. Africa is not shown as it 'really' is in Conrad's novel. Rather, Africa is seen through the exotic perspective of a European, Marlow, who believes that the protagonist Mr. Kurtz has been corrupted by African cultural influence. Conrad, through the use of irony and evocative description, demonstrates that Kurtz has perverted native African culture and made himself into a false god. Kurtz has been sleeping with local women as if it is his birthright and using fear to keep Africans under his sway. He is dying a physical and moral death, unable to sustain his European way of life in an environmentally hostile land.

While Heart of Darkness shows the European view of colonialism as detrimental to the moral fabric of Europeans, the fall-out from colonialism is felt by Africans far more deeply today. While Kurtz exits "the horror, the horror" through death, and his fiancee is protected from the truth of his true nature, Africans today must with the suffering of the economic and political destruction caused by colonialism. Africa suffers from both political instability and economic devastation that has been at least partially brought upon it by European imposition. Europe created nation-states based upon arbitrary combinations of tribes, and undid ancient methods of farming and tribal ways to create markets for European goods. Colonialism never created a sustainable economic system for the good of Africans. Culturally, the fusion of Christianity and European mores and Africa's tribes has created more discord than harmony.