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Acknowledgements I am greatly indebted to my thesis supervisor, Ms. Deng. Without her patient assistance and friendly encouragement, it would not be possible for me to complete this thesis in such a short period of time without reducing its scholarly quality. Her willingness to give me her time so generously has been much appreciated. Truly, without her painstaking efforts in revising and polishing my drafts, the completion of the present thesis would not have been possible.35471
- 上一篇：从生态批评理论角度分析小说《白鲸》
- 下一篇：《最蓝的眼睛》黑人女性的悲剧
My sincere thanks should also go to all my teachers for their scholarly advice and generous help during my study in Foreign Language School of Shanghai Institute of Technology. Any progress that I have made is the result of their profound concern and selfless devotion. Among them the following requires mentioning: Professor Cheng, and Professor Huai.
Abstract
Heart of darkness is one of Joseph Conrad’s most typical and well-known novels to use narrative to dig out the author’s understanding of human nature. The novel takes the character Kurtz as a model in order to show the devastation caused by colonialism in humanity. In terms of human nature, there are a lot of controversies and arguments all the time. Humanity includes a man’s temperament, and it is influenced by genetic factors, environmental factors, educational factors and so on. Everyone has his own positive side and negative side in his/her human nature, so humanity is contradictory but not conflicting. It is hard to define what it exactly is and what it will become. Heart of Darkness is a mixture of adventure stories, black humor, colonial irony and a reflection of humanity. By describing what Marlow, the narrator, has seen and heard, the novel discovers the darkness in the Africa continent at Joseph Conrad’s time.
The thesis introduces the colonialism and imperialism background under which Joseph Conrad is influenced. It analyzes in detail the dark side and the bright side of human nature revealed in Heart of Darkness. Based on social factors, psychological factors, the persity of human nature and the author’s duality during that period, the thesis presents Kurtz’s contradictory of his human nature and the changes of his human nature between goodness and evil, highlighting the author’s intention of writing the novel. It criticizes colonialism and imperialism which lead to the degeneration of human nature and summarizes Kurtz’s failure as well as what it should be taken as an alarm for the readers.
Key Words: human nature, colonialism, contradictory
摘要 《黑暗的心》是约瑟夫•康拉德最出名且具有代表性的著作之一。作者用叙述手法挖掘出了他对人性的理解并且以库尔兹为原型来表现殖民主义对人性的摧残与毁坏。对于人性的本质，人们对此一直争论不休。人性代表一个人的性情，它包含了人与生俱来的正面的性格，它被基因因素，环境因素，教育因素等等所影响。每个人都有他自己的正面与阴暗面，人性所以是矛盾但又不冲突的。没人能够准确定义它到底是什么并且会变成什么样子。这部小说集结了冒险情节，黑色幽默，殖民反讽与人性的体现。小说通过描述叙述者马洛的所见所闻来探索非洲大陆的黑暗。
论文介绍了约瑟夫•康拉德所处的殖民主义与帝国主义时代背景，详细分析了《黑暗的心》中人性所展现的善的一面与恶的一面。根据当时的社会因素，心理因素，人性多样性与作者受时代影响而固有的双重性，论文着重展现与剖析了小说中重要人物库尔兹人性的矛盾面及其在善与恶之间的转变, 凸显作者的写作意图，批判殖民主义及帝国主义对于人性的摧残。论文最后总结了库尔兹的失败与其对于读者的警示。
毕业论文关键词：人性，殖民主义，矛盾
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements.. i
Abstract. ii