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摘要. iii
1 Introduction.. 1
2 Brief Introduction to Joseph Conrad’s Time and His Heart of Darkness . 3
2.1 The Historical Background of Society at Joseph Conrad’s Time.3
2.2 Colonialism and Imperialism Reflected in Heart of Darkness . 4
2.3 The Damage on African Natives from Colonial Activity.5
3 Human Nature Reflected in Heart of Darkness. 7
3.1 The Dark Side of Human Nature 7
3.2 The bright Side of Human Nature. 9
3.3 An Analysis on the Duality of Conrad from Heart of Darkness.10
4 The Changes of Human Nature of Kurtz..............12
4.1 Social Reasons: European Imperialism and Aggression..12
4.2 The Collision between Humanism and Colonialism..13
4.3 Inevitabilities for Changing Kurtz and Leading to His Corruption14
4.4 The Impact of Psychological Changes on Kurtz’s Life14
4.5 The Return of Kurtz’s Humanity..16
5 Conclusion... 17
Bibliography... 18
1 Introduction
Heart of Darkness is Joseph Conrad’s masterpiece in the 20th century. This book enjoys a high reputation for its profound significance and is generally regarded as a pre-eminent work of Conrad’s short fictions. It is a novelette which has distinct characteristics of modernism and deeply reveals the contradiction of human nature.
Conrad was born in Poland and his experience contributed a lot to his writing, especially on his exploration of humanity. He spent his childhood in an upper-class family. When he grew up, he fled to France and found a job as a sailor on the ship. At that time, he knew only six English words. However, he has become a world famous litterateur in English writing after twenty years. He had an abundant of sailing experience with a good talent at writing marine adventure novels and was called “the master of marine fictions” by people. He has begun his creations since 1889 which include Lord Jim (1900), The Secret Agent (1907) and his master work Heart of Darkness (1902). Conrad’s influence has spread widely ascribing to his understanding of humanity. He always advocates feminist, racial equality and have confirmed his centrality to modernism and to the general understanding of it.
Since the birth of human beings, people would be easily controlled by their desire under certain circumstances. According to Christianity, a man is evil-minded at first, man was born with sins. Greed is the instinct of human beings but it is sometimes covered by innocence and goodness. In real life, a person stands in front of others with virtuous mask. He behaves friendly and kindly, however, he is not a charitable person in a complete sense. This is the duality of human nature. The reasons why a person does good deeds are not only from the bright side of his human nature, but also that his kindness suppresses his wickedness. Just like Kurtz in Heart of Darkness, the environment, his personal experience and his transformation of humanity can explain the perniciousness released from human beings’ dark side of nature.
In Heart of Darkness, the author took the identity of Marlow to narrate what had happened. At the beginning of the story was our leading character Marlow who got to Africa with caravans by steamboat from Europe. He was appointed as a captain of a commercial company. There were some troubles when he got to there. His steam boat was broken for the reason that caravans wanted to take Kurtz away because of his illness. All he heard about was “first class”agent Kurtz who stayed away from civilized world, living in a barren land with the natives and was worshipped by them. So Marlow was determined to find him and found out what had happened there. Along the journey, he saw so many arduous living conditions and unfair scenes under the domination of European colonists. So many black people were chained and colonists compelled them to take the sweat. He thought they would keep doing their work until their death. Hence he had seen Kurtz’s violence and cruelty. Finally, Marlow met Kurtz after plenty of difficulties, he found Kurtz was dying. Before his death, he gave Marlow a pocket of documents, a piece of photo and shouted out,“horror，horror！”After all these things had ended up, Marlow came back and he didn’t tell anyone about the colonialism of Kurtz, perhaps he would keep this secret forever.