Dark Prejudice in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness :: HOD Joseph Conrad Racism

Prejudice in Heart of Darkness Slavery has been with us since the Egyptian times and with it prejudice towards certain humans have also interject about. In Conrads Heart of Darkness these prejudice feelings are reflected throughout the story by the characters and their descriptions. The main character, Marlow shows more prejudice feelings towards the native black slaves by much of his descriptions and actions towards them. One of the most noticeable prejudice descriptions that Marlow gives to us is in the way in which Marlow describes the Themes River in two different positions. He first describes the river as be a place where many people seek to follow their dreams. In a way, his descriptions are like a great fantasy with great feelings of serenity and full of liveliness. This description of the river also contained many words of color this Marlow rarely uses to describe events. The description of the river going upstream was extremely different from the former d escription. Marlow describe it as this The air was warm, thick, heavy, and sluggish. There was no joy and brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of overshadowed distances (Conrad 216). Upriver was where all the natives lived and this is how it is described, quite the opposite of what he had thought before. Marlow feels extremely uncomfortable going to this area, he even says that it seems as if the large trees hanging over the river swallow the boat up as they expire up. These words give the impression that this area is very uncivilized and even animal like. Marlow constantly feels that something is watching him and he called this watching monkey tricks (Conrad 22). seemingly referring to the natives watching him. Yet another description that Marlow gives to us that is somewhat different is in the reactions of Kurtzs girlfriends to his departure and death. We first meet Kurtzs native girlfriend. Her descriptions wer e much of her savage appearances. Marlow refers besides much of her jewelry as barbarous ornaments and gifts of witch-men. This he does not know entirely only assumes so. When he describes her facial expressions, they arent very human like but more like an animal.