Pat O'Hara
Ms. Duneman
AP English 3
9 December 2004
Response to Heart of Darkness Essay Question #1

	In Heart of Darkness, the character Marlow uses the imagery of terrain-- mostly rivers-- as a device to convey the deeper meaning of his philosophical rants. Marlow himself is an avatar for Conrad, whose experiences, detailed in Marlow's monologue, are parallels of Joseph Conrad's.
	The criticism of colonialism, using terrain as a metaphor, is first realized when Marlow states that the River Thames was used by the Romans to conquer the isle of Britain, when he says, “And this also has been one of the dark places of the Earth”. Such a statement leads us to understand that colonialism is not a purely western-European endeavor; it is practiced at one time or another by all cultures, and is consequently experienced at some point in time by any given culture.
	The Congo river is a metaphor for slow progress, its appearance lending itself to interpretation as ugliness or evilness. This, perhaps, is meant for us to realize that colonialism, the will to dominate, is the vehicle by which great (even if terrible) things are accomplished. The conquest of Africa, her primitive beauty conquered, was only made possible because of the imperialistic and economic drive behind the ivory and rubber trade.
	“The river was there—fascinating—deadly—like a snake.” Replace the word 'river' with 'human soul' and the above quoted sentence gives you the entire theme of the book: the human soul, in its entirety, and especially with its darker aspects, is an inescapable curiosity, one that we must deal with, and one that is inevitably fascinating. To take a stab at an analysis of the human soul is to be lead ”into the heart of an immense darkness."
	The jungle also has a place when it comes to the geographic metaphors used in Heart of Darkness. The trees oppress; Kurtz feels their watchfulness upon his deathbed; he asks Marlow to close the shutters, so that he does not have to feel the “curtain of trees” around him.
	To Marlow, the trees are an allegory to the closing of the way behind him when he is captaining his steamer up the Congo. This seems to represent a loss of some form of naivety; after having seen what he had in the Interior, Marlow is incapable of ignoring such a harrowing experience.