Faust Imagery in Heart of Darkness

By Uthayla Abdullah

And

Julie O’Meara

“This is hell, nor am I out of it.”

In Conrad’s jungle, demonic imagery is used continually, showing the effects of the savage chaos of nature on the normally orderly man.

a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you—you so remote from the night of first ages—could comprehend. And why not?

“… but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise,

The mind of man is capable of anything—because everything is in it.”

p. 38.

Evidence of the effects of the jungle on “the men”

• Conrad uses demonic terms in reference to the men:– The manager has a “forked little beard,” and is referred to as

a “paper-mache Mephistopheles” whose only positive point is his ability to maintain order in his lifestyle while in the jungle.

– Of Kurtz, Marlow says, “He had taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land—I mean literally.”

– “But his [Kurtz’] soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself and… it had gone mad. I [Marlow] had, for my sins, I suppose, to go through the ordeal of looking into it myself.”

pp’s 29, 49, 65.

Key CharacteristicsKurtz• “universal genius” –

source of culture, intelligence in jungle

• “lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts…” p. 57

• Goal: bring “the torch” of virtue, make name for self

• Outcome: made himself “God” to natives, participated in savage customs (cannibalism)

Faustus• Renaissance man –

already done it all… seeks new excitement

• “The God thy serv’st is thine own appetite.” p. 19

• Goal: money, power…• Outcome: easily

distracted from goals, magic used for parlor tricks and jokes, damned to hell

“I take it no fool ever made a bargain for his soul with the devil. The fool is too much a fool or the devil too much of a devil—I don’t know which. Or you may be such a thunderingly exalted creature as to be altogether deaf and blind to anything but heavenly sights and sounds. Then the earth for you is only a standing place… But most of us are neither one nor the other.

• Marlow makes clear references to the playwright for which he is named.

• Makes Kurtz out to be a superior being, too “exalted” to be on earth too long.

• “heavenly sights and sounds” juxtaposed to demonic imagery

http://www.visi.com/%7Emarkg/atheists.html http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/heart/

http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~csicseri/theme06.htm

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Dr. Faustus by Cristopher Marlowe