Jennifer+Yang's+HOD+4+settings+and+Themes


 * 1) Waiting-room: : “Deal table in the middle, plain chairs all round the walls, on one end a large shining map, marked with all the colours of a rainbow. There was a vast amount of red -- good to see at any time, because one knows that some real work is done in there, a deuce of a lot of blue, a little green, smears of orange, and, on the East Coast, a purple patch, to show where the jolly pioneers of progress drink the jolly lager-beer. However, I wasn't going into any of these. I was going into the yellow. Dead in the centre. And the river was there -- fascinating -- deadly -- like a snake.” (74)
 * 2) Coast: “The edge of a colossal jungle, so dark-green as to be almost black, fringed with white surf, ran straight, like a ruled line, far, far away along a blue sea whose glitter was blurred by a creeping mist. The sun was fierce, the land seemed to glisten and drip with steam.” (78)
 * 3) Company’s Station: “ A rocky cliff appeared, mounds of turned-up earth by the shore, houses on a hill, others with iron roofs, amongst a waste of excavations, or hanging to the declivity. A continuous noise of the rapids above hovered over this scene of inhabited devastation. A lot of people, mostly black and naked, moved about like ants. A jetty projected into the river. A blinding sunlight drowned all this at times in a sudden recrudescence of glare.” (80-81)
 * 4) Shade: “Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees leaning against the trunks, clinging to the earth, half coming out, half effaced within the dim light, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair. Another mine on the cliff went off, followed by a slight shudder of the soil under my feet. The work was going on. The work! And this was the place where some of the helpers had withdrawn to die.” (83)

Heart of Darkness shows the superiority of whites over blacks in a context where the blacks are considered to be savages and whites are supposed to be civilized. In the novel, the blacks are described at one point as helpers but, they are treated more like slaves. The white men are corrupt and greedy in the Congo, as Marlow states when he is first entering the Congo. "I've seen the devil of violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire; but, by all the stars! These were strong, lusty, red-eyed devils that swayed and drove men-men, I tell you. But as I stood on this hillside, I foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of that land I would become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly." (Conrad 82) The whites enter the jungle thinking it must be tamed and that its savage, dark natives must become civilized. The white man’s uneasy and disconcerted relations with the barbarism of Africa only make situations worse for the natives. The natives have a relationship with nature where things are still pure and innocent, where they are not exposed to the corruption of the civilized world. The white men conform some natives to live by rules and these natives help to enslave the others. This creates unhappiness and degradation of the blacks where they tend to retreat to the forest to die; "Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees leaning against the trunks, clinging to the earth, half coming out, half effaced within the dim light, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair...And this was the place where some of the helpers had withdrawn to die."(83) Not only does this show the blacks’ subordination to imperialism but also their powerless position in the novel.

In addition, in order to highlight the discrimination between blacks and whites, Conrad deliberately portrays the blacks in Heart of Darkness with no personal traits or uniqueness; there is no humanity in black characters. Their appearance is never really described the only thing Marlow says about them is that they are black, no details, "Black shapes...black bones...black neck,". But the whites in the novel are described in more detail such as the way Marlow describes the manager, Kurtz, and the girl. "I met a white man, in such an unexpected elegance of get-up that in the first moment I took him for a sort of vision. I saw high starched collar, white cuffs, a light alpaca jacket, snowy trousers, a clean necktie, and varnished bots. No hat. Hair parted, brushed, oiled, under a green-lined parasol held in a big white hand." (83) Such depiction in the novel further delineates the imperialistic idea that considered the blacks to be savages and whites to be civilized.