Grim Realities

In the book, Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Joseph Marlow a traveller journeys to the heart of African Subcontinent and is met with ominous encounters.

On board the Nellie a cruising yawl on The Thames river, whose sea reach stretched before like an interminable waterway and by nightfall a change cames over it; serenity, the serenity that became less brilliant but more profound.[1]

The idea of travelling to Congo had arisen from his passion for maps; as a little boy he got hold of a map which displayed the snake like Congo River that intrigued him and had become a place of darkness. He finds a job as a company official who deals with mining and ivory trade. After 30 days of travelling he reaches an opening with a jetty projected into the river; a decaying dusty earth. On a rocky cliff were mounds of turned up earth the houses were on a hill with iron roofs, among a waste of excavation. The noise of the rapids hovered over this scene of inhabited devastation. A lot of black naked people worked tirelessly and the author brings a similarity of their movement to that of ants. There were trees at the periphery providing a sort of shade. The company station was a three wooded barrack-like structure on the rocky slope.

There was decaying machinery all around like, an undersized railway truck with its wheels in the air and the author compares it to the carcass of an animal. They were building a railway and the objectless blasting was all the work going on. There were holes and pits dug here and there, some of which were filled with imported drainage-pipes for the settlement.

The black men, called criminals wore iron collars and were all connected together with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking. Black rags were wound around their loins, and the short ends wagged to and fro like tails. They were thin and frail and the joints in their ribs were like knots in a rope.

The scene described above was one of the stations were Marlow stayed for 10dyas before he embarked on a 200 mile journey.

Delineating the atrocious sufferings of the natives under the insensitive company officials, this compilation is a peep into grim realities of imperialism and the dark interiors of human psyche.[2]

(395 words)





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[1] ‘Heart of Darkness’ by Joseph Conrard, page 10, publisher Rupa & Co

[2] ‘Heart of Darkness’ by Joseph Conrard