The Light, The Dark, The Dialectic

The Hegelian dialectic consists of three stages of development: a thesis, giving rise to its reaction, an antithesis, which contradicts or negates the thesis, and the tension between the two being resolved by means of a synthesis. It asserts that reality beyond one's perception is interconnected, contradictory, and dynamic. It also refers to a method for presenting of ideas and conclusions. I think this is fundamental to understanding the structure of The Heart of Darkness. I just don’t know exactly how.

In the Heart of Darkness, Conrad creates numerous literary parallels; the light and the dark, land and water, Rome and England, Europe and Africa, whites and blacks, jungles and forests. These are more than literary parallels; these are dualities in what appears to be a dualistic world. The reader attempts to define and sort these dualities and in doing so reveals endless connections and contradictions. Conrad creates a surface reality that invites this exploration in the same way that the jungle or the wilderness invites exploration. The results may be similar as well.

Beyond the dualistic surface reality, true reality is interconnected, contradictory and dynamic. It is dialectical. The development of civilizations, nations, or a people is dialectical. It moves from dark, to light, and then on to darkness again. It’s unclear whether this motion is a spiral or a vortex, whether it moves up or down, whether it ends in darkness or spawns another instance of The Light. On the surface, Conrad seems to say that it all ends in The Dark, but maybe that’s only on the surface.

Early civilizations are dark. England before the Romans was dark. Marlow describes it as “cold, fog, tempests, disease, exile, and death – death skulking in the air, in the water, in the bush,” nothing more than “sandbanks, marshes, and savages. To the civilized Romans, England is incomprehensible and detestable. In the same way, Africa is dark to the civilized European. Conrad describes the journey up the Congo as “travelling in the night of first ages….” The atmosphere of the jungle is an implacable, brooding force with a vengeful aspect.

Rome and England are essentially the same. Notice Marlow says “Mind, none of us would feel exactly like this,” when speaking of the Romans. Not “exactly like this” but close. The Romans and later the English are the antithesis of The Dark. On the surface both represent The Light. I think Marlow is being ironic in his description of the Romans. He says, “They were no colonists, their administration was merely a squeeze, nothing more… they grabbed what they could get for the sake of what could be got.” This considerably understates the influence of the Roman Empire on the English. As a result of the Roman conquest civilization spread across Europe. Light came out of the Thames. England became civilized. It built a tradition based upon Roman law.

I also think Marlow is being facetious when he claims that, unlike the Romans, Europeans are justified in exploiting Africa because they have a motive higher than just making a profit. They have an Idea. I think the Romans had a number of Ideas that they spread through Europe: engineering, architecture, art, literature, government, etc. The Europeans have Efficiency. In the political and business circles of industrial age Britain the prevailing Idea was Efficiency, efficiency in government, manufacturing, and commerce. Spreading efficiency was a religion for those who participated in the exploitation of an entire continent. It was unselfish and something they could “set up and bow down to and offer sacrifice to….” Even if it was hypocritical.

The Synthesis is represented by Marlow, drifting with his colleagues on a yacht in the Thames. He combines the characteristic of the savage and the civilized. Only Marlow, and Kurtz, recognize that civilized men are, at heart, the same as savages, cannibals in their own right. They become fascinated by the conquered, fascinated by “the mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungle, in the hearts of wild men.”

Or something like that. Maybe Chaos Theory would be a better explanation.