Discovery of Selfhood in Joseph Conrad’s Novels

Pages:97-98
Sheela Malik and Narender Kumar (CMJ University, Shillong, Meghalaya and Pt. N. R. S.Govt College, Rohtak)

Canrad has projected the phenomenon of psychic decomposition in the presentation of his vision in Heart of Darkness. Conrad’s life and works are inseparable. Conrad’s “powerful personality” was “a personality at once simple and complex.” Heart of Darkness is a novel which clearly show the influence of psychology and psychiatry which were emerging as full fledged sciences at the time when this novel was written. Heart of Darkness embodies Marlow’s existential consciousness in searching for Kurtz. Its characterization of Kurtz and Marrow’s it reaches a philosophical level which reveals a truth about human existence like many of his heroes, he was lonely and was seeking independence. Henry James Marlow, is the narrator reminiscing about his adventures in the Congo as a boat captain, he also remember the terrible treatment of the native people by self-seeking company agent, Mr. Kurtz. The primitive culture of central Africa offers Kurtz a kind of release from the moral restraints of the civilized world as a result he has followed his own “ego-ideal” to realize himself. Douglas Brown observes in him a kind of “maniacal assertion of the self against traditional morality integrity in human dealing and low”1 Kurtz like Camus’s Clamence in The Fall claims that every things belong to him Marlow describes the attitude of Kurtz “my ivory, oh yes I heard him, my intended my ivory, my station, my rivers, my everything belonged to him.