Heart of Darkness Theme of Madness

The question of how and why one goes mad in the interior pervades the novel. Conrad suggests that the white man’s fear of Africa’s unexplored heart, her ‘savage’ people, and the crew’s greedy internal power struggle thrust Marlow (and before him, Kurtz) towards madness. When one becomes so far removed from society’s mores and restrictions, good and evil become relative terms. When these moral boundaries begin fading, Conrad suggests, man loses the sense of where he stands in the great moral struggle. Having lost this foundation, it is a short step to losing one’s mind.

1. How does Conrad define madness? How is Kurtz the ultimate embodiment of madness?
2. What symptoms accompany the onset of madness in Heart of Darkness? What human faculties begin to break down? Describe Marlow’s slow succumbing to madness. You could also argue that he doesn’t succumb to madness – whatever floats your boat.
3. Is madness caused by the trip up the Congo River and into the interior? Or is it something that is born into man, regardless of his environment? In other words, is madness caused by inherent nature or environment and experience?
4. Can the harlequin be seen as a bridge between madness and sanity? How do his words make sense yet seem like folly to Marlow? How does Marlow relate to the harlequin? What does this say about Marlow’s state of sanity?

Isolation and life in the wilderness is the sole cause of Kurtz’s madness; in other words, there is something inherently madness-inducing about the African interior.

One of Conrad’s main messages is that madness is not caused specifically by living in the wilderness, but that the seeds of madness – ambition, obsession, and greed – are already extant in a man before he journeys into the interior.