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Heart of Darkness, a la Shmoop. Heart of Darkness is so chock full of gore

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and allegory, it’s hard to tell the two apart.

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With all the body parts in the jungle…

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…you’d think there’d be an actual heart somewhere. A heart… of darkness.

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But there isn’t. So what exactly is the heart of darkness?

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Say you're an imperialist – someone whose country gobbles up smaller countries like

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Pac-Man eats power pellets.

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To you, the heart of darkness is the evil that lies in the depths of the jungle of Africa…

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Somewhere in the vicinity of all the crocodiles and malaria-ridden mosquitos. 

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The darkness isn’t just the carnivorous beasties, bugs the size of your head, tropical

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diseases, boiling heat, unclean water, lack of modern conveniences, lack of electricity

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and plumbing…

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We could go on and on, but we’re feeling a little sick ourselves.

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What really freaks the imperialists out besides this untamed and hostile wilderness are the

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so-called savages…

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…who have never seen the warm, electric lights of civilization. Or pants, for that

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matter. Now if you're one of the colonized instead,

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you might have a considerably different view on the subject…

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Namely that the heart of darkness represents the evils of imperialism…which creates darkness

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in its brutal treatment of native populations.

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These so-called civilized white folk chain together slaves, force them to do all the

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hard labor, and don’t even feed them.

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Just because they know how to operate a flush toilet doesn’t make them civilized.

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So maybe the argument of who’s the evilest link…the colonizers or colonized… is like

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trying to decide between Alien vs. Predator.

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That’s a battle that none of us want to get stuck fighting.

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Look, we're all capable of evil… whether we're native Africans, living isolated in

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the jungle…

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…civilized white folks drinking high tea while owning slaves, or carnivorous intergalactic

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species. That's why the novel has such an obsession

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with Kurtz.

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Not because he’s an alien, but because he represents what happens when we give into

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that darkness…

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We start using body parts as interior decoration.

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The colonel shows us that the darkness is inside of everyone.

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We hate to break it to you, but there are no good guys.

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So what does all this evil stuff have to do with a heart of darkness?

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It might lie in the hearts of the uncivilized savages…

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Or in the hearts of the so-called civilized imperialists…

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Or maybe the darkness is in all of us.

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Or Joseph Conrad just thought it was a killer title.

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Really Scary Jungle Boat Ride sounds more like an amusement park attraction than a classic

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novel. Shmoop amongst yourselves.

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