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Heart of Darkness 9134 Views


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Everyone has that happy-go-lucky friend. The one who skips through life with a smile and believes everybody has a beautiful soul. We're guessing that person has never read Heart of Darkness .

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:05

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

00:11

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

00:14

With all the body parts in the jungle…

00:15

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

00:22

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

00:27

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

00:32

Pac-Man eats power pellets.

00:35

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

00:44

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

00:49

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

00:54

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

01:03

and plumbing…

01:06

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

01:11

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

01:16

so-called savages…

01:17

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

01:28

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

01:32

you might have a considerably different view on the subject…

01:35

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

01:41

in its brutal treatment of native populations.

01:46

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

01:52

hard labor, and don’t even feed them.

01:55

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

02:05

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

02:10

trying to decide between Alien vs. Predator.

02:13

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

02:17

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

02:22

the jungle…

02:24

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

02:33

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

02:39

with Kurtz.

02:40

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

02:46

that darkness…

02:47

We start using body parts as interior decoration.

02:51

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

02:57

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

03:01

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

03:05

It might lie in the hearts of the uncivilized savages…

03:08

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

03:11

Or maybe the darkness is in all of us.

03:13

Or Joseph Conrad just thought it was a killer title.

03:17

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

03:21

novel. Shmoop amongst yourselves.

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