Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, is a novel about two men of different personalities and viewpoints about life, Marlow and Kurtz. Marlow is a polite man who is always observing and judging. Kurtz is an ivory poacher in Africa. He is a poet-genius and a murderer who allows himself to be deified by the natives and rules his station through charisma, coercion and fear. Both, Marlow and Kurtz have a heart if darkness. Throughout the novel, the darkness is a metaphor for evil, hatred, and fear as well as wild, elemental power. Conrad uses metaphors, syntax, connotations, and tone to bring about the dominant impression, which is that all men have a heart of darkness. The only difference among the darkness of men is that some are able to overcome it where as others are not. .
Marlow finds darkness inside him; however, he is able to overcome it. Marlow finds his darkness within him when he realizes that Africans do not need to be civilized. They already are. Marlow says, "We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there "there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were "no, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of I "this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one."" (62) The author uses long sentences with pauses in them. The breaks in the sentences allow the reader to focus in on the point that Africans are not inhuman and that Marlow realizes this in an ongoing process. The connotation of "shackled form of a conquered monster- shows what Marlow thought of the Africans. He dehumanizes the natives. A monster is something that people hate, and to keep them shackled is like imprisoning a wild and dangerous animal. The natives are not dangerous, "Fine fellows-cannibals-in their place. They were men one could work with, and I am grateful to them. And, after all, they did not eat each other before my face: they brought along a provision of hippo meat.