Joseph Conrad continuously portrays the theme about the evils and the consequences imperialism brings, either to its victims or even to the perpetrators in his novel The Heart Of Darkness. Marlow, the main character of the novel, shows the readers the truth about the real motives of the Europeans. The "lie" which was to civilize and educate the natives never did come about. Instead, the Europeans "grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got" and caused "an aggravated murder on a great scale". In pgs 83-84 and 91, the author shows the readers about the appalling effects imperialism has on both the natives and the colonists. .
Marlow strolls under the trees to get some rest and some shade on pgs 83-84 when he "stepped into the gloomy circle of some Inferno". Conrad metaphorically compares the atmosphere and scenery of that moment with hell when he sees a bunch of natives that were "dying slowly". Those black figures were portrayed as people whose souls had departed from them and their zeal and fire to live had been abated and burnt out. They were reduced to the state of inferior human beings and possibly, even animals when Conrad provides us with the imagery, "one of these creatures rose to his hands and knees and went off on all fours towards the river to drink". The detrimental effects of imperialism is clearly shown through these oppressed natives that were "scattered in every pose of contorted collapse, as in some picture of a massacre." They were stripped from their homes, their cultures, their hopes, and their lives.
These great pilgrims that once had a mission to help bring about civilizations in the primitive land of Africa underwent a revelation. Realizing the superiority of their own power and the weaknesses of the natives, they quickly seized power and enslaved the Africans. Power, corruption, and lust had replaced their sense of morality. The Europeans "wandered here and there with their absurd long staves in their hands".