In Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness, the evil qualities of a man are introduced and discerned as direct effects of imperialism. The character of Marlow in the Heart of Darkness advances the theme of the hypocrisy of imperialism in the scene when Marlow arrives to the Company's outer station at the mouth of the Congo river. Through Marlow's eyes the reader penetrates into the darkness within the characters and themselves. The change and shift of Marlow's perspective show the contrast between his first view that justified imperialism, and final that discovers the ultimate evil truth about imperialism. .
Marlow is a very uncertain and suspicious character about the African environment and everything around him. All of the horror around him constantly tests his mental strength. Marlow is a sympathetic man, especially towards the native's situation, and this quality is the key to his sufferings. His breakthrough into the effects of the imperialism leave him infected with the evil he faced.
In the scene where Marlow arrives to the station where he meets the Company's chief accountant, he foreshadows of what he will see and learn further in his trip and also of what imperialism delivers and what it is build on, "But as I stood on this hillside, I foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of that land I would become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of rapacious and pitiless folly".(13) In this scene Marlow comes face to face with the harsh truth of human torture and egoism the Company and Imperialism create in order to get the desired product, the ivory. "Everything else in the station was in a muddle-heads, things, buildings. Strings of dusty niggers with splay feet arrived and departed; a stream of manufactured goods, rubbishy cottons, beads, and brass wire set into the depths of darkness, and in return came a precious trickle of ivory".(15).
In this scene we clearly see the hypocrisy of the imperialism through Marlow's eyes.
