Heart of Darkness Hypocrisy

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, is a shortened novel in which the author’s goal is to show the wickedness of man’s heart. The story follows a group of five men as they plan to seek out ivory in the heart of Africa.

Heart of Darkness contains many religious allusions that work together in order to bring an emphasis on the purpose of the story, to show man’s sinful heart. As the story begins, we are introduced to the protagonist Marlow and his upcoming journey in search for ivory in the heart of Africa. The author shows clear illustration of hypocrisy behind the elegant exteriors. A clear example of this would be the way that Marlow and his crew are described as pilgrims.

As the reader continues on in the story, they are able to recognize the irony in calling them pilgrims. Pilgrims are recognized as having the quality of purity. However, Marlow’s crew who is carrying out this expedition is easily seen as wicked in not only their actions, but also their thoughts and motivations. A brief example of this can be seen as they were navigating through the Congo. The crew was attacked and they had been proud that they potentially killed another person. This shows the irony in referring to them as pilgrims, because the crew is anything but pure. Also, pilgrims are known for missionizing to foreign groups in for the purpose of converting them on their travels, but instead the crew is seen as exploiting the natives for their goods.

Another example of irony that the reader will recognize would be when when the corrupt company travels through a station that Marlow had stopped at, “It came in sections...headed by a donkey carrying a white man in new clothes and tan shoes, bowing from that elevation right and left to the impressed pilgrims” (Conrad 45). The picture that Conrad paints of a superior and mighty body entering into the station, leaving the people in awe, leads the reader to recognize this scene’s parallel to Jesus’ return to Jerusalem on a donkey after His fasting in the desert. However, the irony is seen as Conrad continues to describe the company in a way that allows one to understand the corruption and wickedness that is carefully concealed behind the claimed Jesus-like intentions that the company had established.

“A quarrelsome band of footsore sulky n----rs trod on the heels of the donkey...this devoted band called itself the Eldorado Exploring Expedition...to tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe”. This shows the true intentions of the corrupted company, hidden behind the fake motives that they had set up for themselves. Along with the religious ideas throughout the story, there are also various religious references that allow the author to further demonstrate his view on human nature. When Marlow enters Belgium, he is able to see a connection between both white colonists and white sepulchers, 'In a very few hours I arrived in a city that always makes me think of a whited sepulcher'.

Initially, this gives off the sense that there are corrupt morals behind the Congo operation, but as the story develops, one is able to see that it doesn’t only apply to the crew’s expedition, but to all humans who think that they are more important than others. This reference is a direct allusion to the bible in Matthew 23:27-28, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you are like to white sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.” A whited sepulcher can be defined as a whitewashed tomb, but because of the contrast between the pure exterior and the rotting corpse it contains, it becomes a symbol of hypocrisy.

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