When evaluating Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, two significant themes of modernism characterize it as a true modernist text. Race and the binary of savagery within colonialism is a dominant theme throughout the novella. Conrad crafts a narrative that exposes the early 19th-century mindset of savagery and its connection to racial assumptions within the context of contemporary colonialism and imperialism. Conrad also explores the psychology of humanity through Freud’s lens of the id, super-ego, and ego. He presents the possibility that Kurtz represents the purest form of the id, and that society--or lack thereof--directly influences our reactionary instincts.

Conrad exhibits the Freudian concepts of the id, super-ego, and ego throughout the story, suggesting that the novella is a psychoanalytic piece on the human psyche. The three aspects of the human psyche can be explained as follows: “...the id is the primitive and instinctual part of the mind that contains sexual and aggressive drives and hidden memories, the super-ego operates as a moral conscience, and the ego is the realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id and the super-ego.” Within these definitions, Heart of Darkness shows the human psyche when left to its own devices. The result is the pure form of the id, with sex, aggression, and selfishness the center of focus--in a sense, the character of Kurtz.

Conrad also explores the racial influence of European power movements during the early 1900s. Developed from Darwin’s theories of evolution, the determination of racial differences is a result of the naturalistic movements preceding colonialistic and imperialistic movements. Under the assumption that humans fell into social classes, social orders, and races based on biological factors--rooted in social Darwinism--many European cultures began taking on the belief that racial differences were results of evolution. Therefore, as they assumed evolution fueled the racial contrast, they believed it fit for civilizations and civility to be tied race. As European powers began conquering what they considered uncivilized territories, their assumptions as being part of superior civilizations and societies led to projections of savagery on any peoples whose color of skin and culture did not match their own.

Continuous debates about Conrad’s individual perspectives on race are numerous but are the least of concern when considering Marlow and his own perceptions of race. While Conrad had similar life experiences of exploration as his character, the importance of Marlow’s character struggling with race, racial perceptions, and savagery has more precedence than Conrad’s personal opinions. Marlow undergoes personal transformations on his perspective of the “savage” Africans. His society determines that he should automatically assume any projections of savagery onto the colonized, but his interactions with the people show his internal struggle with this societal pressure.

One of the most impactful and early descriptions of the native Africans is when Marlow views them hiding in the trees (pg 17-18): “They were dying slowly--it was very clear. They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now, nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation lying confusedly in the greenish gloom” (pg 17). Marlow is aware that he should view them as his enemy, but he is instead filled with sympathy and pity for their pure despair. He describes them as “black bones” and “sunken eyes.” He is acutely aware of the unnatural aspects of their state, leaving the underlying question of why are they dying unanswered for him. While aware of their despair, he seems to be grappling with the question of whether or not they are in this state because they have no humanity or if the humanity of Europe’s colonizations lowered them to this point. However, through our ironic distance as readers, we definitively understand colonialism is the cause.

Marlow’s experience with these dying Africans is in direct contrast to his experience with his helmsman dying, another moment where he seems to wrestle with the African’s humanity. His helmsman’s death causes Marlow to reevaluate the savagery of the natives, but through a jaded lens still heavily influenced by his European ideologies of racial differences (pg 50-51). He explains, “It was a kind of partnership….And the intimate profundity of that look he gave me when he received his hurt remains to this day in my memory--like a claim of distant kinship affirmed in a supreme moment” (pg 51). Marlow is grappling with the fact that he can find a kinship of humanity with an African, one that he even describes with animalistic qualities before. The dichotomy of Marlow’s ideologies versus his compassion conflict time and time again, but consistently suggest the underlying possibility that Marlow believes that the Africans do have humanity. The questions of who are the civilized and who are the savages run throughout the story--from the beginning with the anecdote about the Romans invading England to the end where Marlow feels the facade of the European society--and are consistently influenced and subverted by Marlow’s interactions with the Africans.

The question of Kurtz’s relation to savagery and civilized is also a running theme throughout the novella. Marlow describes Kurtz as both the pinnacle of European civilization and the epitome of darkness within Africa: “Everything belonged to him--but that was a trifle. The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own….All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz” (pg 48-49). Marlow goes through a personal debate of what exactly happened to Kurtz and how he had fallen so far from civilization. He makes several notes about Kurtz being well written, with a written language being the purest form of a civilized society. These characteristics cause Marlow to be unable to grasp what caused Kurtz’s fall. However, through Freudian lenses, Kurtz can be seen as the Id.

Marlow describes society as the space between the butcher and the policeman, a perfect example for the existence of the ego between the pressures of the id and the super-ego (pg 49). The id, or the purely carnal desires of human nature, is symbolized by the butcher, the member of society who handles the blood and gore that is necessary for survival. The super-ego, or the moral and ethical pressures of society, is symbolized by the policeman, the enforcer of the moral and ethical code through the law. The ego is the consolidation between the two forces. To be a part of society, we must live between the butcher and the policeman, existing in the ego state. Once the societal moral and ethical pressures are removed for Kurtz, he is no longer forced to live within his ego as the super-ego force no longer exists. Instead, he defaults to his carnal desires and lapses into the Id.

Marlow’s understanding of Kurtz abandoning the super-egoic pressures is seen through his descriptions of Kurtz’s lack of restraint. He says, “They only showed that Mr Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts, that there was something wanting in him--some small matter which, when the pressing need arose, could not be found under his magnificent eloquence” (pg 57). Without the requirement of a moral standard, Kurtz abandons all forms of restraint to fall into his desires. Kurtz losing his restraint is the final step of collapsing into his id. With no need to exist inside his ego, he can instead cave to any and every desire within his id that would otherwise be suppressed.

Kurtz’s death-bed epiphany sparks an epiphany in Marlow. Marlow describes Kurtz’s final struggles: “I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself” (pg 66). As Kurtz exclaims, “The horror! The horror!” it is a realization of these same moments of despair within himself. He realizes his fall from humanity by existing within his own id and the inability to step back into the morality of his ego. His horror is how he has himself become savage without his moral pressures in the wilderness. Marlow’s own epiphany in the wake of Kurtz’s death is his personal potential to fall into his psychological desires of the id. His time in Europe after Africa is described as almost otherworldly as he has come to learn the powerful psychological pressures that society enacts to maintain civility. He has seen the epitome of Europe in Kurtz become fragile in the wilderness, leaving him with the fear that the same results could happen to any other European, even himself.

Conrad’s debates of savagery and civilization are influenced directly by the Freudian concepts of the id, super-ego, and the ego. He nearly argues that society exists within the fragile space between the butcher and the policeman, the id and the super-ego, a balance that can quickly be shifted and shattered. He also presents Marlow’s internalized conflict of who the savage and who the civilized are, specifically through racial lenses that his ideologies have trained him to project onto the colonized. Conrad directly addresses the contextual issues of his time, ranging from psychological ideas to the questions of naturalism and superior races, through the nuanced complexity and art that is Heart of Darkness.

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