Research Paper on:
Kurtz and Marlow in Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

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era are sharply contrasted. Marlow is the new employee who is sent upriver to bring back Kurtz, a station manager for the same company. Kurtz has been in the jungle  for quite sometime, nine years. The journey upriver to find Kurtz is allegorical to the journey that both men take into the darkest recesses of the human psyche. It is  a journey that only Marlow survives, as Kurtz gave into the darkness long ago. As to why this happened -- why Kurtz abandoned every ideal that he held before coming  to Africa -- Conrad leaves the reader to conjecture, however, certain aspects of Kurtzs and Marlow character suggest an answer. Kurtzs educated background, his learning and his trust in  his own cultural heritage, proved to be poor shields from the tyranny of his darker impulses, once the reinforcements of civilization were not present. Marlow, on the other hand, as  a man of action, had the resources to resist the freedom of a more savage world. By contrasting the characters of Kurtz and Marlow, Conrads purpose in this dark narrative  becomes clear. According to critic Daniel Schwarz (1998), the act of writing was for Conrad a "self-conscious process" in which he tested  and explored his own intellectual and moral identity (p. 122). This suggests that Conrad created Marlow in order to explore his own identity. This interpretation is substantiated by the fact  that Marlow relates the tale a if he were "recollecting a spiritual voyage of self-discovery" (Schwarz, 1998, p. 123). The opening of the novel portrays the horrors of colonialism  and the effect it has on the natives. Marlow, despite his best efforts to remain objective, feels repelled by the signs of British imperialism. As he journeys deeper into the