Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Carl Jung's Principle of Opposites

The mysteriousness of the title is the first indicator of the mysteriousness of Marlow's journey into Africa. Seemingly no one--Marlow, Kurtz, the reader--is quite certain if any conclusions he draws over the course of the story are completely accurate.

At the beginning of Marlow’s journey his aggressively states he hate of liars and hypocrites, yet at the end Marlow lies to Mr. Kurtz fiancé, “But I couldn’t. I could not tell her. It would have been too dark- too dark altogether… (Page 72).” The journey changed this aspect of Marlow’s personality. As Marlow faces the horrors of the Congo River he learns that some lies are necessary to spare others. In How To Read Literature Like a Professor, the author Thomas C. Foster states, “Okay so here’s the general rule: whether it’s Italy or Greece or Africa or Malaysia or Vietnam, when writers send characters south, its so they can run amok… if we’re being generous, that they can run amok because they are having direct, raw encounters with the subconscious (Foster, 179).” As Marlow travels down the Congo River he continues to here about Mr. Kurtz and he begins to relate himself to Kurtz. As Marlow’s journey continues he begins to realize that Kurtz is crazy. As marlow begins to realize that As that happens Marlow begins to connect himself to Mr. Kurtz but as he continues to relate to Kurtz he begins to realize hat Kurtz is not the man Marlow believed him to be. This realization of how Mr. Kurtz is subconsciously hurts Marlow because Marlow saw himself and Kurtz as kindred spirits and no that Marlow sees that Kurtz is a horrible person

This paper aims at using Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung’s collective unconscious and archetypal theories to interpret the archetypes of characters, natural scenes and themes.

Jung defines archetypes as, “Universal images that have existed since the remotest times. As a figure that repeats itself in the course of history wherever creative fantasy is fully manifested” (Jung, 7). Regarding the idea of archetypes, Northup Frye was a prominent theorist who contributed to the study and progression of archetypes; he applied Jung’s theories about collective unconscious, archetypes, and primal images to literature. Through Frye’s proposition of four mythoi type plots, “He formed a strong basis for four major genres that associated with each season of the year: comedy (spring), romance (summer), tragedy (fall), satire (winter)” (Frye, 45). According to Carl Jung the goal of humanity is to achieve individuation, the goal is to reach a state where the unconscious is known and integrated into the conscious mind. It is collective in nature from our human ancestors, predisposed human ways of perceiving, responding and reacting.

The two main characters in Heart of Darkness, Marlow and Kurtz are used to show the true nature of man, that is, the

For example, when Marlow sees the manager, who is the epitome of imperialistic evil, abusing a young boy, Marlow does not do anything. He thinks to himself how horrifyingly wrong it is, but he just walks away accepting what is happening. In the end, Marlow is symbolic of those few people, in the past and present, which can see all of the materialistic and selfish corruption that is rampant in the world and realize how wrong it is. Most of these people, as Marlow further represents, do absolutely nothing to bring about change, instead just accepting what is and letting it happen.

According to Carl Jung’s theory, the psyche has three parts to it; the ego, personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious (Golden, date unknown.) Jung believed that the archetypes were part of the collective unconscious; this is where psychological inheritance happens. “All the most powerful ideas in history go back to archetypes” (Golden, date unknow.) Jung believed each archetype had its own unique values, meanings, and personality traits. It is possible that people display more than one kind of archetype, but there always seems to be one specific archetype that makes itself more apparent (Golden, date unknown.)

Further supporting the notion that the story follows the Journey into the Underworld archetype, characters that represent distinct regions of the psyche accompany Marlow throughout his journey. In their introduction to Jungian psychology, Donald Kalsched and Alan Jones note that characters who appear alongside the hero in a Journey Into the Underworld story “are representatives of the psychic totality that supports the ego in its struggle,” (The CG Jung Foundation). During his interview with the manager, Marlow comments that the odd smile the manager puts on following each sentence made, “the meaning of the commonest phrase appear absolutely inscrutable,” (49). He also adds that “it was impossible to tell what could control such a man,” (49).

Carl Gustav Jung is a Swiss psychiatrist and the successor of psychoanalysis with important intellectual movements of the twentieth century. In his early career, Jung was influenced by the theory of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis (Breger 2000, p. 217). However, they came into disagreement in notions which then broke their relationship. It was because Freud’s view of myth was based on reality, which there was no religion involved, whereas Jung though that myth was based on both reality and religion. Consequently, Jung’s notions were commonly accepted by society because of the wider context. Then, through his research and clinical findings, he developed some concepts like archetypes, collective unconscious, shadow, extrovert and introvert and persona (Carter 2011 p. 442). These concepts help Jung to deepen the explanation about myth. For Jung, myth is a projection of archetypes and collective unconscious. Their form are universal and identical with every society back into history. Myth can be identical because the original form, the archetypes, is configured to be the same among human's unconscious globally where people's psychic realm encounters certain motifs and typical figures that built into the structure of man’s unconsciousness (Jung Myth Ex. 3-4). According to Edward Tylor and James Frazer, myth and science were contradict where science was factual and myth was not (Segal 2003, p. 48). Therefore, myth has an important role in human nature and modern

     Each character has a special role in the novel; Kurtz and Marlow are the most important, through these two characters we are able to see how good and evil balance each other out. Marlow?s journey into the heart of darkness can also be seen as a journey into his own soul. He was in search of the darkest of objects, the ivory. Unlike Kurtz, Marlow was able to withstand the darkness from controlling him. Kurtz soul became the darkness and caused him to forget everything else there was to life. His last words were not that of love but rather of hate, ?The horrors the horrors.?

Serving as the most important example of psychological personification, Kurtz juxtaposes Marlow’s transformation through his role as Marlow’s Jungian shadow. Using the archetype to describe the tension between human nature and the civilized ashamed reaction to our natural dark side, Jung identifies the shadow as a part of the psyche that, “...is composed for the most part of repressed desires and uncivilized impulses...all those things about oneself one is not proud of,” (Frith Luton). These repressed desires and impulses, most obviously greed and wrath, lie at the center of Kurtz’s character, spurring his transformation from an honorable civilized man to a greed driven megalomaniac. As previously stated, the literary shadow often represents

 At first Marlow was speechless to finally have met this seemingly "idol." Yet, after having spent time with Kurtz and getting to know his character, Marlow finds out for himself that Kurtz really was not the person that the stories had described him to be. Heart of Darkness is an accurate example of how stories can be a negative impact upon an individual. An accumulation of false information can be deceiving, as well as, misgiving- and in Marlow's case, disappointing.

In the story we can see the internal problems within Marlow more clearly because we can understand where he started, as a civilized Englishman. Marlow is a good man that is morally strong, but adventurous, he says at the beginning of the story, “you know i hate, detest, and can’t bear a lie.” He will not lie at the beginning of the story he says he would rather die than lie. However, Marlow does lie at the end to the Intended, He lies for good reason, to protect her, but he still lied. This shows the evil that was inside of him, that corrupted him. He may not have been off the edge like Kurtz but he had seen evil. “ darkness is like going over a cliff, but i have peeped over the edge” (p160). The darkness of the nation drives a man mad,

As the Heart of Darkness snakes its way into the savage shadows of the African continent, Joseph Conrad exposes a psycho-geography of the collective unconscious in the entangling metaphoric realities of the serpentine Congo. Conrad’s novella descends into the unknowable darkness at the heart of Africa, taking its narrator, Marlow, on an underworld journey of individuation, a modern odyssey toward the center of the Self and the center of the Earth. Ego dissolves into soul as, in the interior, Marlow encounters his double in the powerful image of ivory-obsessed Kurtz, the dark shadow of European imperialism. The dark meditation is graced by personifications of anima in Kurtz’ black goddess, the savagely magnificent consort of the underworld,

Marlow’s attempt at recreating his subjective past is met with unease on the part of the narrator and like a litmus paper he brings out the intellectual and emotional effect the author is seeking. When the effect has been so affirmed, the author proceeds to manipulate it. When, for example, we see Marlow’s desperation for having missed the chance to speak to Kurtz as absurd, Conrad makes the listeners sigh with the same reaction. Marlow reacts heatedly- “Why do you react in this beastly way, somebody? Absurd? … This is the worst of trying to tell… Here you all are, each moored with two good addresses, like a hulk with two anchors, a butcher round one corner, a policeman round another.” Pp 53 This chastisement by Conrad gets displaced from Marlow’s companions to the reader. Marlow is trying to prevent us from judging Kurtz and by doing so highlights his importance in the tale’s critical discourse.