conradian reversal

essay on light and dark imagery in HOD. and the conradian reversal.


As she gazed across the darkening horizon, she noticed a small pinpoint of light. Keeping her mind on the spot, she allowed her eyes to scan the ocean, and continued to find white lights spread across the deep green, almost black, sea. She held Harlow close to her chest and rocked her back and forth, all the while saying, “He’ll come home soon… daddy’s coming…” Watching as the lights grew more distant, she lost hope and called it a night. She laid Harlow in her crib, turned off the lights, and crawled under the covers as she had done so many nights before. Light and dark have a tendency to deceive. As mankind discovers light in this world, darkness continues to present itself in a threatening way. So often Joseph Conrad uses light and dark imagery to present truths. In Heart of Darkness Conrad takes reality into his own hands and twists it by reversing the meanings of the light and dark imagery.

“A dark figure obscured the lighted doorway of the manager’s hut, vanished, then, a second or so after, the doorway itself vanished, too” (Conrad 89). While in Africa, Marlow discovered a darkness capable of overwhelming all light and stamping out any flames. This darkness was caused by the corruption of the white pilgrims who came to the wilderness with selfish motives. Most of the evil brought into the Congo could be traced to Kurtz, found at the center of the Congo, the “heart of darkness.” Kurtz became the root of the problem without being present in most situations. His image became the model for every pilgrim in “the Company,” and kept any light from being visible through the darkness.

The darkness overwhelmed the light, and even when light was found, it was in such small amounts and was almost not visible at all. When Marlow’s steamboat traveled up the Congo toward Kurtz and the inner station, they encountered a dense fog. “When the sun rose there was a white fog, very warm and clammy, and more blinding than the night” (102). For a moment Marlow noticed the sun. The sun did not bring joy, however, as readers might have expected. The darkness in Africa, caused by the pilgrims, was so impenetrable not even the sun could break through.

Although Conrad was not the first to twist the roles of light and dark imagery in his writing, his messages were so advanced the concept has now become known as the “Conradian reversal.” In this reversal, light takes on a dark meaning, representing a “bad” idea, while the dark images become “good.” Conrad wrote, “Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had fone out on that streams, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from a sacred fire” (55). The pilgrims in Africa brought an evil unknown to the natives. The light-skinned pilgrims came to the Congo selfishly, and the innocence of the dark-skinned Natives became more and more a desired trait. The hearts of the pilgrims, called “emissaries of light” (65) corrupted so many ideas in their society and the negative changes could not be reversed. Below the surface, the natives were, without a doubt, the lesser of the two “evils.”

Many nights, she sat, staring out into the darkness, and let the lights raise her hopes. Tonight, after turning off her lights and crawling in to her bed, she lay awake for awhile. Her eyes penetrated the darkness, and before long, she was able to see almost clearly. She heard a knock at the door. Heart racing, the girl cautiously peered out of her window. The porch light revealed the face of the man she had stayed up so many nights waiting for. She let him in and greeted him with a passionate embrace, planning to never let him go again. After so many nights of darkness, she was at peace. Before understanding Heart of Darkness on a deeper level, it seems to readers that Africa is the root of all evil. But after reading, it is evident that the evil comes from the heart of every man. The light in our lives is often blocked out by the overwhelming powers of darkness, but in Christ we can overpower evil. The only true light is that of Christ Jesus.