The Heart of Darkness with its conjuration of gradual deterioration towards delirium illustrates a quasi-fictional adventure through the Belgian Congo. Watts highlights the key subject matters in the novella, ‘Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is a rich, vivid, layered, paradoxical and problematic novella or long tale; a mixture of oblique autobiography, traveler’s yarn, adventure story, psychological odyssey, political satire, symbolic prose-poem, black comedy, spiritual melodrama and skeptical meditation.’ The Heart of Darkness is a complex novella that offers the reader a compelling tale of the Belgian Congo while also presenting a critique of the social climate in the colonies.

F.R. Leavis in The Great Tradition argued for the inclusion of The Heart of Darkness in the canon citing that the novella is an ‘art of vivid essential record’ which articulates greed and moral decay to be behavior better suited in a sanatorium and is situated against the expansive and oppressive mysteries of the setting. The aforementioned, sets the tone for the rest of the novella. The character Kurtz is an agent of the company, his mental imbalance is a result of being enveloped by the nature of his surroundings in the Congo is made clear by the author; the excerpt (refer to Appendix 1) is representative of a reversal in the system of colonial hierarchy, where the surroundings are labeled oppressive in contrast to the infiltrators who desecrate the resources of the Congo and oppress the people. The lines ‘it made me hold my breath in expectation of hearing the wilderness burst into a prodigious peal of laughter’ and ‘the thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own,’ exhibits Marlow’s belief in the dangers of the wilderness through personification where the wilderness bursts into laughter and metaphorical expression where it demonstrates to what extent the power of the darkness has over an individual. Kurtz explicitly forsakes the ideals attached to the civilizing process deeply embedded in European imperialism. As an agent of the company, Kurtz is expected to represent the values and act in the best interest of the company, he does the opposite when he stakes sole claim on the ivory, station, river etc. In the excerpt of The Heart of Darkness, Conrad reaffirms the disillusionment surrounding the African continent, said author situates Kurtz in the center of the metaphorical hell, he is the ‘would-be civilizer, the embodiment of Europe’s highest and noblest values, radiating darkness.’ Conrad’s attention towards fetishizing Kurtz and ‘his Africa’ depicts criticism through the examination of how the civilizing process in nations abroad transpire on various levels in the novella with emphasis placed on the manner in which European political authority and consumerism govern the employment structure of the Company in Africa as well as the part it plays in Kurtz’s eventual demise. Criticism of the empire by Joseph Conrad in the novella is made clear in the extract, taking into account the author’s portrayal of Mr. Kurtz in a state of delirium as a result of being overwhelmed by his surroundings.