Heart of Darkness

2. Denotation-definition
Connotation-emotional association with a word
heart darkness

3. Of hearts
 Into the heart of darkness Marlow traveled
 Journey motif
 Exploration of self
 What will we find in our hearts
a. the heart is who we are
-connation our emotions
i. if our hearts are broken we are
broken-what does that mean? What
are we then capable of?

4. And hell
 The mind can make a heaven out of hell and a hell
out of heaven
 When Kurtz himself is lying on his deathbed, he sees into
his own heart, looks his personal hell in full view, and utters
things which give Marlow a grim revelation as to what lies
within that black abyss. Kurtz's final words, as he ends his
voyage into his bitter core, are "The horror, the horror!"
referring to what he sees inside himself.
 The fall of Lucifer
 The fall of Kurtz
 Hell symbolizes the separation of us from God (the light)
 Hell was blue

5. Symbols of Hell
 The Journey/The Fall
 The culmination of Marlow's journey leads into
the heart of darkness, or in a more worldly
sense, Hell. Heart of Darkness fosters the
allusion that hell is within us, that it is the evil
existing deep inside our souls.
 Kurtz and Lucifer
 Hell is a separation from society/rules
 The congo resembles a snake/temptation

6. Evil
 Conrad's frequent symbolic combinations of life and death is
probably one of his numerous parallels to light and dark, echoing
the fact that the two must exist simultaneously - there cannot be
without the other. Conrad's book is based on the presence of
light and dark within everyone, and in Marlow's journey the
question is often posed of which is predominant. There are times
when darkness usurps the light, others when it is the opposite.
However, the darkness (evil) usually tends to prevail.
 Conrad is implying that a sense of evil resides in the core of every
human, and therefore reigns at the centre of humanity, however
veiled by morals, civilization and refinement. This is one of the
main facts Marlow ascertains on his journey, for he sees darkness
everywhere, even when there is light.

7. The Lucifer Effect-how good
people turn evil
 What is evil-intentionally behaving in ways that harm, abuse, demean, dehumanize,
or destroy innocent others-or using one’s authority and systemic power to encourage
or permit others to do so on your behalf.
 We are afraid of evil because we know the evil in us. This causes us to act
 Salem Witch Trials, The Holy Crusades
 Who are you without society?
 People’s characters may be transformed by their being immersed in situations that
unleash powerful situational forces.
 The Rape of Rwanda
 Abu Ghraib
 The Stanford Prison Experiment
 The Experiment

8.  "Instead, I argue that while most people are good
most of the time, they can be readily seduced into
engaging in what would normally qualify as ego-alien
deeds, as antisocial, as destructive of others."
"Those forces that exist in many common behavioral
contexts are more liekly to distort our usual good
nature by pushing us toward engaging in deviant,
destructive, or evil behavior when the settings are
new and unfamiliar. When embedded in them, our
habitual ways of thinking, feelings, and acting no
longer function to sustain the moral compass that
has guided us reliably in the past."

9. Discussion
 i. do you agree with the above statements?
ii. was Kurtz good and then The Congo made
him evil?
iii. Was he always evil and The Congo
(without the strains of society) unleashed the
evil and allowed him to be who he always
was.

10. Discussion
 i. do you agree with the above statements?
ii. was Kurtz good and then The Congo made
him evil?
iii. Was he always evil and The Congo
(without the strains of society) unleashed the
evil and allowed him to be who he always
was.