Coincidentally, I read The Great Gatsby shortly before Heart of Darkness. (As usual, I listened to both as audiobooks during commutes.) I was struck by the similarities between the two, and it turns that indeed, F. Scott Fitzgerald had been studying Joseph Conrad in the time between publishing his previous novel and before writing Gatsby. He self-consciously adopts the prose style, thick with lurid imagery and allusion. Both authors carry it off well and the effect is grand, if pretentious. But Fitzgerald doesn’t stop there - he mimics the narrative structure, key element of the plot line, and core attributes of the main characters, while adapting and twisting key themes. Basically Gatsby is Heart of Darkness in New England, but with all the elevated moral aspects of Conrad’s message and worldview stripped out. Gatsby sends only a message of modernist despair - the people are unsympathetic and amoral, the relationships dreary, everyone either randomly dies or just goes away, and any hint of lasting meaning or connection is just an illusion. Really, in my experience, it just doesn’t have to be this way.
Heart of Darkness too has its share of dreariness, isolation, immorality, and tragedy; but this despair is not an inescapable fact of life in society. Despair for Conrad is instead the result of man’s deliberate choice to reject the better way of life associated with Western civilization. The central figure of the novel is Kurtz, a middle class regular guy in British society, who transforms into an appalling monster when given a bit of power but no restraints other than his own moral ideas.
Here is the iconic scene of Kurtz’s last words, narrated by Marlow:
I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror—of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision—he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath:
‘The horror! The horror!’
The “heart of darkness” that lies within every man requires taming. Religion, law, manners, and civilized society exist to temper the savagery that would otherwise rule over him, and to show him a higher and truer path. The further we deviate from the norms and institutions of Western civilization, the closer we come to the horror. Conrad illustrates this point in the individual, through Kurtz, but also at the societal level, through the European colonies in Africa. Set far afield from civilization, the colonial outposts that Marlow visits are structurally brutal and racist, unconcerned with the human cost of their cold quest for ivory, wealth, and power. Conrad takes the sensible Conservative position of being pro-civilization and anti-colonization - the latter because of the former. Colonization gives ambitious men authority over other men, but places them outside the constraints of European civilization, and the results were demonstrably barbarous.
It is odd that being pro-civilization should be notable. But here we are, living in a world after Rousseau, who taught that humanity is inherently good at heart but that it is civilization that taints us. Joseph Conrad was born just after the Romantic period, in which literature and the arts were swept up in this new idea. We now live in a world after Nietzsche, who spurned the “slave morality” of Christianity and Christian civilization, taking Rousseau one step further by encouraging people to build their own identity around the uncivilized impulses from within, and to adopt, like Kurtz, a power-hungry “master morality.” The world of philosophy and geopolitics was swept up in this new idea during the early to mid 20th century, and the fallout was catastrophic. We are still trying to put the pieces back together. And yet Rousseau’s and Nietzsche’s ideas are again flourishing in new and different ways. It won’t end well for civilization, but it never was supposed to. I don’t know whether Joseph Conrad was thinking of Rousseau when he wrote Heart of Darkness, but the title appears to me a direct rebuttal to his thesis.
Let me end this with a comment on the ending. After Kurtz’s death, and after returning to civilization, Marlow seeks out Kurtz’s betrothed. She is a very sweet girl in mourning over the loss of Kurtz-in-society whom she loved dearly, with no inkling of the true nature of Kurtz-outside-society. The melodrama of Marlow’s internal struggle with what to tell the poor girl, and how he finally responded is just over the top and you have to go read it if you haven’t. Fitzgerald attempts a similar scene near the end of Gatsby, but the results are paltry in comparison.
Really enjoyed your analysis.