Just a Voice?

A man or a shadow?

In Florence H. Ridley’s article “The Ultimate Meaning of Heart of Darkness,” Ridley suggests that “when the external controls are removed and you must live with evil and staggering temptation,” you must fall back upon your “restraint, arising from… faithfulness or from some deliberate belief.” In Heart of Darkness, the “external controls” of European society are absent in the jungle, turning it into a place of temptation where it is easy to succumb to savagery unless one has a strong sense of self. In other words, when one loses one’s grounding by traveling to a new locale, one becomes overcome by the new culture and unable to maintain one’s identity. A place, Conrad implies, is inseparable from one’s character, as he proves through Kurtz. When Kurtz detaches himself from European society and its customs, he becomes someone else, not so much a different person as a shadow, an almost mythic creature without a true identity.

Conrad suggests the hollowness of Kurtz by associating him primarily with a voice rather than a body or actions. Before meeting Kurtz, Marlow makes the “strange discovery” that “the man presented himself as a voice,” and after meeting him, realizes that he is “very little more than a voice” (58-59). Kurtz is not a three-dimensional being but just an element of one, a voice, something that, like Kurtz, lacks grounding. A voice is disconnected from the rest of a body; unlike a gesture, which represents one’s thoughts, body, and mannerisms, a whole personality, a voice is an isolated part of oneself that does not demonstrate much. It indicates a lack of substance, which Conrad suggests by describing “one immense jabber” that is “without any kind of sense” (59). The voices are just that, sounds that have no meaning, little grounding to a person or place.

When Marlow describes Kurtz’s body, it only reinforces the notion of Kurtz as a shadow rather than as a complete person. Kurtz “look[s] at least seven feet long” even though his name “Kurtz” means “short “ in German (74). Even just the subtle distinction between Kurtz “looking” and “being” seven feet long demonstrates his lack of authenticity—Marlow is not even sure about his height, a part of oneself that is not subjective but a fact. The paradox of his name also supports the idea of Kurtz as hollow, as he is not what he seems. He does not have an identity, a body that aligns with his voice and name, but disconnected parts that form a person who seems constructed rather than real.

This lack of self, Conrad seems to imply, is the result of losing one’s connection to the motherland. Kurtz lives deep in the jungle, a place disconnected from his original home, Europe, and an environment without the “external controls” that help one define oneself. When placed in a site so completely different from Europe, Kurtz loses touch with himself because his character is defined by his home. He then becomes someone else, a mere shadow that demonstrates the importance of place to one’s identity.