Representation of the Natives

The way the natives were portrayed in Heart of Darkness can be considered malleable when examining the text. The natives were shown as both powerful and powerless at different times within the story. Because the Europeans were traveling deep into the interior of a country they were very unfamiliar with, the natives held an air of mystery about them; however, this mystery often did not elicit respect, as it usually does. The natives were treated very poorly, and forced into service, overworked and poorly treated. Even the fact that the natives in the service of the ship were cannibals did not make the Europeans wary of their treatment of the natives. Although the fear associated with cannibalism did not serve to alleviate the suffering of the natives on the ship (and therefore deemed them powerless), there were instances in which the natives used fear to bring them power, although subconsciously and usually to little or no avail. At one point the ship comes under attack, and it becomes necessary to scare the natives away with the ship's horn. Upon hearing native drums or spotting a native village on their voyage, the pilgrims would be worked into a frenzy. The unfamiliarity of the landscape they were in and the people they encountered served to make everyone anxious, and that anxiety escalated through the book. Therefore, the power the natives held over these outsiders was more psychological as opposed to the physical power that the Europeans held over the natives that they forced into their service.
It can also be said that the Europeans felt superior to the African natives because of the "advanced" society that they came from. Therefore, the power they felt over the natives as a result of modernization served as their justification for making the natives their subordinates. The mental superiority that they felt over the natives was what allowed Kurtz to infiltrate their culture and make them feel that he was so high above them that he could reach God-like status. Once he had infiltrated their society, he had the power to exercise control over the natives. This power is hard to give up, and even as Kurtz falls sick and is being taken away, he is discovered crawling back to the native camp. Perhaps travel can be seen as a way to experience power in new ways; maybe traveling to a foreign country deemed "barbaric" or "primitive" is tempting to some in that it gives a potential traveler a taste of superiority and perhaps even power, which is always a temptation to human nature.