Madness In Heart Of Darkness

Madness In Heart Of Darkness

What would it take to drive a person insane? What elements and constraints keep people in a healthy mental atmosphere? In the novella, Heart of Darkness, there are two characters that appear to have gone mad. The two characters, Marlow and Kurtz, will be the topic of discussion and three areas will be covered to examine the source of their madness. Three fundamental elements that can be argued for the source of their madness are the separation of society, boundaries of power and the perspective of morality.
First, let’s define what madness means according to the dictionary definition. The state of being mad is defined as insanity, senseless folly, frenzy; rage and intense excitement or enthusiasm. In the story you have Marlow on a mission to go kill Kurtz and throughout this journey to reach Kurtz he begins going down the path to madness. He has been in the military for quite a while and has become somewhat addicted to the idea of being in the jungles and in the wild life aspects of military war zones.   In the story Marlow says, “‘the other day I took up a man who hanged himself on the road. He was a Swede, too.' 'Hanged himself! Why, in God's name?' I cried. He kept on looking out watchfully. 'Who knows? The sun too much for him, or the country perhaps” This particular quote shows the utter shock in seeing someone who had killed himself. Marlow gets his first taste of the real peril of insanity. The surroundings, it is implied, are so bad that men would rather die than endure life in them. Also in the quote, “In the steady buzz of flies the homeward-bound agent was lying finished and insensible; the other, bent over his books, was making correct entries of perfectly correct transactions; and fifty feet below the doorstep I could see the still tree-tops of the grove of death." Marlow draws our attention to the madness of the situation by juxtaposing two very different images together; here we have one of a man lying dead on his deathbed, and another of...