So I was writing this essay for english on this book Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. He learned english in his 20's so its pretty remarkable that he has this work of literature thatspeakers of the english language celebrate and teach....but anyway there are some spelling errors throughout the book that the editor somehow didnt catch...so in while i was doing this essay on the prevalence of darkness in the novel i thought..... what if i replaced dark with dank. I don't say it all THAT much but you get the point- The 2nd edition of The Darkness (The Dankness)
-t4h
The Dankness By Forrest Hausz Dankness is a prominent aspect of Conrad’s Heart of Dankness. It is used liberally as a means of describing people, places, and the psychological trauma of confused men. In many cases dankness is applied to the setting in a literal and metaphoric fashion. On one hand, the sun is rising and the land, in truth, may be quite alive and bright. But on the other hand, Conrad depicts it as being dank and full of seemingly evil qualities. Perhaps dankness is used in this sense as a way to imply the evil hidden within imperialistic nations, as well as the lands laden with evil that they strive to conquer. More specifically, dankness is best interpreted as the inability to see someone or something. In this way, it means the inability to know or understand that thing or person. This theory can be applied to Marlow’s struggle to understand the land, Kurtz, and his conflicted thoughts on his exploitation of “savages.” The first application of dankness in the novel is its use in terms of the setting. The European establishments, or sometimes “the whited sepulcher” has a righteous demeanor but is described mostly as dank. A whited sepulcher is something from the bible that can be described as beautiful and divine, but realistically full of hate and dankness. This is a way to describe the imperialistic nations and the enterprises that bring horror and death upon other countries. The underlying dankness here can be translated into a theme. Some things that seem righteous sometimes are full of evil that spreads and corrupts. This shows the dankness on the side of the Europeans. However, there is a more naturally bred evil that dankness holds in the primitive continents of the world that are not borne from corrupt institutions and organizations of the material world. The continent of Africa is portrayed as dank in two senses. It is literally dank in terms of the natural life and landscape, but also has a force that thrives within the confines of its borders. It seems that dankness has taken hold of the area, and that its presence also corrupts the land and swallows up all who venture into it. The use of imagery such as the fog represent this. The fog shows natural evil within the land, this gives the impression of confusion among the crew as they go farther up the river. The dankness provides blindness that clouds the senses. To not see is to not know, which is probably why so many people lose their head to the evil within the jungle. The second application of dankness is more involved with the corruption of the mind. We see the underlying evil and dankness within both imperialistic Europe as well as the natural world of the African continent. These two forces collide in the jungle and it forces men like Marlow and Kurtz to re-evaluate who they are, what they are doing, and everything they have known. This force is ultimately shown in the dankness of the land. We see that the evil presented in the dankness of the terrain changes people, perhaps brings out their residual self-image or how their mind perceives themselves with all influences aside, or what they believe to be morally correct. In Kurtz’s case, he finds truth in his life at the hands of death that has been cast upon him by the evil present in his surroundings. It is ultimately the realization of the horrors that he has committed that changes him. It is clear that Marlow is the only one that notices this final truth in his soul. In this way Marlow serves as an intermediary between the real world and the dankness within all the men who venture too deep into the heart. The dankness in the novel serves to help draw a line between those who live in a dream world of lust and corruption and those who face the truths about themselves by being bathed in the evil of the land. This, and the more obvious note that the dankness is buried within both imperialistic Europe and savage Africa, are two prominent applications of dankness within the novel. The dankness both corrupts and spreads, feeding on the hearts of weak men, as well as offers a path of moral righteousness within ones self, that can only be achieved by exposure to its power.
