Joseph Conrad's novels Heart of Darkness and Nostromo

If he were asked, however, if he apprehension it were possible that he was representing the calamity that would ensue, he would sure get down denied that any such occasion were possible. The lines of Linda to Giorgio, after the violent death of "the thief of his honour," ably stand as the message of the book, with take to be to the motivations of outsiders who would come to build up and in their wake forsake only destruction:

She could not bear to look at him. He filled her with terror and an almost unbearable feel of pity. She had observed the change that had come over him. He would ne'er understand what he had done; and charge to her the whole thing remained incomprehensible (Conrad Nostromo 530).

This guts of the ultimate mystery of the meeting of Europeans and autochthonic wad, and of the terrible consequences of that encounter, pervade both novels. It seemed so simple when Gould and the the Statesn Holroyd set out to restore the economy and make slightly money themselves, it seems like such a simple competitive enterprise, and when tragedy ensues, they simply do not understand what went wrong. They do not live in nature or for nature, only if rather to tame and ravage nature, to try to take its wealthiness or its secrets, with no thought of the consequences, and in the process they bring a verify of destruction to the people and the land. They have taken the way of life they pursued in Europe and America and tried to lower it in a realm that they could never understa

nd, and all involved suffered as a result.

Even Nostromo. in his effort to save the people and the land, takes action (going to sea with the silver) which results instead in destruction. At the selfsame(prenominal) time, Conrad seems to be saying that there is an inevitability to the process whereby even the best of intentions result in such a curse and such destruction:

Stewart, J.I.M. Joseph Conrad. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1968.

In fact, Marlow grants Kurtz a banknote of self-knowledge, though it has been won at a horrible cost for himself and many others:

Both novels show how colonialists not only mishandle but also become corrupted by their efforts to impose an external reality on a society and stopping point they do not and will never understand.

Against Gould's faith in the exploit's power to better the people's lives, the prophecy of Dr. Monygham is delivered, in which he says that the mine will bring the same destruction, if not worse, that the tyranny of introductory years brought. Kurtz in Heart of Darkness is an even more(prenominal) cursed man, utterly transformed into a bloodthirsty inhuman by the delusions of grandeur colonialism has instilled in him. Kurtz has thrown himself into the corruption of colonialism so completely that he no longer has any sense of the destruction he is creating in himself and in the Afri brush aside land where he dwells. At least the characters in Nostromo realize what they have done, although they certainly do not realize how it has come about.

single must ask, of course, if the reward of perception and self-knowledge could have come at a smaller price for Kurtz and those whose lives he has destroyed. The same can be asked of Gould in Nostromo: Could not he have considered that his grandiose plans could result in such disaster. The answer, of course, is that neither man, or Marlow, or Nostromo, realized what was happening, until it was too late.

Marlow seems to this reader to be the major exit between the two novels. Of all the major characters, he
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