Light/Dark (white/black)

Light/Dark (white/black) In this book, The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, there are several ways in which the light and the dark created different moods through light/dark colors. Conrad portrays color as a symbol to what is to come or what mood the scene will take up, and oftentimes, shows how the light can symbolize false hope and doesn't always mean goodness, as generally anticipated.



Whenever Marlow and his crew are on his steamer after sunrise, close to Kurtz' Station, it becomes really foggy and visibilitiy gets really poor. For like a minute or so, the fog rises and the sun shines like a symbol of hope in the wilderness. Later, the fog covers them once more and they are later attacked. As stated from shmoop, Conrad has a really dark vision shown through this book and sometimes in the book, light is there but it's still too dark to mean anything, becuase after the fog comes over them again, Marlow's steamer is attacked and one of his close crew members that he made friends with on the journey died from the attack, which also shows the hard times they had on their journey.

Conrad connects the themes of light/dark with cruelty as well. When Marlow first reaches the station, he takes a look around and finds lots of slaves and some that are no more than black shadows, showing cruelty and also darkness through the black shadows. They have been worked to the point of inhumanity making them black figures that mean nothing.