I'd like to think that we're all born good. That we all start out our lives with good hopes, good intentions, and with complete innocence. And as for the people that aren't so good, well, society and the world around them must have made them that way. I'd like to know that there wasn't a driving evil force inside of everyone that could make them manipulative or cruel. But unfortunately, as we realize throughout Heart of Darkness, it seems that each of us is born with a soul that can quickly turn evil. When pushed to their limits, a good person can do some horrible things.
Take Kurtz, for example. He began his adventure in the Congo with good morals and good, altruistic intentions. Unlike most people who go to work in the Congo, Kurtz surely had no intention of killing and abusing the natives. But as we see when Marlow reads Kurtz' report, his ideas changed after some time in the Congo. At the end of a vibrant, beautiful and entrancing report, Kurtz scrawls the words "Exterminate all the brutes!" (50). Certainly, the original Kurtz who started his journey in Africa never would have written such words. But as his experiences progressed, his mind began to change. He was in a dark world completely foreign to his own, so he as a person was bound to learn new things about himself and evolve mentally, whether for better or for worse. He was being pushed far beyond his limits, so far that his mind and his soul couldn't take it, and the evil was exposed. Marlow talks about the wilderness and its impact on Kurtz throughout his journey, "This alone had beguiled his unlawful soul beyond the bounds of permitted aspirations...the soul had looked within itself and...it had gone mad." (65-66). So if a soul goes mad and turns to horrible ways when it's pushed beyond its limits, then it must be true that way deep down inside, all of our souls are evil. Maybe none of us have seen this side of ourselves because we haven't been pushed as far as Kurtz; perhaps living in our safe, comfortable, sheltered society has allowed our souls to build a sort of wall around the darkness. But who's to say that, when placed in a similar situation, we wouldn't change in the same ways?
I hate to say it, but after seeing Kurtz and Marlow's experiences, I have been led to the inconvenient truth that the soul may be inherently evil. But if this is the case, then what defines the breaking point? When does a soul suddenly shatter and go mad? Is it when a person has had to undergo so much pain that it simply cannot bear any more? Or is it when a person has inadvertently caused so much harm to others that the soul can't stand to look at itself any longer, and it just cracks? I like to think that I am a pretty good, altruistic person. I like helping other people, I like making others happy, and I feel awful when I upset anyone. So the fact that there's a part of my soul way deep down that is secretly evil is exceedingly hard for me to grasp. Am I really evil? Are you really evil? After reading Heart of Darkness, it seems so. Who knows if we will ever crack and see the dark side of ourselves, as I assume that most people never do. But it now seems inevitable that somewhere in each of our souls, we are all a little bit evil. Each of us has our own heart of darkness.
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