Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness: Debunking the Two Basic Imperial Clichés

Abstract

Joseph Conrad's in his Heart of Darkness has been condemned as a supporter and defender of the imperialist views and in other situations he is thought to be ambivalent, ambiguous and indecisive concerning this same topic. This paper aims at proving that in Heart of Darkness Conrad employs strategy of introducing the long established imperial clichés to debunk them and to show how fake they are. This strategy is successful and convincing in depicting the cruelties that are caused by the power and authority of imperialism especially if we put this novel within its historical context; a time when imperialism and all of its byproducts were acceptable as practices of the white man's burden theory