Heart of Darkness
What does Marlow discovers about hisself?
In part 2 of the book
In part 2 of the book
Marlow begins to realise many things about himself. I think that one of the larger themes is that he sympathises not with the white colonial oppressors but rather with the black "savages" that are oppressed. Indeed, Marlow begins to see the "white" souls of the black people and the "black" souls of the whites who exploit them; the heart of darkness lies within his own kind. Although Marlow is a product of the 19th century European colonialism, he begins to perceive the wasteful decadence of the colonial oppressors at the expense of an innocent indigenous population. Like Kurtz, Marlow begins to feel sympathetic to an "alien" people rather than his own.