Heart of Darkness - Reform play or racist trash?In 1890, Joseph Conrad spent four months as a steamboat captain in the Congo. Like his character Marlow, Conrad became both physically ill and very disturbed as a result of his experiences. The Congo haunted Conrad, and despite spending relatively little time there, he felt compelled to write about his experiences years later.1 Indeed, the Congo had a profound influence on Conrad. It was there that he met Roger Casement who would become a long-time friend and ally in the campaign against Leopold II. Conrad's experience was very similar to Marlow's. As a young man, Conrad looked at maps and wished to travel to the unexplored Congo, like Marlow. He was captain of a steamboat that traveled between Stanley Falls and Léopoldville. Like Marlow, he also became very ill as a result of his travels. While in the area he kept a daily journal which would aid him in his future work. Conrad originally wrote a short story about his experiences in the Congo, but later decided that a somewhat longer work would be needed to deal with the subject.2 From this profound influence came a profound short story, Heart of Darkness, published in 1902 . at the height of the Congo controversy. Heart of Darkness painted a very dark picture of the Congo. It's no surprise that there are so many dark images in Heart of Darkness, Conrad adequately portrayed the tone of Congo. Kurtz can be seen as a white man who left for the Congo, like so many others, with the aim of “civilizing” the inhabitants of the region. But in the end, it's Kurtz who is the wildest. Kurtz could be a representative of any of the members of the For...... middle of paper ......on different races have improved. That there is even a debate would indicate that people today are more aware of the issues of racism than they were in 1902. Works Cited (1), (2), (6) Forbath, Peter . The Congo River. Harper & Row Publishers. New York. 1977. (3) Widmer, Kingsley. “Joseph Conrad.” Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 34. Gale Research Company. Detroit. 1985(4) Watts, Cedric. Conrad's "Heart of Darkness": A Critical and Contextual Discussion. Mursia International. 1977. (5) Pakenham, Thomas. The scramble for Africa. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. London. 1991. (7), (8), (9), (10), (12) Achebe, Chinua. Hopes and Obstacles, Selected Essays. Double day. New York. 1977.(11), (13) Sarvan, CP “Racism and the “heart of darkness””. The International Review of Fiction. winter 1980. International Fiction Association.