Physical Journey Essay

Physical Journey Essay (Heart of Darkness)

The novel “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad, the main character Marlow believes that: “the mind of man is capable of anything-because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future”. Marlow’s trip to Africa changes the way he looks at things geographically and historically but the mental journey he took affected him the most. Marlow becomes removed from society in the jungles of the Congo where he is forced to adapt to extreme conditions both physically and mentally. In order to better understand Marlow’s mental journey and how the challenges in the jungle changed him, it is necessary to investigate the mind. The most widely accepted form of mental investigation is Sigmund Freud’s famous method, psychoanalysis.

Marlow starts his journey into Africa as a “superego”. Marlow states that when he was a young boy he had a great passion for maps, and at the time the maps were mainly blank, so he searched for adventure to fill in those blank spaces on his favorite maps. Young and idealistic, he had wanted nothing more but to experience life. Ever since Marlow was a young boy he yearned to see Africa and to explore the void within, so to appease his exploration urge, he applies to a trading company where he can operate a steam boat up. Upon arrival in the winding snake named Congo, Marlow has to make haste and adjust to not only new physical conditions but also to new cultures and societies. Because of this shift, Marlow’s “id, superego, ego” become unbalanced and his psyche is put to the test. Marlow illustrates being on the Congo river as, “travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world…you lost your way on that river as you would in a desert…till you thought yourself bewitched and cut off for ever from everything you had known once-somewhere-far away-in another existence perhaps”. As Marlow experiences an isolates state he shows that he has abandoned society and how the id is slowly taking over and...