Heart Of Darkness - Cruelty

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We have noticed that important motives in Heart of Darkness connect the white men with the Africans. Conrad knew that the white men who come to Africa professing to bring progress and light to "darkest Africa" have themselves been deprived of the sanctions of their European social orders; they also have been alienated from the old tribal ways. "Thrown upon their own inner spiritual resources they may be utterly damned by their greed, their sloth, and their hypocrisy into moral insignificance, as were the pilgrims, or they may be so corrupt by their absolute power over the Africans that some Marlow will need to lay their memory among the 'dead Cats of Civilization.'" (Conrad 105.)
The supposed purpose of the Europeans traveling into Africa was to civilize the natives. Instead they colonized on the native's land and corrupted the natives. "Africans bound with thongs that contracted in the rain and cut to the bone, had their swollen hands beaten with rifle butts until they fell ...

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