Hurt in/of Darkness: Green Forest vs. Dark Space in “Heart of Darkness” - Bouregbi Salah

Nature and identity are dialogically related to one another. Nature is but the extension of the insights of identity: it represents the within through metaphors and symbols. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is a good illustrative example for such relationship. Two setting serve as ground for the novella: the river Thames in London (England), and the Congo River, where the major events of the story did take place: it is enveloped by the green savage forest and accessible only through three stations: Company Station (Kinshasa), Central Station (Katanga) and Inner Station (Stanley Fall). The story is narrated through flash-backs and happened in the dark ‘primitive’ Africa. In the story, the White-white culture and the Black-black culture come into play. What is noticeable is that all what are white turn to be the source of strife, killing and murder and all what is black becomes a part of nature. In other words, those who kill, grab and destroy are whites more than blacks. What we have learned from such experimentation is that all what make sense in Europe do not make sense in African. Whites have become what they were not: Darkness of Africa has unveiled the real nature of the ‘pilgrims’.