A Minor Charater in Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness :: Heart Darkness essays

A little Charater in Heart of Darkness   Heart of Darkness is a new in which many relatively minor characters serve major functions in the overall meaning of the work. One such character is Kurtzs mean who starkly contrasts against Kurtzs evil to better show the evil and primal side of man.     The Intended is the embodiment of mans denial of the truth of home(a) evil. In the painting of the Intended, her cover shows her blindness to the truth, symbolized by the torch she holds. The truth of mans evil is within her grasp, solely yet she allows herself to be blinded so she rumpnot accept this to be true. She is in denial -- as far as she knows, if she cant see the evil or that it holds a penetrating presence, it does not exist to her.     Ironically, until now, Conrad describes the Intended as having a shade of truthfulness upon her features. She is an innocent -- the word halo compounds that notion however this too is ironic. She is scarcely a person, just as capable of venom as anyone else, which is symbolized by the black she wears. Marlow only lies about Kurtzs life and last to spare the Intended the knowledge of what Kurtz had become -- a manifestation of rude(a) human evil. Marlow is the blindfold that shields her from the truth that Kurtz fell to a natural knowledgeable compulsion towards iniquity, and that this inner evil exists everywhere.     Because she denies the existence of an inner evil, the Intended is only as innocent as a human being can be. This innocence contrasts severely with Kurtzs own evil. This innocent girl was the fiancee of a murderer demi-god who decapitated people. She is the innocent side of the relationship, or the yang. She is pure, but with a spot of shadowerness being the potential for evil only because she is human. Kurtz is the dark side of the relationship, the yin. He is an animated figure of death who once was frightful and innocent, like the fiancee. He w ent to Africa with good intentions, but was corrupted by virtuous freedom. With no society to tell him how to act, he fell prey to his inner darkness.