In the book The Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad demonstrates that human beings are dark and empty inside and that, if left to themselves, the dark and empty side will reveal itself and take over. It can be said that a certain degree of darkness lies within every person, but this darkness will not emerge except in an appropriate environment. The darkness, however, can emerge and ultimately destroy the person if it is not restrained by reason. If someone's inner darkness surfaces, the victim is given the opportunity to reach a point in personal growth and derive a sense of self-knowledge from it. Conrad makes many references to darkness, right in the first few pages, giving a sort of foreshadowing of what comes later in the book. When the book begins, it is dusk and very dark, the narrator creates a feeling of stillness and Marlow suddenly breaks the mood by saying, "and this too was one of the dark places of the earth." takes him to his story about another of the dark places of the earth he had travelled. Marlow tells of how he found work as a steamboat captain on the Congo River. This is a reference to the title, because at the time Conrad wrote the book Africa was often called the land of darkness, with the Congo at its center, or heart. Marlow's first job is to recover the bones of the former steamboat captain. , Fresleven. Fresleven is the prime example of a good man surrendering in the heart of darkness. He was said to be a "gentle" man, but was stabbed by the chief's sin after hitting the chief in anger. Most men had come to Africa in the hope of giving it civilization and prosperity, but they gave up. their own wants and needs, and cared about African... middle of paper... rkness. He had come to Africa to create civilization and wanted to build ivory towers as beacons for the natives of the Congo. He was an artist, a speaker, a poet, writer, musician, and a politician, but he had no integrity and was tainted by the heart of darkness: the brown current flowed quickly out of the heat of the darkness, dragging us down. the if with double the speed of our upward progress, and Kurtz's life also rushed by, ebbing, ebbing from his heart into the inexorable sea of ​​time. (Conrad, 81) In this quote Marlow suggests that the river separates him from the heart of darkness and brings him back to civilization. It also suggests that Marlow and Kurtz may leave the heart of darkness behind, but Kurtz seems to leave more and more of himself behind and that he too has been permanently scarred by it..