The Unbearable Humour

Firstly, I would like to say that the book's title, Heart of Darkness, presents a variety of interpretations. Either the author wishes to depict a heart, filled with darkness, or the core of darkness itself. One way or another, the vague meaning gives it an eerie mysteriousness I find appealing. This title's duality compares to a simple test designed to identify one's dominant brain hemisphere. Click Here. Whichever interpretation of the title the reader's subconscious chooses defines a part of that person I have yet to uncover. I take pride in defying both tests. I can both control the direction of the dancer's motion, as well as which of two messages I select within one clever title.

We see some humor in the apparently depressing narrative as well. Saved from the bitterness of texts like that of The Road, Conrad unleashes precious trickles of bitter humor to entertain the reader, and give him some darkness to laugh at. We see some satire with the display of irony at the end of chapter 1, when Marlow describes the attitude of the "sordid buccaneers" (54) who "...tear treasure out of the bowels of the land [...] with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe" (54). Marlow's job to help the company pump ivory from the veins of the land, using the native population as fuel, establishes the irony in Marlow's shocked reaction to the buccaneers.

Another instance where humor arrives as an old friend, instantly cherished, and surprisingly missed, arrives when Marlow depicts his cannibalistic crewmen. He notes the "fine fellows—cannibals—in their place" (62). Here, we can choose our own interpretation as we did with the title. This time, the fun lies in deciding whether this exemplifies blunt sarcasm or implied irony. Either Marlow does not believe the cannibals to be "fine fellows ... in their place" (62), but rather the exact opposite, or he trusts the reader to take his comment sincerely, and laugh at the inconcievable concept of a cannibalistic friendship/harmless and positive relationship.

This type of apparent contradiction repeats itself with Marlow's absurd comment regarding how he "perceived—in a new light, as it were—how unwholesome the pilgrims looked, and I hoped, yes, I positively hoped, that my aspect was not so—what shall I say?—so—unappetising..." (75). This dark humor takes advantage of a bleak topic to entertain the reader's morbosity at its weakest. Such innovative cases of self-perception interest the reader. The psychology involved in leading someone to calculate how appetizing they are fascinates me.

One more instance of Conrad's humor lies when he depicts one of Marlow's vessels as a "cripple of a steamboat" (81). This personification exemplifies a type of sadly humorous, and extremely vivid description. Why I find it comical, I will probably never know, but this is exactly the type of slightly uncensored humor encrusted in Conrad's novel that is proving so indispensable in the survival of such grim scenes.