Saturday, February 15, 2014

What is the central question in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness?

I am sure you will get several ideas on this one, but one
central question that comes to mind for me as I consider the themes of good, evil, truth
and morality is, "Can man change?" More specifically, I wonder if man can go from bad to
good. It seems easy to move in the other direction throughout history, but this
direction is much, much harder to come by.


This is
complicated by the unreliability of the narrator. If the narrator weren't tainted and if
we could trust each perception, coming to a better conclusion on your question would be
easy. Perhaps though, that is part of what contributes to the question of change for the
better.

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