Introduction “Heart of Darkness” is a short story written by Joseph Conrad and published in 1899. The short story is the story of a character, Charles Marlow, and his experience as a as an ivory transporter on the Congo River located in central Africa. The text shows Marlow sharing a story with other sailors about to take off on another voyage. Charles had been a sailor for years, but he always had a particular interest in Africa, an unexplored place that fascinated him as a child. It was with this motivation that he found a position in a European trading company to take a steamboat to the center of Africa. When he arrives at the mouth of the river, he sees African men reduced to slavery and put to work. There, Charles hears about and becomes obsessed with meeting a man named Kurtz who had previously gone into the jungle to find ivory and had ideas for "taming" the African people and bringing European civilization to the peoples Africans considered wild. Charles undertakes this perilous journey only to discover that Kurtz's ideas have failed and that he himself has become a savage. Kurtz had been considered a God by one tribe and began raiding surrounding villages for ivory and participated in brutal and savage practices. Marlow takes Kurtz on the boat and tries to get him back to civilization, but Kurtz was too sick and died, leaving Marlow with his belongings and documents. Conrad acknowledged that "Heart of Darkness" is partly based on his own experiences as the character. captain of a steamboat on the Congo River in the 1890s, where he witnessed the horrific treatment of indigenous Africans and the imperialism imposed on the populations by European corporations. The book is a bit ambiguous, but its themes are clear and the contrast of two very different...... middle of paper ... rather than learn, they assumed everything was wrong in their culture and their societies, then they began to plunder and massacre. ConclusionIt was good to be able to read "Heart of Darkness" again (because I was much more impatient than when I read it in high school). I really like the book and I think it's a very interesting. I think it's culturally important for people to see how harmful the consequences can be if we enter into an ethnocentric culture and how we can in turn be harmed by our ethnocentric judgments. there is more information about the African natives, their culture and their society, as the story contains a lot of information about them However, I believe that Conrad uses this as a tool to show how easy it is. of not understanding a culture and then acting as if we understand what is best and trampling on existing customs..