Introduction

Colonial legacy is a term used to describe the changes that affected nations and regions
governed by invasive colonial ruler. In many areas of the world, including Africa, colonialism
brought a change in many facets of society, including government structure or organization,
political practices and even economics. Colonial literature also describes what happens to the
colonized nation once colonists settled in the area, and questions the notions of identity,
otherness, racism, imperialism and so on. One of the major works of colonial literature that
describe what happen to the Africans during colonialism is JOZEPH CONRAD HEART OD
DARKNESS .

-Aspects of colonial oppression in HEART OF DARNESS

HEART OF DARNESS centers around a sailor named Marlow and his journey up the Congo
River to meet a man called Kurtz. Marlow takes a job as a riverboat captain for an ivory
trading company in the Congo. Through his travels, he sees a lot of carelessness and
disorganization in the stations of the company .According to him, colonialism began because
of the ivory which the Europeans’ were very hungry for. So, the main reason of colonialism in
Heart of Darkness is to economically exploit the land in the Congo. First, the colonists take
the ivory and make money off the trade, but give nothing of value to the natives and to the
land that might be damaged from the process. Second, the colonizers forced the natives to be
their slaves, where they have to do all the hard work for them. The Africans operate the boats,
collect and load ivory into the boats, while the traders watch them and tell them what to do in
a very harsh way.

-Postcolonial identity

Africa lost its identity or the purpose of its own. The African characters are nameless slaves,
sick both physically and physically and psychologically. They are dying of disease,
worshipping the evil and undeserving Kurtz .Africa is also portrayed as a wilderness ,far from
civilized society; it is only through a long travel that Marlow comes to really understand the
difference between civilized and the uncivilized world .In this way Africa exists as the
other ,while Europe is the is the rightful society . This is what the title come to mean when
Marlow travels into the deepest part of the land, he reaches HEART, the center of darkness

-the concept of hybridity in Kurtz

Kurtz who is mentioned by the manager of the company as a men who has adopted many
characteristics of the savage culture .his hybrid character revealed through a painting Marlow
saw in the Manager’s office .this painting represents “a draped and blindfolded women
“which shows the change that has occurred in Kurtz personality after living for so many years
in the darkness .He seems to have fallen in love with darkness, blindness and somberness. He
has appropriated the new culture so deeply that he has become a hybrid person, a mixture of
the colonizer and the colonized.