Name: Feier Catalin Robert

Text/ author chosen: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Research Topic: The Degradation of the mind in Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Research Question: Which part of the human psyche is in control of Kurtz's mind throughout
the novel?

Claim/ Thesis statement: In the novel Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Kurtz’s personality
is tripartite (the id, ego, and superego) which is in a constant battle for the domination of his
psyche.

Outline: In this essay, I will talk about the id, ego, and superego and how Kurtz's behavior and
thinking process is affected by the particular part of the tripartite that is in control, how his mind
stability slowly decays.
I. INTRODUCTION
Background info: Kurtz's mind is split into 3 distinctive parts which affect his behavior and the
way he thinks. Marlow's expectation of the great man that Kurtz was supposed to be, a well-
balanced mix between the id, ego, and superego was shattered at the sight of him.-
Supporting details: Definitions in particular for each aspect of the human psyche: id,
ego, and superego
Thesis statement: In the novel Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Kurtz's personality
is tripartite (the id, ego, and superego) which are in a constant battle for the domination of his
psyche.
II. BODY
A. First main idea: id, ego, and superego are essential aspects of modernism as different
concepts/ sides of the human psyche that coexist but are in a constant battle for supremacy.
Explanation of how Freud's theory works, and what role each part has.

B. 2nd Main idea: Different types of behavior and mentality when each of those 3 psyche
components is in control.
- Kurtz’s Behavior and thinking process with the Ego and superego in control/
correlation
 - Kurtz's Behavior and thinking process with the Id in control.

C. 3rd Main Idea: How the setting influences the character and the in-control facets of the
psyche.

III. Conclusion:

In the conclusion, I will talk about the fight for supremacy, which part wins in the end, and
which is the downfall of Kurtz.
 FACETS OF KURTZ'S PSYCHE

During the modernist period of literature, the novel suffered many changes from the
canonic stylistic form to the influences underwent by it and even to the themes and motifs
evoked in the novel. The modernist writers were fighting for overturning the traditional way of
writing, thinking, and living during their time. There was a period of transition in which concepts
and ideologies clashed with the modernist ideology emerging victorious, the modernist writers
experimented with their literary works and with their expressivity, experiments motivated by one
modern ideology expressed by Ezra Pound, an ideology that is the bedrock of the modernist
literature, a so-called motto “Make it new”.

The influences exerted on the modernist novel or poetry variates from one field of
expertise to another, from the field of philosophy with Nietzsche's idea of psychological drive,
especially "the will to power", to physics with Einstein's theory of relativity, to Henri Bergson
with the perceptibility of time, to Darwin evolution theory and the survival of the fittest, to Karl
Marx and not at last to Sigmund Freud with the area of psychology and psychoanalysis with the
theory on the human personality. In this essay I will direct my focus on Freud’s theory and how
it shapes Kurtz’s character, how the in-control part of the human psyche changes, from
knowledge to instinct, from apprehension to desire, from reason to madness, from dialectics to
physicality. I will discuss the two distinct voyages that occur in Conrad's novel which in fact, are
two sides of the same coin, “This journey into Dark Africa, I will argue, has both a geographical
and a psychological dimension” according to Fraticelli.

Perhaps the most essential theory in Freud's work and taken over by modernist writers, is
the theory on the human psyche, that the human personality has more than one aspect. In Freud's
perception, the human psyche is divided into 3 distinctive parts: the Id, ego, and superego which
develop at different stages in our lives.

According to Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, the Id is the primitive instinctual part of the
mind that contains sexual(Eros) and aggressive(Thanatos) drives, it's stubborn and it responds
the what Freud called the pleasure principle, it's the principle that focuses on our basic urges,
needs, and desires which, if denied gives us tension or unpleasure. The personality of a newborn
child is dominated only by the id, later in his life, he develops an ego and superego.

The superego is the source of self-criticism, the superego incorporates the values and
morals of the society. It has the role of controlling the id by confronting the desire with moral
and societal expectations. It also has the role of turning the ego toward moralistic goals rather
than superficial. The superego can punish by causing the feeling of guilt or reward the ego for its
decisions through the feeling of pride towards the self.

The ego is the decision-making component of the psyche, it's a mediator between the id
(desire) and the superego( morality). The ego works with reason while the id is chaotic and
unreasonable. In a perfect image of the psyche, the ego is in control, the ego is the one that takes
into account the opinion of both the id and superego and comes up with the best solution for its
dilemma, the ego is a problem-solving mechanism. And of course, what we focus on is the
special situation where the ego fails to fulfill its duties in containing the id and superego, leading
to the id in charge of the psyche slowly decaying the psyche and personality. As Fraticelli said,
"the notions of geography and madness, as thematized in the novelistic universe, play a central
role in the construction (and destruction) of Self and Others". It all started with a so-called wish
of colonizing, teaching, and evolving in a geography of the unknown, a noble quest fitting for the
ego and superego, a moral quest benefitting the world, a quest that soon started to turn to a
darker side, in the desperate try to tame the wilderness, our hero gave in to the wild, to its
instincts, to the id as presented in the last destination of our characters, as presented by the image
of Kurtz. "Presented as a travelogue, Heart of Darkness has a journey structure, with London as a
point of departure, and the Inner Station run by a mentally deranged Kurtz as an ultimate
destination” (Desire in "Heart of Darkness"), it's a journey both a physical journey and a journey
into the psyche, the more we sail on the river the deeper we sink into the consciousness, the more
we travel into the wild, the more we see the wild that “traveled” into our character, the more we
try to suppress our save customs, the harder is to not give in to them.

Kurtz’s behavior and thinking process with the Ego in control is rather canonic, he is
driven, concise, and coherent- as the Marlow observes in the report Kurtz wrote for the society
for the suppression of savage customs, his writing style is “vibrating with eloquence” or as an “a
beautiful piece of writing”. Kurtz has a brilliant mind and everyone looks up to him- he was
already described as being a poet, a description befitting at the sight of the paper he wrote- he is
the embodiment of a perfect colonizer, he is the perfect man for the job, an aspiring young man
devoting his life to the empire, for the so-called cause of colonizing which in fact was for
collecting ivory. The Ego which Kurtz manifests seems strong, working in a tight relationship
with the superego, with the moral and social drive, he seems to be - as the image of him is
presented to us by the other characters- a saint, a savior, “ a deity”. The image of him is exactly
what the society needed him to be ( in concordance with the superego), exactly what the white
folks needed- a deity element in a vast land claimed by nobody, a god in a no-man’s-land that
seemed to be laid for a claim but is infused with a perilous and sinister nature- someone who can
conquer the wilderness, someone with a strong ego, someone who can suppress the savage
customs of the inhabitants, someone who – as Kurtz refers to the white people- “must necessarily
appear to them like supernatural beings – we approach them with the might of a deity”(Heart of
Darkness, Joseph Conrad), with the ego in control, Kurtz is what he needs to be, what we expect
him to be. In analyzing the degradation of Kurt’s mind, we must focus first on his pre-madness
state and image, on his character that indicates normalcy, little is known about Kurtz’s life before
the task of colonizing and the sketch of his personality is drawn to us by Marlow, a vivid
representation of how the other characters perceive Kurtz, at the beginning of the novel is found
in the next excerpts extracted from the book. Kurtz is described as a “prodigy” and a “genius”
while several people make mention of his potential for greatness within the Company. The
accountant who Marlow meets before beginning his voyage states, “will go far, very far”.
Excerpts that overall, are suggesting the idea of a great man, a man of great intellect, a man who
later will be portrayed as the opposite, as not only physically decayed but psychically as well
suggested also by the note in which Kurtz’s report ended, the document is ended with the
sentence, handwritten at a later date, “Exterminate all the Brutes!”.

Kurtz's behavior and thinking process with the Id in control is chaotic, not referring
strictly to behaviorism, but to dialectics and cognition as well. Form the image of a perfect
leader, of a man in which the will to power shines brightly, a man with a noble task, form the
image of the colonizer, of wilderness tamer we descend to the image of colonized, of the wild
man, from a genius to a mad man. Drunk with power, with pleasure, with reverence and love, he
slowly gives in to the id, to the pleasure principle, to his instinctive actions, we can also argue
that there is a regression in Kurtz’s mind, a regression to a man who lives by pleasure and not
reason- as I mentioned earlier, to a baby-. “‘They adored him … What can you expect?’ … ‘He
came to them with thunder and lightning, you know--’” ”(Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad),
Kurtz’s perception of the self is rather godlike, he has both the eros and the Thanatos in his
hands, and rules them both with love and aggressiveness, with thunder and lightning referring to
his guns and ammunition. Kurtz’s claims extend beyond objects, to include people. He believes
“everything” and everyone to be under his power- “ My Intended, my ivory, my station, my river,
my--’ everything belonged to him”. ”(Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad)

“Kurtz’s loss of “soul” can be read as an instance of dissociation, or loss of psychic

balance. Simply put, he “lost his head,” just like the heads decorating his front yard “lost their
bodies.” Kurtz stumbled, lost his balance, and lo! He fell into the abyss. In that sense, the ego he
had constructed since childhood, underpinned by culture, dissolves in the grip of the jungle, it
becomes deconstructed. Self-destruction is a form of madness, a way in which man can undo his
“soul.” The epitome of imperial megalomania, Kurtz is no longer among the living” ( Madness
and Geography, Fraticelli, 13)

Kurtz can no longer recognize himself, he doesn’t want to, he is now drunken with
power, with the id and he can no longer control himself. The ego and superego are cast aside,
shattered, and no longer relevant in his life, the wilderness got into his system and is now a part
of him, can’t escape and he doesn’t want to, detail evoked by the fact that after he is rescued, he
still sneaks and tries to return to the wild, to the rituals and sacrifices he got used to, to the
dances around the fire and the letting loose of personality, he no longer embeds with reason –
“The wilderness had patted him on the head, and, behold, it was like a ball—an ivory ball; it had
caressed him, and—lo!—he had withered; it had taken him, loved him, embraced him, got into
his veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his soul to its own by the inconceivable ceremonies of
some devilish initiation”. ”(Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad)

Our character’s reactions to the new Kurtz are righteous, especially the reaction of our
fastidious Marlow “Because (Marlow) has identified Kurtz with language, he expects self-
control, logic and reason” (West, 2007/ Marina A. Kinney, Exploring Madness), he is in a state
of denial, how can a man so great and about whom he heard so many great things is now a slave
to pleasure, a follower of the id “Why! He’s mad,’ I said. He protested indignantly. Mr. Kurtz
couldn't be mad. If I had heard him talk, only two days ago, I wouldn't dare hint at such a thing…
”(Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad).

The setting influences on the character and the in-control facets of the psyche is easy to
tell, as Perry Meisel said “After all, if the novel’s landscape is to be read as the terrain of the id,
then its native inhabitants have to be cast as primitives” (Decentering "Heart of Darkness",
1978) therefore, if the nature of the inhabitable place resides in the terrain of the id, so will the
inhabitant, so will Kurtz who spent time in isolation and wilderness and not only Kurtz, the
reverberation of the geographical id and psychological id are felt even after Marlow’s expedition
is over, even after days and days passed, only at the reminiscence of the events, Marlow has a
chill down his spine, beautifully evoked in the ending part of the novel, when Marlow is asked
which were Kurtz’s last words “I was on the point of crying at her, ‘Don’t you hear them?... in a
whisper that seemed to swell menacingly like the first whisper of a rising wind. ‘The horror! The
horror!”, the horror which is a summary of Kurtz’s life in the wilderness, but Marlow, dominated
by the ego and superego, choses to give a rather more pleasing response to Kurtz’s intendent, a
response that would be consider as moral “The last word he pronounced was—your name”.
”(Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad)

In conclusion, Kurtz’s psyche suffered many heavy blows and a serious decaying follow-
up. The essence of this “degradation of his mind” resides in this duality that Kurtz is, the drastic
changes that he went through. We first encounter(through the eyes of others) a poet-like figure, a
man who amazed through eloquence and coherence, a godlike figure, an ideal colonizer, the best
prospect of the empire, a man from whom much was expected and who offered much, the
personification of the Ego which coexisted in a perfect balance with the superego and the id.
Then, after we finally meet him, our high expectations are shattered into a million tiny pieces,
the Kurtz we imagined is nothing like the one we found, an uncommunicative individual, unable
to speak properly, dominated by instincts, dry and unkempt, a savage-like figure, a colonized not
colonizer, not by the people but by the nature, the wilderness, the id. Nature which, in the end, is
the one who won the battle for supremacy but also, is the won who is Kurtz’s demise.
 REFERENCES

Primary source:

- Conrad, Joseph, Heart of Darkness, 1899

Secondary sources:

-Meisel, Perry, Decentering "Heart of Darkness", vol 8, No.3, 1978, pages 20-28.

- Ross, Stephen, Desire in "Heart of Darkness", Vol.36. No. ½, 2005, pages 65-91.

- West, Rinda. Out of the Shadow: Ecopsychology, Story, and Encounters with the Land.
University of Virginia Press, 2007.

-Woolf, Virginia, Modern Fiction, London, The Hogarth Press, 1984.

- Fraticelli, Miguel Arcángel, Madness & Geography: A Study on Voice, Discourse, and
Polyphony in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, 2016.

- Childs, Peter, Modernism, 2002, Taylor & Francis e-Library

- Marina A. Kinney, Exploring Madness in Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Lawrence's Women
in Love, 2010, VOL. 2 NO. 12