Use of Language in Heart of Darkness Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad is a story that connects the audience to the narrator's senses. We come to understand the environment, the setting, the other characters, and Kurtz strictly from the narrator's point of view, as he experiences things. We are excluded from the world of Conrad (the narrator in this case), we are allowed to feel only what the savages allow us to see as he, through his eyes, feels with his body. We are unable to see as the world sees it. Is he seen as a superior, a drone, a sailor? His dream consciousness guides us readers along the river as if we were part of the flow of things, ripples in the water, spots of darkness. Conrad uses language to paint pictures in our minds. He poignantly uses metaphors like “Outwardly he resembled a butcher in a poor neighborhood” (57) to animate those images, allow them to breathe a little. His choice of words and word combinations, his poetic tone and smooth style transitions create a sensual experience. On the surface it talks about man's exploration in Africa with all its physical and moral dilemmas, yet the belly is the inside of man, an attempt to touch the reader deeply. “Each station should be like a lighthouse on the road to better things, a center of commerce certainly, but also of humanization, improvement, education”. (104) When Conrad says that the “germs of empires” float in man's head, flowing back down the river into the mystery of an unknown land, his metaphors emotionally appeal to something serious, a commentary on the heart of man. (67) Our senses are serenely assaulted by tastes and surfaces, sounds and images. The “tremble…… middle of paper……their hands, like so many unfaithful pilgrims bewitched inside a rotten enclosure. The word "ivory" rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were begging for it. A shadow of imbecile rapacity lingered in all this, like the smell of a corpse. By Jove! I have never seen anything so unreal in my life. And out of the silent wilderness that surrounded this clear spot on the earth it struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, patiently waiting for the end of this fantastic invasion. Works Cited and Consulted Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. New York: Bantam Books, 1981. Ross, Mark. “The Roots of Darkness.” 1997. http://members.aol.com/mark13/html> (9 February 1998) Ross, Mark. “The roots of racism”. 1997. (9 February 1998)