Among the truths about human nature we learned in Heart of Darkness, the most impactful and probably most obvious takeaway is that evil exists inside everyone. This is definitely the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about Heart of Darkness, and probably one of (if not the) most important realization made in English this quarter. Everyone in the novel, and upon reflection virtually everyone in the real world, has some malicious side to them, and even though there can be great variance from one person to the next, it's a common thread that runs through all people in some way or another.
In Heart of Darkness, it seemed that everyone Marlow encountered in the Congo had wicked intentions or were willing to be evil for personal gains, with Kurtz being the ultimate embodiment of this attribute. Even Marlow found himself slipping into aggressive or uncharacteristically malicious thoughts while in the Congo looking for Kurtz. When we discussed this idea in class we came up with many other examples of how people, under certain circumstances can lose touch with reality and succumb to the evil inside them. Maybe that's my own interpretation of the discussion, but nonetheless my point can be make by looking at the characters of Heart of Darkness as well as some real life instances, like the Stanford prison experiment for example. An interesting idea is the notion that a basic characteristic of people includes the existence of evil; to steal some lyrics from Metallica's song Am I Evil, "Am I evil? Yes I am. Am I evil? I am man." Meaning that there is no way to hide or mask the reality of evilness, people just need to know how to control and manage it. A major theme I saw in Heart of Darkness was the struggle between good and evil, which could be parallel with the internal struggle within every person; the existence of evil is present in everyone, coinciding with the existence of good and occasionally struggling for dominance with it. Perhaps this isn't such a bad thing though.
It's an inconvenient truth because it's just another thing people need to be aware of so that they can deal with and manage their internal evil when it does surface, avoiding potentially harmful effects on their character, but this does not necessarily make it a "bad truth" or a "demoralizing truth." Sure, it'd be nice if we could rest easy knowing only certain people carried the evil gene, but that is clearly not the case, making it imperative for people to be in touch with their evil side, so that they're familiar wit its capabilities and so they can stave off its attempts to overcome their lives (avoiding a Kurtz-like scenario). There may in fact be benefits though to having an evil side, or at least knowing can have one.
There is something to be said for people's need for balance, and the idea that all good has an equal amount of evil existing somewhere in the universe. Perhaps people need to be in touch with both their altruistic and malicious sides to fully appreciate life and the different lenses used to look at it with. I'm beginning to think people need both yin and yang to live to their fullest potential, neither one can succeed without the other. I'd like to think that there is reason behind my more devilish side, method to madness if you will. At the same time though, everything is about perspective, and while good keeps evil in perspective (and vice versa) I probably need to keep both in perspective and be aware of my self really have the opposites complement each other and strike a balance. I guess that's the lesson underneath all of this: it's all about balance
March 12, 2012
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