Heart Of Darkness Compared to Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong Essay

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad tells the story of Marlow, a Brit, of a Belgian company which is imperializing the African Congo area and in search of the successful, infamous Kurtz. The excerpt Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong from Things They Carried by Tim OBrian is about a young woman, Mary Anne, who comes to stay with a troop in Vietnam during the war.. Although these stories manifest on separate continents, the structures and themes are strikingly similar. Both Heart of Darkness and Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong focus in on the transition from their homeland mindsets to madness as a result of the environment. By way of gloomy diction ambiguity, Heart of Darkness and Things They Carried use the wilderness as a symbol of the greater force of mans moral confusion and images of madness to illustrate the materialization of the darkness in the human heart.

The wilderness is used as a manifestation of mans inherent evil and moral confusion. Conrads novella unravels in the heart of the Congo River area where native African tribes thrive in the jungle. When traveling through the jungle, Marlows crew looked on amazed, and began to suspect [themselves] of being deaf -- then the night came suddenly, and struck [them] blind as well. When the sun rose there was a white fog, very warm and clammy, and more blinding than the night (48). The large trees blocked out the light and the fog obscured the travelers vision, rendering their senses useless and subjecting them to assumptions. After they enter this fortress of nature, the crew frantically runs around, assuming that the natives are planning to attack. The jungle seems to further represent moral ambiguity and evil itself. This is confirmed because when Kurtz dies, the wilderness caressed him, 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 (59). Kurtz was a man of greed who lost sight of all human morality. The wilderness treated him like a beloved child, allowing Kurtzs evil to engulf himself. The devilish initiation suggests that the wilderness was a gateway, pulling him down to hell. Mary Anne from Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong is entangled in the moral confusion of the wilderness as well. It seemed to draw her in. A haunted look partly terror, partly rapture (105). The juxtaposed diction of terror and rapture portray the jungles affect as an addicting evil. It drew her in like a greater evil force, much more powerful than human will. For Mary Anne, the wilderness had the effect of a powerful drug: that mix of unnamed terror and unnamed pleasure that comes as the needle slips in and you know youre risking something (114). Much like Kurtz, Mary Anne becomes addicted to the wilderness and eventually part of it. This metaphor compares their relationships to the forest to drug addiction. This is appropriate because they become addicted to something that is detrimental.

Another similarity between Heart of Darkness and Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong is the theme of mental deterioration and paranoia as a result of human weakness. Before Marlows trip in Heart of Darkness, a doctor measures his skull and asks if he has ever any madness in [his] family (13). That the doctor asks this implies that other company employees have suffered from madness and foreshadows that Marlow will likely face a similar fate. Conrads use of the heads on stakes illustrates fear and madness. Those heads on the stakes [were] turned to the house (71). Kurtz mounted human skulls upon polls pointed to his quarters. These symbolic heads warned people not to betray Kurtz, and demonstrate Kurtzs inhumanity which he has acquired while in Africa. He feels the need to revert to savage acts, like displaying human bones, in order to instill fear. A very similar image appears in OBrians story. The character Rat Kiley finds Mary Anne in a hut with blood and excrement on the walls and on a post at the rear of the hootch was the decayed head of a large black leopard. And bones. Stacks of bonesall kinds (110). The image of the dead exotic animal evokes violence and savagery. Mary Anne came to Vietnam dressed primly, but once she came out of the jungle, she had become a beast who craved murder. At the girls throat was a necklace of human tongues(110). She further claimed that it was normal. The human tongue as a piece of jewelry expresses Mary Annes newly learned culture of dehumanization and progression on the path to madness.

Through violent displays, symbolic wilderness description, and the portrayal of the progression from sane and oblivious to deranged and exposed, both Heart of Darkness and Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong depict mans inherent evil. In two different worlds and two different time periods, people manage to behave similarlyhypocritical and savage. This suggests that man has an innate darkness in the heart, an instinctive evil that will always prevail in society.