Heart of Darkness: Reform Piece or Racist Trash? In 1890, Joseph Conrad spent four months as a steamship captain in the Congo. Like his character Marlow, Conrad became physically ill and very disturbed as a result of his experiences. The Congo haunted Conrad, and despite spending relatively little time there, he felt compelled to write about his experiences years later.1 Indeed, the Congo had a profound influence on Conrad. While there he met Roger Casement who would become a lifelong friend and ally in the campaign against Leopold II. Conrad's experience was very similar to Marlow's. As a young man, Conrad looked at maps and longed to travel to the still unexplored Congo, much as Marlow did. He was the captain of a steamboat that traveled between Stanley Falls and Leopoldville. Like Marlow, he also became seriously ill as a result of his travels. While in the region he kept a daily diary which would aid him in future work. Conrad originally wrote a short story about his experiences in the Congo, but later decided that a slightly longer work would be needed to address the subject.2 From this profound influence came a profound novella, Heart of Darkness, which was published in 1902 at the height of the Congo controversy. Heart of Darkness painted a very dark picture of the Congo. It's no surprise that there are so many dark images in Heart of Darkness, Conrad has adequately described the tone of the Congo. Kurtz can be seen as a white man who left for the Congo, like many others, in an attempt to "civilize" the inhabitants of the region. In the end, however, it is Kurtz who is the wildest. Kurtz could be a representative of any of the members of the For...... middle of paper ......about the different races have improved. Even the fact that there is a debate would indicate that people today are more aware of issues related to racism than in 1902. Works Cited(1), (2), (6) Forbath, Peter. The Congo River. Harper & Row Publishers. New York. 1977.(3) Widmer, Kingsley. "Giuseppe Corrado". Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 34. Gale Research Company. Detroit. 1985(4) Watts, Cedric. Conrad's "Heart of Darkness": A Critical and Contextual Discussion. Mursia International. 1977.(5) Pakenham, Thomas. The race for Africa. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. London. 1991.(7), (8), (9), (10), (12) Achebe, Chinua. Hopes and obstacles, selected essays. Double day. New York. 1977.(11), (13) Sarvan, C. P. "Racism and the 'Heart of Darkness'." The international fiction magazine. winter, 1980. International Fiction Association.