Light and Darkness in Heart of Darkness Every story has a plot, but not every story has a deeper meaning. When viewed superficially, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is the tragic story of the white man's journey into the African jungle. When we peel back the layers, however, a different journey is revealed: we venture into the soul of man, complete with warts and wonders. Conrad uses this theme of light and darkness to contrast the civilized European world with the wild African world in Heart of Darkness. In Heart of Darkness, Conrad uses light and darkness to symbolize good and evil respectively. "It is the white that is truly sinister and evil, for it symbolizes the immoral rush for loot by the unscrupulous and callous Belgian traders in ivory and human flesh; the white of the ivory is also contrasted with the black of the natives whose lives must be destroyed for his sake" (Gillon 25). Two central themes recur in Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The first is the fight between the whites and the native tribes, which takes place in... middle of the card... ok and also gives the title. In Heart of Darkness there is a real contrast between what is light and what is dark. These contrasts function within a civilized and savage reality. It seems that light represents the civilized and dark represents the uncivilized, but in reality white is evil and dark is innocent and virtuous. Works Cited Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. Middlesex, England: Penguin Publishers, 1983. Gillon, Adam. (1982). Giuseppe Corrado. Twayne's English Author Series: Number 333. Kinley E. Roby, ed. Boston: Twayne.