HOD + Freud

Heart of Darkness and the Freud text we are reading have similar views on the nature of man. Freud says that men will always pursue their penchant for sex, violence, money, and other desires without consideration for others. He also says that in a society in which nobody has property and everything is shared, men will still covet, do evil, be aggressive, and be bad. Freud sees human nature as automatically bad, determined by past experiences/hardships, and inevitably predictable. he also says that men exploit each other by nature. And, Freud says that men are slaves to their desires. Conrad echoes this exactly. The whole ivory and exploration enterprise, the treatment of the Africans, the corruption, the spoils, the exploitation, and pretty much every other aspect of the book present this same view of men. Dr. Forman, good job seeing this connection! To avoid being overly-vague i will use an example. The three africans chained together, walking up a hill to do work for white men were emaciated, sick, unhappy, dead inside, and driven exclusively by fear of punishment. This shows the evil, angry, exploitative, id-centered, selfish nature of man about which Freud talks in his book. This assignment is also good because it exposes us to Freud, a man who we are all likely to study in college.