This selection is a very cynical comment on how Europeans performed in the Congo surrounded by disease, natives, and the jealous ambitions of their fellow Anglo-males. The injustices committed by the Europeans were amplified by frustration that they could not naturally dominate in the Congolese environment (Adelman 26). Rather, they had to hide their ineptitude behind the shimmery veil of philanthropy and the "White Man's Burden-.
Despite the philanthropic justifications for European imperialism, greed and exploitation are other motives Conrad exposes in his novel. Concerning the Orient which received much of the same abuse as Africa during the time of imperialism, Edward Said argues, "The imaginative examination of things Oriental was based more or less exclusively upon a sovereign Western consciousness according to a detailed logic governed not simply by empirical reality but by a battery of desires, repressions, investments, and projections-(Said 8). "And it is precisely those desires, repressions, investments, and projections' that Heart of Darkness exposes in the discourses of imperialism."" (Hampson XXXii) Conrad's depiction of his characters best emulates this materialism. For example, concerning the Eldorado Exploring Expedition:.
Their talk, however, was the talk of sordid buccaneers: audacity, and cruel without courage; there was not an atom of foresight or serious intention in the whole batch of them, and they did not seem aware these things are wanted for the work of the world. To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe. (Conrad 27).
The Europeans prove to be empty and false, hiding behind the curtain of humanitarianism, while in actuality they are nothing but "papier-mché Mephistopheles- (Conrad 30). It is likely that Conrad encountered the true nature of imperialism while working for a Belgian company in the Congo under the reign of King Leopold II and became disenfranchised with the movement.
