Heart of Darkness, Blog #5

Some of the characteristics that describe a psychological novel are flashbacks, the psychological aspect of the characters within the story or a struggle within a character’s own psyche, the setting, and the story itself going into a great detail, even on the smallest aspect of the story.  Heart of Darkness is a psychological novel and within the reading the first two sections of this novel, Maslow has already began to use flashbacks to tell his story.  Maslow as a character seems like a very intelligent man; however, his past seems like is weighing him down.  Maslow has seen a lot of things in his life, some not as good as the others; for example, when Maslow witnesses a dying group of native workers on his journey down the African coast. “They were dying slowly- it was very clear.  They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now, -nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom” (279).  He basically gets to see first-hand how colonizers are taking over and either disregarding the natives or making them their slaves in order to prosper in this land.  This also makes the setting seem gloomy and depressing as natives' lifes are being taken over by colonizers.

The effects of colonialism on both the colonizers and those who are being colonized are quite different.  The colonizers are basically the people who are allowed to make the decisions on what is going to happen and if they have to, take the people who are being colonized as workers for themselves or slaves.  The people who are being colonized remind me of slaves in their own home.  They are being abused and the colonizers basically have complete control over what is going to happen to them, whether or not they will survive to see the next day or not.  To me, colonization portrayed so far in this novel seems to be very negative towards the people being colonized.  The colonizers are portrayed as selfish, greedy people while the natives are receiving the worse end of the deal by becoming prisoners.