Essay: Body Paragraph 2

In the novel "Heart of Darkness", Conrad shows the different classes of life.  He presents broad extremes that range from the 5 wealthy men from England to the low, poor, uneducated, cannibalistic    villagers of Africa.  Yet Conrad uses these two extremes to make an enormous comparison that feeds directly of the ideas of Freud, which is that no matter how wealthy you are or how poor you are, all people are the same, because they are all born with the natural aggressiveness that causes us to act like savages and animals.  The way we see these actions take place is the use of Conrad inserting Marlow into the story which allows us to have an eyes and ears in the novel.  Through Marlow we not only see a developing story but the reader feels the story as they are in a point of view for the story where they experience what happens hands on.  Marlow's shift from Europe to Africa changes not because of his surroundings purse but because he is finally released into the wild where his id is free to roam and explore and truly develop.  Marlow's transformation proves Freud's point of the inability of humans to detach themselves from their natural ways.  Freud develops the idea that we are all born with natural instinct and this addresses human beings as not people but parts of the animal kingdom.  As well, through Marlow we see changes in others as the rich become desperate and greedy and let their superegos, that which is not spoken or done, take over them, and as end result end them.  Throughout the novel the shift between dark and light is drastic and simply enough epitomizes Freuds theory of superego and id, where the superego is what we cannot say or do (dark) the id is what we are born to do (light) and everything, as Marlow comes back to Europe, always has to commit towards the center of balance, the ego.