An Interpretation Of Heart Of Darkness In Perspective Of Eco-ethics

As one of the most famous colonial novels, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness has been studied from many a respect. This thesis will analyze this novella from the perspective of ecological ethics in order to study the environmental problems as well as social crises caused in such a special condition with the thought of giving light to the modern problems of both the environment and society.The thesis includes four chapters besides the Introduction and Conclusion. The first chapter puts forward the definition of ecological ethics and the basic thoughts of it, including Paul W. Taylor's thought of respect for nature as well as Aldo Leopold's idea of land ethic. The second chapter probes into the novella Heart of Darkness from the perspective of ecological ethics to discuss the imbalance of the relationship between human and nature, especially that between the white people and the African wilderness, from three aspects: the influence of human's behaviors upon the plants, the animals as well as the land in nature on the basis of the elaborate explanation of nature's value. The third chapter discusses the relationship among human beings from two aspects: one is the superiority of the white people to the native people; the other is the indifference among the whites. The coming of the white people not only leads to the problems of the local environment, but also results in the crises of society. The white people take the natives as instruments and make use of them while they, at the same time, treat their own people indifferently. The fourth chapter takes attempts to explore the reasons and causes of such environmental and social problems generally from three aspects: European social environment spurs the white people to come to Congo for either disseminating European civilization to the barbaric natives or acquiring the ivory; the thought of anthropocentrism makes the white people believe that they are the ruler of nature and superior to other races; and the attitude of the whites towards nature influences the relation among human being.Finally, this thesis comes to a conclusion that because of the thought of anthropocentrism, many a crisis has been caused by the whites in the colony—Congo. And because of that the relations between human and nature as well as between man and man fall into problems, such as the imbalance of nature, social moral crisis. In modern society, with the development of technology, more and more people make a grab at nature to satisfy their needs. Nowadays human being is also facing the same problems as Congo does. Furthermore, in modern society, human being puts more emphasis on money and materials. Like the whites in Heart of Darkness, all human do is to make more money. Gradually the relation among human becomes indifferent and human are likely to ignore morality. Since the method of only using ever-developed technologies cannot give solutions to the crises of the environment, the thesis concludes that if people resort to the means of changing their former anthropocentric thought when they deal with those problems with technologies, maybe the crises of both the environment and the society are likely to be solved.