【英语论文】康拉德《黑暗之心》中柯兹的人性分析Kurtz’s Nature In the Darkness.doc

康拉德黑暗之心中柯兹的人性分析Kurtzs Nature In the Darkness摘 要在英国现代文学史上，康拉德是个特殊的人物。他早年热衷于航海事业，直到19世纪90年代，即他投身航海生涯20年之后，才开始从事文学创作。然而他也是一位多产的作家，这些作品为他赢得了世界性的声誉。其代表作有台风，吉姆爷及黑暗之心。 黑暗之心是约瑟夫·康拉德的重要小说作品之一。它于1899年以连载的形式在英国的一家杂志首次发表。自从它问世以来，黑暗之心的影响逐年上升。这部小说本身是一部复杂的小说，是冒险故事，心理分析，政治讽喻，黑色幽默，和怀疑主义沉思的杂合体。在这篇论文中，通过使用弗洛伊德心理分析法以及多角度分析的方法，我试图分析出库尔兹在黑暗中闪现出的人性。通过以上方法，我试图使一个完整的库尔兹呈现出来。我的论文可分为五个部分。第一部分是对作者和他的作品黑暗之心的介绍。第二部分在对库尔兹人性的分析中，借用了精神分析学派的“我”的三重划分，指出库尔兹的堕落在于本我的肆意扩张，超我(社会性的道德、规范)失去了约束能力，自我沦丧。在第三部分中，我们可以看到一个迷失，残暴以及贪婪的库尔兹。第四部分指出库尔兹是一个多才多艺的理想主义者，他徘徊于西方文明与非洲文化之间。通过分析库尔兹表现出的人性，我们可以看出人性的神秘性，同时，我们可以把库尔兹整个人生的抗争看成是当时整个社会文明与个体道德的斗争。 关键词： 康拉德；柯兹；人性Abstract In English literature, Conrad is a special man. As a young man, he is fond of sailing. He is not engaged in the literature until the 90s in 19th century. However, he writes many novels and gets the world prestige. His representative works are Lord Jim, Nostromo and Heart of Darkness. Heart of Darkness is one of Joseph Conrad's celebrated novels. It was first serialized in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1899. Since its publication, Heart of Darkness has become progressively more influential during the following decades. Heart of Darkness itself is a complicated novel, since it is a mixture of adventure story, psychological case study, political satire, black humor comedy, and skeptical meditation. In the paper, I try to present Kurtz 's nature in the darkness, using Freudian psycho analysis and multi-angles analysis. With those approaches, I try to show an intact Kurtz. My paper can be divided into five parts. The first part is the introduction to Joseph Conrad and his novel Heart of Darkness. In the second part, this thesis borrows the three layers' division of "I'' in psycho analytics. This thesis indicates that the degeneration of Kurtz lies in his wantonly expanded ego while as his superego (social moral and regulation) lost binding force and his ego was mined. In the third part, we find a lost, cruel and greedy Kurtz. The fourth part presents a versatile idealist who stands between Western civilization and African culture. By analyzing Kurtz 's nature, we can find the mystery of human nature and the conflict of social civilization and individual moral. The fifth part is conclusion. Key Words: Conrad; Kurtz; natureIntroductionJoseph Conrad did not begin to learn English until he was 21 years old. He was born Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski on December 3, 1857, in Polish Ukraine. When Conrad was quite young, his father was exiled to Siberia on suspicion of plotting against the Russian government. After the death of the boys mother, Conrads father sent him to his mothers brother in Kraków to be educated, and Conrad never again saw his father. He traveled to Marseilles when he was seventeen and spent the next twenty years as a sailor. He went to an English ship in 1878, and eight years later he became a British subject. In 1889, he began his first novel, Almayers Folly, and began actively searching for a way to fulfill his boyhood dream of traveling to the Congo. He took command of a steamship in the Belgian Congo in 1890, and his experiences in the Congo came to provide the outline for Heart of Darkness. Conrads time in Africa wreaked havoc on his health, however, and he returned to England to recover. He returned to sea twice before finishing Almayers Folly in 1894 and wrote several other books, including one about Marlow called Youth: A Narrative before beginning Heart of Darkness in 1898. He wrote most of his other major worksincluding Lord Jim, which also features Marlow, Nostromo, and The Secret Agent, as well as several collaborations with Ford Madox Fordduring the following two decades. Conrad died in 1924.Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous jungle novels, is created on the basis of Conrads diary in 1890 when he was on the journey to Congo. On a cruising yawl at rest on Thames, the narrator, Marlow is telling his story about his travel along another river and the legend of an agent down in the jungle. He is appointed by a company that gathers ivory in Congo. Even though the journey seems quite arduous and somewhat elusive, Marlow, who has always had a passion for travel and exploration, sets out his adventure. From beginning to end, what he sees and hears are the dark Africa where the trade agents are greedily gathering ivory, seizing and grabbing the natives brutally. Especially when he witnesses the fable about Kurtz. As a well-educated white, Kurtz, who has the talent of eloquence as his trump card, is arbitrarily ruling his empire but blindly worshipped by the natives as a saint. The works provides a bridge between Victorian values and the ideals of modernism. Like much of the best modernist literature produced in the early decades of the twentieth century, Heart of Darkness is as much about alienation, confusion, and profound doubt as it is about imperialism. Imperialism is nevertheless at the center of Heart of Darkness. By the 1890s, most of the worlds “dark places” had been placed at least nominally under European control, and the major European powers were stretched thin, trying to administer and protect massive, far-flung empires. Cracks were beginning to appear in the system: riots, wars, and the wholesale abandonment of commercial enterprises all threatened the white men living in the distant corners of empires. Things were clearly falling apart. Heart of Darkness suggests that this is the natural result when men are allowed to operate outside a social system of checks and balances: power, especially power over other human beings, inevitably corrupts. At the same time, this begs the question of whether it is possible to call an individual insane or wrong when he is part of a system that is so thoroughly corrupted and corrupting. Heart of Darkness, thus, at its most abstract level, is a narrative about the difficulty of understanding the world beyond the self, about the ability of one man to judge another.Darkness is the theme of this story. It is the clue to find out the context of the story. Conrad makes an integral connection between mind, body and nature by this application. Darkness is also the color of the places where explores and colonialists settled, and the color of the blacks skin. In contrast to the darkness, the white seems extremely outstanding. But inside their white skin, the colonists have a heart of profound darkness, evil and dread.1 Id, superego, ego of Kurtz by psycho analysis1.1 Definitions of termsThis thesis intends to make a Freudian psycho analysis of Kurtz s nature in the darkness in terms of Sigmund Freud's theory-the structures of mind. Therefore, it is necessary to make clear two definitions: Freudian and psychoanalysis first of all. Freud, is the recognized founder of modern psychoanalysis, who has exerted an influence far beyond his own field. His theory of the workings of human mind and its descriptive terminology find application in almost all branches of humanities and social sciences. Psychoanalysis is a systematic structure of theories concerning the relation of conscious psychological processes. Or it is a technical procedure for investigating unconscious mental processes. Psychoanalytic theory is Freud's theory that the origin of personality lies in the balance between the id, the ego, and the superego. One's personality is the total sum of all of the ways of acting, thinking, and feeling that are typical for that person and make that person different from all other individuals. 1.2 Three structures of mind-the id, the ego, and the superegoThe 1926 edition of The Encyclopedia Britannica described Freud's concept of the elements of personality as follows:The mental apparatus is composed of the "id," which is the reservoir of the instructive impulses, of the "ego" which is the most superficial portion of the id and the one which is modified by the influences of the external world, and of the "super-ego," which develops out of the id, dominates the ego and represents the inhibition of instinct characteristic of man. The id, according to Freud, is the inborn part of the unconscious mind that uses the primary process to satisfy its needs and that acts according to the pleasure principle. Someone further explains that the id is a cauldron of seething excitement. In the id, there is nothing corresponding to the idea of time, no recognition of the passage of time. The id knows no values, no good and evil, no morality, and blindly strives to gratify its instincts in complete disregard of the superior strength of outside forces. In his essay "The Ego and the Id", Freud presents the id as follows: an individual is looked upon as a psychical id, unknown and unconscious. The id attracts all kinds of instinctive forces in order to find their mental representation. The instincts in the id press for immediate satisfaction, regardless of all else, and in this way either fail of achievement or actually do damage. From the point of view of instinctive control, of morality, it may be said of the id that it is totally non-moral. The ego is that portion of human personality experienced as the "self' or "I," which perceives, remembers, evaluates, plans, and in other ways is responsive to and acts in the surrounding physical and social world. The 1974 edition of Encyclopedic World Dictionary defines it as "that part of the psychic apparatus which experiences the outside world and reacts to it, thus mediating between the primitive drives of the id and the demands of the social and physical environment." While someone points out why the ego is formed, that's because the id has to find realistic ways of meeting its needs and avoiding trouble caused by selfish and aggressive behavior. The ego operates according to the reality principle. The ego can be thought of as the executive of the personality because it uses its cognitive abilities to manage and control the id and balance its desires against the restrictions of reality and the superego. According to Freud, the ego is that part of the id which has been modified by the direct influence of the external world. It seeks to bring the influence of the external world to bear upon the id and its tendencies, and endeavors to substitute the reality principle for the pleasure principle which reigns unrestrictedly in the id. It strives to be moral, representing what may be called reason and common sense, in contrast to the id, which contains the passions. The ego is placing itself at the service of the opposing instinctual impulses. It is the representative of the external world to the id. And it tries to mediate between the world and the id. When the ego finds itself in an excessive real danger, where it believes itself unable to overcome by its own strength, it sees itself deserted by all protecting forces and makes itself die. The superego holds up certain norms of behavior, and does not regard to any difficulties coming from the id and the external world. It is the part of the mind that opposes the desires of the id by enforcing moral restrictions and by striving to attain a goal of "ideal" perfection. The Encyclopedic World Dictionary defines it as "that part of the psychic apparatus which mediates between ego drives and social ideals, acting as a conscience, which may be partly conscious and partly unconscious." In others angle, the superego represents the internalization of parental standards and authority. In the normal male child, it replaces the Oedipal desire for the mother. The developing superego thus absorbs the traditions of the family and the surrounding society, serving chiefly to control sexual and aggressive impulses that threaten social structures. In his "The Ego and the Id", Freud assumes the existence of a grade in the ego, a differentiation within the ego, which may be called the "ego ideal" or "superego". The superego derives from the first object of the id, from the Oedipus complex. The ego ideal has the task of repressing the Oedipus wishes. Therefore, the superego "retains the character of the father." Freud points out that the ego ideal is the heir of the Oedipus complex, that it is also the expression of the most powerful impulses and most important libidinal vicissitudes of the id, and that it exercises the moral censorship in the form of conscience. It can be super-moral and then become as cruel as only the id can be. Then how is it that the superego develops such extraordinary harshness and severity towards the ego? Freud proposes, “The excessively strong superego which has obtained a hold upon consciousness rages against the ego with merciless violence. The destructive component had entrenched itself in the superego and turned against the ego.” What is the relationship between the id, the ego and the superego? "The ego is a poor creature owning service to three masters and consequently menaced by three dangers: from the external world, from the libido of the id, and from the severity of the superego." It has to reconcile between the id and the external world, to make the id pliable to the world and to make the world fall in with the wishes of the id. Whenever possible, it tries to remain on good terms with the id; it pretends that the id is showing obedience to the admonitions of reality, even when in fact it is remaining obstinate and unyielding; it disguises the id's conflicts with reality and, if possible, its conflicts with the superego too.In my thesis, I will apply the theories of the id, the ego, and the superego to the psycho analysis of Kurtz s nature.1.3 The application of the psycho analysisIn civilized society, on the basis of the superego, the ego harmonizes the relationship between the id and society, so people's id can only be satisfied to a certain extent. In Europe, Kurtz lives in the civilized society. Everything is set in a formed way which assumes the implement of civilization. He grows up in the atmosphere and acts according to the accepted yardstick. When he has no money, his id drove him to get money. But he will not rob from others because of the existence of the superego. In such condition, the ego can deal with the relationship between the id and the superego well. In Africa, when people are far away from the civilized society, in order to meet the ids demand, they will act by any kind of means. Colonists can do anything they want to do. They ignored the superego and did things at will. There also existed the conflict between white colonists apart from the contradiction between the black and the white. Kurtz was a great man in the Congo River. After being far away from the ethic of the civilized society, the function of the id was greater and greater .As we know, the desire of the id is limitless and he was totally controlled by the id in the end. The following state is that Kurtz regarded himself as the dominator and the desire of goi