With specific examples, demonstrate how Joseph Conrad treats the issues of race and empire in Heart of Darkness.

Joseph Conrad, author of Heart of
Darkness, traveled in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo in
Africa—the river is the Zaire. In Conrad time, it was called the Belgian Congo—he sailed
the Congo River. Conrad's novel allows us to understand his feelings toward the "empire"
and its treatment of the African natives.

In 1878, Leopold
II of Belgium took over Africa—gaining wealth by stripping Africa's of its natural
resources. In doing so, he and his "representatives" created conditions that were
deplorable—

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The Belgian traders committed many
well-documented acts of atrocity against the African
natives...

Leopold II was
eventually forced from his place of power in
Africa.

Charlie Marlow, the narrator of the story—and
ship's captain—is struck by a world that makes little sense as he travels into the
Congo. He finds many men on a quest for material gain; a casual and unfeeling
exploitation of the natives; and, paranoia and insanity running throughout the
Company—the organization that has sent Marlow into the Congo to bring back Kurtz, the
Company's most successful man in delivering shipments of ivory more valuable than those
of all the other agents put together.

When Marlow reaches
the first stop, the Lower Station, he has stepped into a world where reason does not
exist. The first thing he sees is scattered machinery, abandoned and rusting all over
the ground...

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...an undersized railway truck lying there on its
back with its wheels in the air. One was off. The thing looked as dead as the carcass of
some animal.

When Marlow
looks up at the cliff, he witnesses the purposeless blasting of
dynamite.

A
heavy and dull detonation shook the ground, a puff of smoke came out of the cliff, and
that was all. No change appeared on the face of the rock...the cliff was not in the way
or anything...

Marlow turns
at the sound of clinking behind him—noise from the chains that bind African "slaves."
They are wearing rags "round their loins;" Marlow notes that they are so thin that their
ribs stick out, as well as their joints; and, the iron "collar" each wears is connected
to another's and they all move in tandem.

Marlow does not
consider himself weak, but he is appalled at how the people have been
treated.

They
passed me within six inches...with [a] complete death-like
indifference...

They were dying slowly—it was very
clear.

At the Central
Station, Marlow discovers that the manager and his nephew greatly resent Kurtz's success
and they are paranoid about Kurtz's ability to send such an enormous amount of ivory out
of the Inner Station—and the power it affords Kurtz.

In the
Inner Station, Marlow finally finds Kurtz's "camp," and
notes:

Now I
had suddenly a nearer view, and its first result was to make me throw my head back as if
before a blow... These knobs...were...expressive and puzzling...They would have been
even more impressive, those heads on the stakes, if their faces had not been turned to
the house.

Human sacrifices
have also taken place, and Kurtz (worshipped as a God)—at one time brilliant—has lost
his connection to humanity...he is insane.

All that
motivates so many of the characters that Marlow encounters is an insatiable greed,
fostered by the "empire," with a mindless destruction of the native population. Wealth
matters more than human life. Marlow (and Conrad) abhors what the empire has done and
his descriptions of the tormented Africans expose these human-rights violations to the
world.