Similarities Between Heart Of Darkness And The Man Who Would Be King

Imperialism: Backfired As history has shown, stronger nations regularly use imperialism over smaller nations to gain a benefit for themselves. However, both Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" and Rudyard Kipling's "The Man Who Would Be King" depicts how imperialism leads to madness and evil behavior as moral and ethical boundaries are taken away. Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" tells the story of Marlow and Kurtz, two men working together in Africa with varying opinions regarding imperialism. Kipling's "The Man Who Would Be King" tells the story of two veterans, Daniel Dravot and Peachey Carnehan, and their imperialist based schemes based upon convincing people that they are kings and have divine power. Kipling and Conrad both make it clear
Conrad and Kipling effectively and symbolically convey the message that what the stronger and imperialist country gains in material benefits, they lose in moral and ethical standards. In "Heart of Darkness," the character Kurtz intertwined with the natives too much, thus angering many Europeans. Marlow, on the other hand, was against imperialist yet still had his prejudices. The Company was the imperialist unit; they basically forced Africans to work for extremely small wages. This hurt the people of Africa and benefitted the Company. Thus, it's easy to see that, in fact, the Company benefitted materially yet lowered their moral and ethical standards. Kurtz dies and Marlow barley survives a particularly nasty disease. In "The Man Who Would Be King," Dravot and Carnehan scheme the people of Kafiristan into believing they are kings and gods. After getting greedy, Dravot tries to marry a women who simply doesn't want to marry a ‘god.' She bites him, and he bleeds. This gave away Dravot and Carnehan's secret, and they were chased through the mountains. Dravot fell from a cliff to his death, and Carnehan survived a pine tree