Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky--seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.


The last sentence of Conrad's most widely-read work reinforces the central motif of the novel, namely the contrast between light and dark.  Throughout the early pages of the novel, light and dark appear alternately. There is the "luminous space" in the sky, but also a "brooding gloom." The river "shone pacifically" but a mist "like a gauzy and radiant fabric" begins to cover the shoreline.  Even the ships mentioned in the beginning reference this contrast of light and dark: mention of The Golden Hind, a treasure ship loaded with gleaming gold, is followed directly by reference to the Erebus, named after the Greek personification of darkness.


At the end of Conrad's novel, however, light is nowhere to be found, only "a black bank of clouds," a river that flows "sombre under an overcast sky" and that flows into "the heart of an immense darkness." For readers of the novel, this transition might seem obvious, but it reinforces the craft of Conrad, and of all authors who control the imagery of the novel to reflect the purpose and themes of the novel itself.