Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Carl Jungs Principle of Opposite

Carl Jung was a pioneer of psychoanalytic theory along with his former partner and mentor, Sigmund Freud. Though Jung split from Freud and diverged onto his give birth unbeaten trail of psychoanalysis two years before his decease, they argon both highly revered for the myriad of ways in which they developed the sense of the mind. Parallel to this period, Joseph Conrad penned and published the novella Heart of Darkness, which tackled much of what Jung had found about the psyche and its inner workings. In Heart of Darkness, both Marlow and Kurtz are representations of strong reoccurring archetypes inside human myth, religion, and folklore. They work together to epitomize one of Jungs Cores of Personality the Principle of Opposites. The Principle of Opposites states that both sides of opposite pairsgood and bad, light and dark, joy and despair, et ceteraare present to complete the other. In this way, Marlow and Kurtz are opposite replications of each other in Conrads Heart of Darkness they are doppelgngers that complete each other, as in Jungian theory.Marlow is the raconteur of Heart of Darkness, and therefore is one of the more crucial characters within the plot. He embodies the willingness to be valiant, resilient, and gallant, while similarly seeming to be cautiously revolutionary. He is, seemingly the epitome of bravery, going into the jungle. Marlows voyage is, in essence, a night journey into the unconscious, the confrontation with an entity within the self (Guerard 38). The lowering coast is an allegory for the idea of the unconscious mind. Watching a coast as it slips by the ship there it is before yousmiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always wordless with an air of whispering (1... ...Works CitedBurke, Colleen. Colleen Burke - Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness - A Metaphor Of Jungian Psychology. 15 Nov. 2011. .Conrad, Joseph, and Paul B. Armstrong. Heart of Darkness Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Contexts, Critici sm. juvenile York W.W. Norton &, 2006. Guerard, Albert J. Conrad the Novelist. Cambridge, MA. Harvard U. Press, 1958.Hughs, Richard E. The Lively Image Four Myths in Literature. Cambridge, MA Winthrop Publishers, 1975.Jung, C. G. Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 9, Part 1., 2nd ed., Princeton University Press, 1968. 451 p. (p. 54-72).Lord, George de Forest. Trials of the Self Heroic Ordeals in the Epic Tradition Hamden, Conn. Archon Books, 1983.Spivack, Charlotte. The journey to Hell Satan, The Shadow, and the Self. Centennial Review 94 (1965) 420 - 437.