“There is a machine. It evolved itself, and behold!… it knits. It knits us in, it knits us out. It has knitted time, space, pain, death, corruption, despair, and all the illusions… and nothing matters. I’ll admit however that to look at the remorseless process is something interesting.” Joseph Conrad addresses the evils of this machine that has created modern society and molded its citizens in his book Heart of Darkness. In the story, …showed first 75 words of 934 total…

…showed last 75 words of 934 total…of craven terror—of an intense and hopeless despair.” (pg. 64) The corruption, despair, and death in Conrad’s book form the darkness that Marlow experiences. The tone that his writing emulates is one of pessimism, but the message is not. Through Heart of Darkness, Conrad is trying to tell the reader that the only way to rid the world of darkness is to acknowledge it and oppose it, for the machine cannot perform against opposition.