The Search for Truth in the Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness is set in the Congo region of Africa, and his descriptions of that place are stark but filled with the wonder of discovery as well as the shock that comes from discovering ugly truths. Conrad was purposely vague in the setting of Heart of Darkness; in reality he never named the destination to which Marlow went. This may be because Heart of Darkness was more of an internal journey than a journey between places. Conrad juxtaposed his protagonist's internal quest with an external journey through the wilds of "dark" Africa. The climax of the novel was not actions, but moral discoveries and intellectual awakenings. A stylistic device used by Conrad throughout the novel is highlighting themes by placing certain symbolic elements in opposition to contrasting symbolic elements. To achieve this, he relied heavily on metaphors. Metaphors gain meaning only because they are associated in the reader's mind with images or ideas that go beyond the intrinsic meanings of the words themselves (Searl 1979). In reference to the title Heart of Darkness, Ian Watt said "...Both of Conrad's nouns are densely charged with physical and moral suggestion; freed from the restrictions of the article, they combine to generate a sense of perplexity that prepares us for something beyond our usual expectations: if words do not name what we know, they must ask us to know what does not yet have a name" (Watt 1963). In Heart of Darkness the contrast between the elements, which can be represented as bright, and the elements, which can be characterized as dark, resonated. Light carries with it metaphorical meanings... middle of paper... Cox, C.B. Conrad: Heart of Darkness, Nostromo, and Under Western Eyes. London: Macmillan Education Ltd., 1987.Guetti, James. “Heart of Darkness and the Failure of the Imagination,” Sewanee Review LXXIII, no. 3 (summer 1965), pp. 488-502. Ed. CB Cox.Ruthven, KK 'The Savage God: Conrad and Lawrence', Critical Quarterly, x, nn. 1 and 2 (spring and summer 1968), pp. 41-6. Ed. CB Cox.Street, Brian V. The wild in literature. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1975. Thornton, A.P. The Imperial Idea and Its Enemies. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985. Watts, Cedric. A preface to Corrado. Essex: Longman Group UK Limited, 1993.Wiley, The Measure of a Man by Paul L. Conrad. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1954. Wynne-Davies, Marion. Ed. The Bloomsbury Guide to English Literature. New York: General reference to Prentice Hall, 1990.