摘要

《黑暗之心》是二十世纪英国现代主义先驱之一约瑟夫· 康拉德颇具影响力的小说。小说一经问世便得到了各界的关注，在随后数十年里影响力越来越大。小说主要讲述了刚果河上象牙贸易公司的马洛对内地贸易站长科兹真实面目的揭露过程。随着渐入刚果腹地，马洛对科兹的了解也逐步深入，沿途的种种见闻逐步揭露了沦落到非洲社会的欧洲白人科兹的黑暗内心及其为达目的不择手段的本性，他在奴役黑人和攫取财富的过程中，逐渐被“荒野”吞没，他的悲剧是注定的。本文旨在分析科兹的悲剧性表现及其原因，此研究有助于更深刻地了解小说的主题。
本文拟从三个方面进行论述。第一部分简介康拉德及其作品，并阐述国内外评论家对《黑暗之心》这部小说的研究；第二部分从几个方面分析科兹人物形象的悲剧性；第三部分探讨其悲剧的成因。

关键词  科兹，非正常人，悲剧

Abstract

Heart of Darkness is one of the most powerful novels of Joseph Conrad. This novel tells a story what happened in Congo River. Marlow is a aimed to find Kurtz who is the chief of inner station. This trip is also the journey to the heart of Kurtz. With the deep into mainland of Congo, Marlow understands of Kurtz also deeply. What Marlow sees in the road exposes the darkness of Kurtz’s mind. Kurtz is a white people in Europe who is lost in black wildness. Chinese and Western critics studied the novel from colonialism, ecology, tragedy and so many aspects. This paper aims at exploring Kurtz’s tragedy in the work Heart of Darkness. The readers can deeply aware the Kurtz’s tragedy under the description of Conrad.
This paper discusses Kurtz’s tragedy from three aspects. The first part will introduce Conrad and his work briefly. The studies of the novel Heart of Darkness by critics will also shows. The second part will focus on Kurtz’s tragedy in his own nature. His behavior, status and real face are important reasons lead to his tragedy. The third part will combined Kurtz with social background. As a sacrifice of age, he tragedy is also have the relationship with whole society.

Keywords  Kurtz, abnormal people, tragedy

1  Introduction
1.1  Conrad and Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad（3 December 1857-3 August 1924）is one of the famous British novelist. He is the most colorful novelist in Western Modernist Literature. Conrad was born in an upper class family in Poland, followed by his parents into exile. At the age of 12, he became an orphan. When he was 17 years old he started to experience in 20 years in the sea. During that time he also witnessed the death and cruelty in the developing area. His sailing career ended in 1989, and then he became a full-time writer. His novels earlier reflect some initial signs of the tragedy of modern Western development. His writing categories can be divided into sea fiction, jungle fiction and political novels. He also wrote a lot of famous novels such as The Niggar of the “Narcissus”(1897), Heart of Darkness (1899), Lord Jim(1900), Under the Western Eye(1911) and so on.