Joseph Conrad on Inner Conflict

Inner Conflict Quotes
Joseph Conrad on Inner Conflict
I found myself back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams. They trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretence, because I felt so sure they could not possibly know things I knew.

The above string of words is taken from Joseph Conrad’s novella, Heart of Darkness which beautifully describes the inner conflict of a moral man, i.e. what is inner conflict? The inner conflict between the money and the morality, inner conflict between the purity of savage life and the chaos of urban flake. Inner conflict that most of us go through on the daily basis, chasing the bread, butter, wine, and little pieces of silver.

It was not my strength that wanted nursing, it was my imagination that need soothing.

The problem with inner conflict that you know, you are right, but at same time, you feel that you are wrong in some or other way. Because the world does not works like you think, and actually it’s not. Because nobody believes in the values, every one believes that money runs the world. You feel devastated and lost.

Kurtz who was commissioned by an European company to get the ivory from virgin earth of the Africa, got transfixed in between the dilemma of morality and consumerism. Kurtz didn’t know what to look for, money or morality. At first he choose the easier one, money and got his fame across the Europe, but this fame cost him too much. But later with the self-realization, he chose the morality, which earned his words, immortality among the memories of the people he met or influenced in some or other way.

And perhaps in this is the whole difference, perhaps all the wisdom and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible. Perhaps! I like to think my summing-up would not have been a word of careless contempt. Better his cry-much better. It was an affirmation, a moral victory paid for the innumerable defeats, by abominable terrors, by abominable satisfactions. But it was a victory! That is why I have remained loyal to Kurtz to the last, and even, when a long time after I heard once more, not his own voice, but the echo of his magnificent eloquence thrown to me from a soul as translucently pure as cliff of crystal.
But I think there are some people, who believe in you. There are some people who knows you are right somewhere in their hearts. Though Kurtz finds the death at very untimely moment of his life, but he realises the truth before his final moments and which frees him and grants him salvation. That, if you want to live free, you need to live the way you want.

So, is there any solution the inner conflict? I think, it is, but there is no absolute solution. And each solution is different from other. But what I think, the closet solution to the problem is you. Because it is your conflict, it is your struggle. It is you who can best describe the situation. Your choice will define you. And your choice is your only solution. And this very idea also affirmed by Mr Conrad, as he speaks through his alter-ego, Charles Marlow.

His words will remain.

You can read the Heart of Darkness online at Project Gutenberg or you can buy the print copy at Amazon

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