Joseph Conrad

Both The Return of the Native and Heart of Darkness present two culturally striking emotional reflections that stem from the civilized self in man's pre-civilization existence(1). Civilization and its consequent impacts on the consciousness of the individual may result in continuous yearning for a lost world, which led to skeptical attitude and vulnerability to hostility of the so called progress. These matters constitute various forces in modern literary texts. In this respect, the desire for material complacency granted by civilization, which affects man's position among his peers, becomes controversial. Then, virtual glory offered by human is inadequate and helpless to enable man live in harmony with his self. Thus, in both novels conflicts arise from other serious conflicts within the cultural perspectives that ramify into a series of internal arguments on the values impacted by civilization construction.

Critics have observed that the cultural aspects of these two novels include values conflict and civilization reliability conflict. For example, Roy Huss believes that The Return of the Native involves the values of urban culture fused with other social and cultural values as an integral part of overall tragic situation (2). Also, Donald Benson argues that Heart of Darkness may be a novel that explores the nature of civilization with its capabilities and origins and traces what is human in essence (3). However, despite the observations on the cultural problems raised in the two novels, there is a tendency of civilized mentality to re-estimate the value of civilization as a major force from the structural perspective. It is possible then that the structural study shows that both narratives, despite the difference in attitudes, style and characters, stem from a primitive tendency that lies in the consciousness of narrators as a really inclusive tendency (4). In addition, the political features of figures in Heart of Darkness and the social background in The Return of the Native represent definite two different contexts in which the dramatic qualities are attributed to the primitive tendencies (5).