Heart of Darkness, unarguably one of the best novels ever, on the subject of imperialism and the madness that it gives birth to. The novel deals with the subject of madness not in terms of medical lunacy but lunacy that originates from becoming very powerful, from corruption of soul and from higher level of intellect. In one of his letters, Joseph Conrad described the central premise of the novel as "an anecdote of a man who went mad in the Center of Africa." (Collected, 417) From the beginning of the novel, it appears that madness is a critical theme as Marlow faces the rather intriguing question: "'Ever any madness in your family?' |the trading company's doctor~ asked, in a matter of fact tone" (11). Madness is a omnipresent threat in a place where temptations are myriad and many and where soul is always vulnerable. Marlow realizes that when in the presence of boundless temptations, any man could go a little mad. He sees the very extremes of madness in Kurtz, the man who couldn't hold on to his soul when a chance for its corruption presented itself. Kurtz is repeatedly described as mad and this madness had its sources in two important things: a) intellect/genius and b) unbridled power. Perhaps Marlow gave one of the best explanations for madness within Kurtz when he tries to understand the sources of depths of madness that he noticed in Kurtz. It is where he overcomes with this deep urge to kill Kurtz because the man looked just so extraordinarily inhuman:
             "Soul! If anybody has ever struggled with a soul, I am the man. And I wasn't arguing with a lunatic either. Believe me or not, his intelligence was perfectly clear-concentrated, it is true, upon himself with horrible intensity, yet clear; and therein was my only chance-barring of course, the killing him there and then, which wasn't so good, on account of the unavoidable noise. But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself, and, by...