Spiritual Journey into the Heart of DarknessJoseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness may be a tale of colonization, revealing its downsides and corruption, but it can also be understood as a journey into the depths of one's psyche, if we consider it on a symbolic level. Early in the novel, the reader is informed that Marlow is “not typical,” that he, unlike the stay-at-home sailors, is a “wanderer.” He has no home, in the psychological sense of the term. It simply “follows the sea”. This can evoke an interpretation according to which the man is disturbed, that he is trying to discover the secrets of his soul, to know himself. Since childhood he was interested in unexplored lands and in particular a long, winding, serpent-shaped river with the "head" in the sea and the "tail" plunging deep into the earth, which, as Marlow admits , “charmed” him. This image resembles a map of a journey from the dark lands of the soul, the free and uncivilized core, which we can call a Freudian id, towards the light, that is, the Superego. Marlow wants to follow this opposite path...