The artist’s moral principles in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Ingmar Bergman’s Persona

Abstract

In this work I will analyse Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, focusing on the moral principles that the characters hold and that also worry their authors. There are many novels and films in which a sort of heart of darkness could be identified. I have chosen these two masterpieces because they enter the heart of the heart of darkness and because it is an inner exploration that finally defines their main characters Marlow, Kurtz and Elisabet as artists full of moral thoughts and dilemmas. I will argue that an artist deals with moral principles in a different way than the rest of the people. My aims are to show that these works deal with the moral principles of the artist, to explain why Marlow, Kurtz and Elisabet Vogler could be considered as artists, and to understand their moral inner debate and their decisions. I will first carefully annotate the moral principles of these characters. I will then study the way in which the problem of the moral principles of the artist was dealt with in the historical and cultural context in which Conrad and Bergman created their respective works. I will also study the critical literature on these authors regarding the question of moral principles. Then I will analyse the thoughts and behaviour of the main characters of the novel and the film