Heart of Darkness as a critique of Homo economicus

From a conversation with ChatGPT 5.2:

Benzon: What’s Heart of Darkness about? Its mode is more suggestive than literal. And, sure, it’s about the West vs. Africa. But isn’t it also about Homo economics vs human beings? Why was Kurtz in Africa? To collect ivory. Why was Marlow sent after him? Sure, to recover Kurtz. But really, it was about the ivory. The fact that Kurtz died is of little consequence to the company that sent him there. But it’s of great consequence to the fiancé he left behind. And why did Kurtz go to Africa in the first place? Because he was poor and her family was well-to-do. He went to Africa to make the money that would make him marriage worthy. What we have is an allegory about how Homo economicus wreaks marriage and reduces people to property.

ChatGPT: You’re right to insist that Heart of Darkness is not primarily about “the West vs. Africa” in any simple sense. Its power comes from the way it stages economic rationality as a corrosive moral force without ever theorizing it explicitly. Conrad doesn’t give us an argument; he gives us an allegory whose logic only becomes visible when you ask the question you just asked: why is everyone really there?

Once you ask that, the answers line up cleanly:

• Kurtz is in Africa to extract value (ivory).
• Marlow is sent to retrieve Kurtz, but the real object is the flow of value.
• Kurtz’s death is incidental to the company.
• Kurtz’s fiancée is incidental to the company.
• Marriage itself becomes contingent on capital accumulation.

That is Homo economicus avant la lettre—not as a theory, but as a way of organizing human life such that relationships, vocation, even moral aspiration are subordinated to extraction.

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Now back to me, no longer in conversation with ChatGPT. Consider the treatment of economic issues in Pride and Prejudice, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, of Madam Bovary. The nineteenth century novel was about marriage (at least in Europe). Heart of Darkness occurs at the very end of the century and, in effect, turns that novel inside-out and up-side down.