What If?: Pushed Over the Edge

As profound and powerful as Heart of Darkness was, there were also some painful, gritty truths weaved into it. There was one in particular which struck me when it surfaced in our class discussion one day: If one is pushed too far, one may start to lose his/her ethics or identity.

            Of course, the primary example of this phenomenon in the novella is Mr. Kurtz, who, after spending so much time as a commander of a trading post in the Congo, became an insane tyrant ruling over the natives. In essence, we concluded, Kurtz had been pushed so far beyond his limits and humanity, that he had lost his previous aspirations and even morality.

            But… the first time I heard this, I was confused. It contradicted what I had been told ever since the first time I skinned my knee: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Time and time again, I’ve heard quotes like “You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have,” and so on. These describe situations which are so hopeless, that the way you react reveals a lot about your character and identity. So what is the difference between this “push over the edge” which actually makes you “grow” and the one Kurtz experienced?

            Perhaps it depends on the “push”. Are some trials and tribulations more likely to make one weaker than others? Maybe a skinned knee and the depths and dangers of the African wilderness cannot be compared because the vast gap in severity between them. Or perhaps it depends on the person being pushed. Could it be that every person just has his or her own set of limits? But, if this is the case, how does one know what they are?

            I don’t know if it is even possible to tell. After all, unlike reading a novel or watching a movie, in this case we do not constitute a third person perspective… we are actually inside the character we are analyzing: our own self. As we discussed about the Stanford Prison Experiment, it often takes an outside person to alert one to the ways he or she has changed. And even then, the waters can be very muddy, and the mind can be very hard to read.

            I am thankful that Heart of Darkness became the devil’s advocate to my previous notions of the near indestructibility of the human spirit and mind. Don’t get me wrong, it is much stronger and resilient than we often give it credit for, but there is a hidden fragility among it all. Looking into pressure points and that “edge” could be very valuable because, in the end, our identity is all we really have.