Writing the Unspeakable:

Horror and Desire in Roger Casement’s Black Diaries, Ricardo Eustasio Rivera’s The Vortex, and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

Abstract

The representation of the jungle environment as an uncanny space is shared by the texts of Casement, Rivera and Conrad in their portrayal of extractivist practices in Latin America and Africa. Roger Casement’s 1912 investigation of human rights abuses in the Amazon and José Eustasio Rivera’s 1924 novel La Vorágine (The Vortex) both describe the experience of disorientation of the jungle environment during the rubber boom, using sensorial imagery to evoke a profound sense of horror, along with vivid descriptions of exploitation. Although similar to Joseph Conrad’s 1899 Heart of Darkness, the texts by Casement and Rivera use their sensory immersion in the uncanny environment of the jungle to evoke its power and criticize exploitation and colonialism. Ultimately, the uncanniness of the jungle is revealed to be a crisis of Western masculinities and identity during the early twentieth century.