Heart of Darkness

by Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)

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Chronology

Basic Facts

Narrative Techniques

Structure

Characters

Women in the Heart of Darkness

Study Questions

Fu Jen University's Students Work

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Conrad Websites
Conrad and Heart of Darkness
The Joseph Conrad Foundation

Heart of Darkness
Gradesaver: Biography of Joseph Conrad
Classic Notes on the Heart of Darkness
Essays on Heart of Darkness

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Chronology

This extract is taken from Adam Gillon, Joseph Conrad (Boston: Twayne, 1982)

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Basic Facts

Type of work - Novella (between a novel and a short story in length and scope)

Genre - Symbolism, colonial literature, adventure tale, frame story, almost a romance
in its insistence on heroism and the supernatural and its preference for the symbolic over the realistic

Time and place written - England, 1898-1899; inspired by Conrad's journey to the 
Congo in 1890

Date of first publication - Serialized in Blackwood's Magazine in 1899; published in 
1902 in the volume Youth: A Narrative; and Two Other Stories

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Narrative Technique

Narrator - There are two narrators: an anonymous passenger on the Nellie, who 
listens to Marlow's story, and Marlow himself, a middle-aged ship's captain

Point of view - The first narrator speaks in the first-person plural, on behalf of four other passengers who listen to Marlow's tale.

Marlow narrates his story in the first person, describing only what he witnessed and experienced, and providing his own commentary on the story.

Tone - Ambivalent: Marlow is disgusted at the brutality of the Company and horrified by Kurtz's degeneration, but he claims that any thinking man would be tempted into similar behavior.

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Structure

Setting (time) - Latter part of the nineteenth century, probably sometime between 1876 and 1892.

Setting (place) - Opens on the Thames River outside London, where Marlow is telling the story that makes up Heart of Darkness. Events of the story take place in Brussels, at the Company's offices, and in the Congo, then a Belgian territory.

Major conflict - Both Marlow and Kurtz confront a conflict between their images of themselves as "civilized" Europeans and the temptation to abandon morality completely once they leave the context of European society.

Rising action - The brutality Marlow witnesses in the Company's employees, the rumors he hears that Kurtz is a remarkable and humane man, and the numerous examples of Europeans breaking down mentally or physically in the environment of Africa.

Climax - Marlow's discovery, upon reaching the Inner Station, that Kurtz has completely abandoned European morals and norms of behavior.

Falling action - Marlow's acceptance of responsibility for Kurtz's legacy, Marlow's encounters with Company officials and Kurtz's family and friends, Marlow's visit to Kurtz's Intended.

Themes - The hypocrisy of imperialism, madness as a result of imperialism, the absurdity of evil

Motifs - Darkness (very seldom opposed by light), interiors vs. surfaces (kernel/shell, coast/inland, station/forest, etc.), ironic understatement, hyperbolic language, inability to find words to describe situation adequately, images of ridiculous waste, upriver vs. downriver/toward and away from Kurtz/away from and back toward civilization (quest or journey structure)

Symbols - Rivers, fog, women (Kurtz's Intended, his African mistress), French warship shelling forested coast, grove of death, severed heads on fence posts, Kurtz's "Report," dead helmsman, maps, "whited sepulchre" of Brussels, knitting women in Company offices, man trying to fill bucket with hole in it, etc.

Foreshadowing - Permeates every moment of the narrative─mostly operates on the level of imagery, which is consistently dark, gloomy, and threatening

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Characters

Marlow

Charlie Marlow, thirty-two years old, has always "followed the sea", as the novel puts it. His voyage up the Congo river, however, is his first experience in freshwater travel. Conrad uses Marlow as a narrator in order to enter the story himself and tell it out of his own philosophical mind.
When Marlow arrives at the station he is shocked and disgusted by the sight of wasted human life and ruined supplies . The manager's senseless cruelty and foolishness overwhelm him with anger and disgust. He longs to see Kurtz- a fabulously successful ivory agent and hated by the company manager. More and more, Marlow turns away from the white people (because of their ruthless brutality) and to the dark jungle ( a symbol of reality and truth.) He begins to identify more and more with Kurtz- long before he even sees him or talks to him. In the end, the affinity between the two men becomes a symbolic unity. Marlow and Kurtz are the light and dark selves of a single person. Marlow is what Kurtz might have been, and Kurtz is what Marlow might have become.

Kurtz

Kurtz, like Marlow,originally came to the Congo with noble intentions. He thought that each ivory station should stand like a beacon light, offering a better way of life to the natives. Kurtz mother was half-English and his father was half-French. He was educated in England and speaks English. The culture and civilization of Europe have contributed to the making of Kurtz; he is an orator, writer, poet, musician, artist, politician, ivory procurer, and chief agent of the ivory company's Inner Station at Stanley Falls. In short, he is a "universal genius"; however, he also described as a "hollow man," a man without basic integrity or any sense of social responsibility.
At the end of his descent into the lowest pit of degradation, Kurtz is also a thief, murderer, raider, persecutor, and to climax all his other shady practices, he allows himself to be worshipped as a god. Marlow does not see Kurtz, however, until Kurtz is so emaciated by disease that he looks more like a ruined piece of a man than a whole human being. There is no trace of Kurtz' former good looks nor his former good health. Marlow remarks that Kurtz' head is as bald as an ivory ball and that he resembles "an animated image of death carved out of old ivory."
Kurtz wins control of men through fear and adoration. His power over the natives almost destroys Marlow and the party aboard the steamboat. Kurtz is the lusty, violent devil whom Marlow describes at the beginning. He is contrasted with the manager, who is weak and flabby- the weak and flabby devil also described by Marlow. Kurtz is a victim of the manager's murderous cruelty; stronger men than Kurtz would have found virtuous behavior difficult under the manager's criminal neglect. It is possible that Kurtz might never have revealed his evil nature if he had not been cornered and tortured by the manager.

The Manager

This character, based upon a real person, Camille Delcommne, is the ultimate villian of the plot. He is directly or indirectly to blame for all the disorder, waste, cruelty, and neglect that curses all three stations. He is in charge of everything. Marlow suggests that the manager arranged to wreck Marlow's steamboat in order to delay sending help to Kurtz. He also deliberately prevents rivets from coming up the coast to complete the steamboat's repairs.
At the manager's command, a native black boy is beaten unmercifully for a fire which burnd up a shed full of "trash." (The boy is probably innocent.) The manager's conversation with his uncle reveals the full, treacherous nature of both men. His physical appearance is ordinary; his talents are few. Excellent health gives him an advantage over other men. He seems to "have no entrails" and has been in the Congo for nine years. His blue eyes look remarkably cold, and his look can fall on a man "like an axe-blow."

The Brickmaker

Despite his title, he is a man who seemingly makes no bricks; instead, he acts as the manager's secretary, and he is responsible for a good deal of the plot's entangling elements. For example:
* He reveals the reason why the manager hates Marlow
* He shows Marlow the painting which Kurtz left at the Central Station (one of the important symbols of the book). 
* He reveals the reason why the manager hates Kurtz 
* He unwillingly and indirectly lets Marlow know that the delay in getting rivets is intentional 
* He lets Marlow know that the white men at the Central Station identify Marlow with Kurtz, as members of the "new gang of virtue."

The Accountant

He is the keeper of all the company books; he gives Marlow his first information about Kurtz, and he also reveals the general hatred which the white men bear toward the blacks. In addition, he confides his conviction that there is shady business at the Central Station.

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Ｗomen in Heart of Darkness

1.Kurtz's African mistress
- whole Black community
- beauty of the wildness
- wild and gorgeous
- savage and superb
- the soul of the jungle in all its cruelty

2.Kurtz's Intended
- naive and long-suffering fiancee
- lives in a dream world
- the soul of civilization, a civilization woven partly of truth and partly of lies

3. Marlow's aunt
- secures Marlow a position with the company
- "a dear enthusiastic soul"
- believes in imperialism as charitable activity
- naive and "out of touch with truth"

These three women are all extreme, stereotypical in nature and limited illustrating Conrad's portrait's of brutality, violence, death and darkness of the unconquered world Since navigation and exploration are all done by men, these themes are apart of male realm, and thus can only be understood or is meant to be inclusive by men. As a result, through these women, it is understood that women this brutality would never have occurred. They are not capable of these feelings and characteristics:
- an unthreatening manner
- easily dominated and controlled by men
These representations allow the central themes to be illustrated for the author, showing they are of male phenomenon.

4. The Woman in Kurtz's painting (found at the Central Station)
- symbolizes the Europeans who have come to civilize the natives.
The torch- represents the European customs and values that they try to force upon the native Africans.
Blindfolded- the Europeans can't "see" the negative effects that their customs have on the natives.
Distorted face- to the natives the European 
customs seem rather repulsive.

5. The two women Marlow encounters in the Company's office knit black wool
- they represent the Fates who guard the "door of Darkness" (Hell and Destruction)

The black color
- may be associated with the Natives on whose destruction and exploitation the Company was based. (Darkness into which Marlow descends (sin and death)

The wool
- signify the thread of life

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Studying Questions

Here are some questions to ask yourself after reading the novel:

1) Why are most of the novel's characters given only descriptive titles, and not actual names? (ex. brickmaker, accountant)
2) Why is the framing narrator unnamed?
3) What do the three women in the novel represent? (Marlow's Aunt, Kurtz Intended, and his Mistress) What does Marlow mean in Chapter 1 when he says that women are "out of touch with truth" and live in a beautiful world of their own?
4) What does it mean to have a "choice of nightmares" (Chapter 3)?
5) What is "the horror" (Chapter 3)?
6) In chapter 1, Marlow states, "You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavor of mortality in lies which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world." Yet in Chapter 3, he lies to Kurtz' Intended. Why do you think that is?
7) Early in Chapter 1, Marlow says, "The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only...something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to." What do you think he means by this? Is this passage a criticism of colonialism in general?
8) Conrad uses the term "nigger" in Heart of Darkness. Do you feel that Conrad is being racist in these remarks? Why or why not?
9) What does Marlow think of the futility and waste that goes on in the Company? Give some examples.
10) Often throughout the novel, when Marlow describes a black object or person, he then points out something light or white about it. For example, in chapter 1 he describes one of the workers at the Outer Station saying, "It looked startling round his black neck, this bit of white thread." What does Conrad accomplish by this contrast, what is he trying to express?
11) The unnamed narrator breaks the story only a few times. Why do you think he broke the story where he did?
12) Early in Chapter 3, Marlow describes Kurtz' house and the gateposts around it. He is startled by the shrunken heads atop the posts that are turned toward the house. He remarks that they would be more impressive if turned outward. Why did Kurtz have them turned towards the house?
13) Near the end of Chapter 3, Marlow, talking about Kurtz states, "True, he had made that last stride, he had stepped over the edge, while I had been permitted to draw back my hesitating foot." To what is he referring?

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