When Conrad was quite young, his father was exiled to Siberia on suspicion of plotting against the

Russian government. After the death of the boy’s mother, Conrad’s father sent him to his mothers
brother in Kraków to be educated, and Conrad never again saw his father. He traveled to marseilles
when he was seventeen and spent the next twenty years as a sailor. He signed to an English ship in
1878, and eight years later he became a British subject. In his twenties, after joining the English
fleet, Conrad anglicized in Slavic name and learned English. In 1889, he began his first novel,
Almayer’s Folly, and began actively searching for a way to fulfill his boyhood dream of traveling to
the Congo. He took command of a steamship in the Belgian Congo in 1890, and his experiences in
the Congo came to provide the outline for his best-known novel, Heart of darkness. Conrad’s time
in Africa wreaked havoc on his health (causó estragos en su salud), however, and he returned to
England to recover. He returned to sea twice before finishing Almayer’s Folly in 1894 and wrote
several other books, including one about Marlow called Youth: A Narrative before beginning Heart
of Darkness in 1898. Conrad was only moderately successful during his lifetime, although he
moved in prominent literary circles and was friends with people like Henry James and Ford Madox
Ford: with the latter he coauthored several works. Conrad was writing at the very moment when the
Victorian Age was disappearing and the modern era was emerging. Victorian moral codes still
influenced the plots of novels, but such principles were no longer absolute. Novelists and poets
were beginning to experiment with form. When Conrad died in 1924, the First World War had come
and gone and modernism dominated literature.

HEART OF DARKNESS
Heart of Darkness, novella by Joseph Conrad that was first published in 1899 in Blackwood’s
Edinburgh Magazine and then in Conrad’s Youth: and two other stories (1902).. Heart of Darkness
examines the horrors of Western colonialism, depicting it as a phenomenon that tarnishes not only
the lands and peoples it exploits but also those in the West who advance it. Although garnering an
initially lackluster reception, Conrad’s semi autobiographical tale has gone on to become one of the
most widely analyzed works of English literature. Critics have not always treated Heart of Darkness
favorably, rebuking its dehumanizing representation of colonized peoples and its dismissive
treatment of women. Nonetheless, Heart of darkness had endured and today it stands as a Modernist
masterpiece directly engaged with postcolonial realities.
Heart of darkness is the story of Marlow’s experience in the Congo. Marlow tells his story as he sits
in a boat that is approaching the city of London on the River Thames. As he relates, he had been
sent to the Congo to help recover the body of a fallen captain. Yet what he found was almost
inconceivable. Though europeans were supposed to civilize the Congo, they had turned it into a
killing ground. Absolutely nothing seemed to work, and heaps of men and material were wasted by
ineptitude. To make matters worse, it seemed that a talented colonist had gone mad in the interior.
Marlow sets out to try and convince this mad colonist to return to Europe. When he reaches the
interior, he finds that the man, Mr.Kurtz, had cast a spell over the locals living like a king. Unlike
the other colonists, Kurtz has no illusions about what he is doing. He has fully embraced evil,
Marlow’s journey up the Congo River to Kurtz and his journey back home are colored by profound

 reflections on the nature of a good and evil. In fact, Marlow is compared to the Buddha several
times in the story, perhaps indicating his insight into the suffering he sees. Finally, the story closes
with the return to London.
Heart of darkness breaks up the temporal continuity of the 19th century novel. The use of multiples
narrators undermines the 19th century convention of narrative omniscience. The novel is fulled of
imagery and symbolism, which are often untraditional. It has an open-ended, ironic, multi-layered
and inconclusive. The narrative structure is discontinuous and fragmented and the technique of
forcing the reader to share the impressions of the characters. Readers must meet unusual challenges
in Reading the work and engage actively in figuring out and even the crating of the work’s
meaning.
There are two narrators: named English man who provides the framing narrative and Marlow, the
protagonist, who is an unreliable narrator. There are three important listeners: the lawyer, the
accountant and the director. The book is structured into three chapters, a prologue and an epilogue.
Heart of darkness has a complex narrative, being it an example of modernist experimentation.
Conrad follows mainly two techniques: technique of delayed decoding, Conrad records first the
impressions that an event makes on Marlow and only later Marlow’s arrival at an explanation of the
event; and technique of time shift, with flashbacks and flashfowards. It is interesting that the book
is writing in prose poetic, so it has an hypnotic rhythm and a poetic rhythm too.
The meaning of the “heart of darkness” that the novella takes its name from is ambiguos. It could
refer to the Belgian Congo, perhaps the most terrible of all of Europe’s colonies. Or, it could refer to
the character of Kurtz, who has embraced evil. Interestingly, it could also refer to the capitals of
Europe, which enjoy peace and prosperity as they run criminal empires. There is an almost mystical
quality to Heart of Darkness and Conrad’s use of symbols is one of the primary sources for the
text’s transcendent feel. For example, he refers to Brussels, the capital of Belgium, as a “whited
sepulcher”. A sepulcher is a tomb and tends to be dark, so the fact that this one is white is unusual,
in the Bible, this phrase is used to refer to a hypocrite - someone who looks white and clean on the
outside but is dead and rotting on the inside. Women also serve as powerful symbols in the novella.
Perhaps no two women strike the reader as much as Kurtz’s European fiancé and his Congolese
mistress. His mistress is a wild beauty, dynamic and dangerous. Meanwhile, his fiancé is tame, pure
and naive. She has been kept far from the world of men, while Congolese mistress is at home in it.
The Congolese woman symbolizes the power and potential of Africa, while the European woman
represents the sterility of Europe.