CONRAD

Life
• He was born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in Russian-occupied Poland in 1857.
• His family was forced into exile in Russia due to his father’s insurrectionary activity.
• After his parents’ death he was brought up by an uncle.
• Left for Marseilles in 1874 to go to sea.
• He became a British citizen in 1886, learnt English to acquire his Master Mariner
qualification.
• He travelled to the Congo in 1890 where he experienced the brutalities of colonial
exploitation.
• A modest inheritance allowed him to abandon the sea and devote himself to writing.
• He died from a heart attack in 1924.

Main works
1897->The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’
1900->Lord Jim
1902->Heart of Darkness
1904->Nostromo
1907->The Secret Agent
1910->The Secret Sharer
1917->The Shadow Line

Conrad and the writer’s task

In the Preface to The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ he stated that the writer:
-should not amuse his readers
-should not teach a lesson
But should record the complex pattern of life as he saw it.

Settings
• The sea.
• Exotic latitudes.
• The ship.
• An African river.
• The jungle.
They enabled him to isolate his characters so that their problems and inner conflicts stood
out with particular force.

Narrative techniques
Conrad found chronological sequence inadequate->broke the normal time sequence
used time shifts->to create the illusion of life being lived by a number of very different people
at the same time.
•Used first-person narration, an invisible narrator, journals and
letters.
• Many novels and short stories are told by the same narrator, Marlow, or have more than
one narrator.
• Used several points of view to break free from the constraints of an omniscient narrator
•the reader is left to decide for himself
•relativism of moral values.
Language
The fluid form of his novels reflects the complexity of man’s consciousness.
The dialogue is idiomatic characterised by:
•questions;
•exclamation marks;
•dashes;
•interjections.
Conrad used a great variety of adjectives and a complex syntax.

Main themes
• The individual consciousness ->a man who has the qualities of honesty, courage and
fidelity is confronted with evil.
• The conflict between personal feelings and professional duties ->it is organised society that
gives man confidence.
• Individual responsibility and self-control.

Heart of Darkness (1902)

‘The title I am thinking of is “The Heart of Darkness” but the narrative is not gloomy. The
criminality of inefficiency and pure selfishness when tackling the civilising work in Africa is a
justifiable idea. The subject is of our time distinctly – though not topically treated.’
THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF THE NOVEL
Conrad witnessed the specific form of colonial imperialism King Leopold II of Belgium
practised in his Congo Free State. His agents had to:
•bring civilisation;
•accustom the natives to general laws;
•institute a labour tax of forty hours per month
PLOT
• The novel is set at the end of the 19th century at an unspecified date.
• The story is told by a sailor called Marlow who works for a Belgian company involved in the
ivory trade in the Congo.
• Marlow and the passengers of the Nellie are waiting for the tide which will let the ship sail
from London.
• Marlow’s task is to carry raw ivory from the heart of the African continent to the coast where
it can be loaded on ships bound for Europe.
• In Africa he gets to the Company Station where he is disappointed by the inefficiency and
by the cruelty of the colonial exploitation.
• There he hears Kurtz’s name for the first time.
• Kurtz was a company agent who has become a sort of idol for the natives. He is seriously
ill.
• Marlow finally meets Kurtz and succeeds in taking him on board.
• Kurtz dies during the journey.
• When Marlow returns to Belgium, he calls on Kurtz’s fiancée and tells her that Kurtz said
her name while dying.
THE MAIN CHARACTERS
Marlow
•A sailor who enjoys exploring the uncharted areas of the world.
•Has not yet been subjected to the chaos of the African Congo.
•Is able to view things in a rational light.
•Comes to realise that the natives probably have more sense than the white Europeans who
have come to civilise them.
•Like Kurtz, he is the only person in the novel to be addressed by his name.
Kurtz
• The chief of the Inner Station.
• Almost legendary due to his genius and his station’s superior ivory production.
• Has a passion for the wilderness, the years in the jungle have made him savage and
fanatical.
• He is worshipped like a godlike being by the natives.
• He is in poor health by the time Marlow encounters him.

THE INDICTMENT OF IMPERIALISM

In the novel imperialism is a system of political and economic dominance.
Conrad condemned:
•the brutal exercise of law on the natives;
•the missionary zeal;
•the administrative efficiency and search for profit.

WHAT IS THE ‘DARKNESS’?

• Death and despair in the jungle.
• Solitude and alienation, which drive man mad.
• The death of ethical behaviour.
• The death of goodness and civility.
• The death of our authority as selves.

A journey into the self

• Marlow’s is a mythical journey in search of the self to bring back a new truth.
• Kurtz went into the jungle without knowing himself his wrong conduct took him beyond the
limits of his heart the result was madness and death.
• Marlow did not transgress his limits, he came back without fully understanding his
experience.
• The heart of darkness tried to exercise its influence on him he was able to restrain himself.
• Marlow was saved because his aim was self-knowledge, the mystery of existence, which
demands great humility.
•The novel ends with this suggestion:” it is impossible to penetrate the surface of reality in
any meaningful way”.

THE STRUCTURE AND STYLE OF THE NOVEL

• A series of stories, one embedded within the other.
• External frame with an anonymous narrator who introduces the story and formally closes it.
• Marlow, the observer-narrator.
• Shifts backwards and forwards in Marlow’s narrative creation of suspense and interest.
• Language characterised by idiomatic speech and irony psychological realism.
HEART OF DARKNESS
SUMMARY
Heart of Darkness centers around Marlow, an introspective sailor, and his journey up the
Congo River to meet Kurtz, reputed to be an idealistic man of great abilities. Marlow takes a
job as a riverboat captain with the Company, a Belgian concern organized to trade in the
Congo. As he travels to Africa and then up the Congo, Marlow encounters widespread
inefficiency and brutality in the Company’s stations. The native inhabitants of the region have
been forced into the Company’s service, and they suffer terribly from overwork and ill
treatment at the hands of the Company’s agents. The cruelty and squalor of imperial
enterprise contrasts sharply with the impassive and majestic jungle that surrounds the white
man’s settlements, making them appear to be tiny islands amidst a vast darkness.
Marlow arrives at the Central Station, run by the general manager, an unwholesome,
conspiratorial character. He finds that his steamship has been sunk and spends several
months waiting for parts to repair it. His interest in Kurtz grows during this period. The
manager and his favorite, the brickmaker, seem to fear Kurtz as a threat to their position.
Kurtz is rumored to be ill, making the delays in repairing the ship all the more costly. Marlow
eventually gets the parts he needs to repair his ship, and he and the manager set out with a
few agents (whom Marlow calls pilgrims because of their strange habit of carrying long,
wooden staves wherever they go) and a crew of cannibals on a long, difficult voyage up the
river. The dense jungle and the oppressive silence make everyone aboard a little jumpy, and
the occasional glimpse of a native village or the sound of drums works the pilgrims into a
frenzy. Marlow and his crew come across a hut with stacked firewood, together with a note
saying that the wood is for them but that they should approach cautiously. Shortly after the
steamer has taken on the firewood, it is surrounded by a dense fog. When the fog clears, the
ship is attacked by an unseen band of natives, who fire arrows from the safety of the forest.
The African helmsman is killed before Marlow frightens the natives away with the ship’s
steam whistle. Not long after, Marlow and his companions arrive at Kurtz’s Inner Station,
expecting to find him dead, but a half-crazed Russian trader, who meets them as they come
ashore, assures them that everything is fine and informs them that he is the one who left the
wood. The Russian claims that Kurtz has enlarged his mind and cannot be subjected to the
same moral judgments as normal people. Apparently, Kurtz has established himself as a god
with the natives and has gone on brutal raids in the surrounding territory in search of ivory.
The collection of severed heads adorning the fence posts around the station attests to his
“methods.” The pilgrims bring Kurtz out of the station-house on a stretcher, and a large
group of native warriors pours out of the forest and surrounds them. Kurtz speaks to them,
and the natives disappear into the woods. The manager brings Kurtz, who is quite ill, aboard
the steamer. A beautiful native woman, apparently Kurtz’s mistress, appears on the shore
and stares out at the ship. The Russian implies that she is somehow involved with Kurtz and
has caused trouble before through her influence over him. The Russian reveals to Marlow,
after swearing him to secrecy, that Kurtz had ordered the attack on the steamer to make
them believe he was dead in order that they might turn back and leave him to his plans. The
Russian then leaves by canoe, fearing the displeasure of the manager. Kurtz disappears in
the night, and Marlow goes out in search of him, finding him crawling on all fours toward the
native camp. Marlow stops him and convinces him to return to the ship. They set off down
the river the next morning, but Kurtz’s health is failing fast. Marlow listens to Kurtz talk while
he pilots the ship, and Kurtz entrusts Marlow with a packet of personal documents, including
an eloquent pamphlet on civilizing the savages which ends with a scrawled message that
says, “Exterminate all the brutes!” The steamer breaks down, and they have to stop for
repairs. Kurtz dies, uttering his last words—“The horror! The horror!”—in the presence of the
confused Marlow. Marlow falls ill soon after and barely survives. Eventually he returns to
Europe and goes to see Kurtz’s Intended (his fiancée). She is still in mourning, even though
it has been over a year since Kurtz’s death, and she praises him as a paragon of virtue and
achievement. She asks what his last words were, but Marlow cannot bring himself to shatter
her illusions with the truth. Instead, he tells her that Kurtz’s last word was her name.

CHARACTERS
MARLOW
Although Marlow appears in several of Conrad’s other works, it is important not to view him
as merely a surrogate for the author. Marlow is a complicated man who anticipates the
figures of high modernism while also reflecting his Victorian predecessors. Marlow is in
many ways a traditional hero: tough, honest, an independent thinker, a capable man. Yet he
is also “broken” or “damaged,” like T. S. Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock or William Faulkner’s
Quentin Compson. The world has defeated him in some fundamental way, and he is weary,
skeptical, and cynical. Marlow also mediates between the figure of the intellectual and that of
the “working tough.” While he is clearly intelligent, eloquent, and a natural philosopher, he is
not saddled with the angst of centuries’ worth of Western thought. At the same time, while he
is highly skilled at what he does—he repairs and then ably pilots his own ship—he is no
mere manual laborer. Work, for him, is a distraction, a concrete alternative to the posturing
and excuse-making of those around him. Marlow can also be read as an intermediary
between the two extremes of Kurtz and the Company. He is moderate enough to allow the
reader to identify with him, yet open-minded enough to identify at least partially with either
extreme. Thus, he acts as a guide for the reader. Marlow’s intermediary position can be seen
in his eventual illness and recovery. Unlike those who truly confront or at least acknowledge
Africa and the darkness within themselves, Marlow does not die, but unlike the Company
men, who focus only on money and advancement, Marlow suffers horribly. He is thus
“contaminated” by his experiences and memories, and, like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner,
destined, as purgation or penance, to repeat his story to all who will listen.

KURTZ
Kurtz, like Marlow, can be situated within a larger tradition. Kurtz resembles the archetypal
“evil genius”: the highly gifted but ultimately degenerate individual whose fall is the stuff of
legend. Kurtz is related to figures like Faustus, Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost, Moby-Dick’s
Ahab, and Wuthering Heights’s Heathcliff. Like these characters, he is significant both for his
style and eloquence and for his grandiose, almost megalomaniacal scheming. In a world of
mundanely malicious men and “flabby devils,” attracting enough attention to be worthy of
damnation is indeed something. Kurtz can be criticized in the same terms that Heart of
Darkness is sometimes criticized: style entirely overrules substance, providing a justification
for amorality and evil.
In fact, it can be argued that style does not just override substance but actually masks the
fact that Kurtz is utterly lacking in substance. Marlow refers to Kurtz as “hollow” more than
once. This could be taken negatively, to mean that Kurtz is not worthy of contemplation.
However, it also points to Kurtz’s ability to function as a “choice of nightmares” for Marlow: in
his essential emptiness, he becomes a cipher, a site upon which other things can be
projected. This emptiness should not be read as benign, however, just as Kurtz’s eloquence
should not be allowed to overshadow the malice of his actions. Instead, Kurtz provides
Marlow with a set of paradoxes that Marlow can use to evaluate himself and the Company’s
men. Indeed, Kurtz is not so much a fully realized individual as a series of images
constructed by others for their own use. As Marlow’s visits with Kurtz’s cousin, the Belgian
journalist, and Kurtz’s fiancée demonstrate, there seems to be no true Kurtz. To his cousin,
he was a great musician; to the journalist, a brilliant politician and leader of men; to his
fiancée, a great humanitarian and genius. All of these contrast with Marlow’s version of the
man, and he is left doubting the validity of his memories. Yet Kurtz, through his charisma and
larger-than-life plans, remains with Marlow and with the reader.

THEMES
- The Hypocrisy of Imperialism
Heart of Darkness explores the issues surrounding imperialism in complicated ways. As
Marlow travels from the Outer Station to the Central Station and finally up the river to the
Inner Station, he encounters scenes of torture, cruelty, and near-slavery. At the very least,
the incidental scenery of the book offers a harsh picture of colonial enterprise. The impetus
behind Marlow’s adventures, too, has to do with the hypocrisy inherent in the rhetoric used
to justify imperialism. The men who work for the Company describe what they do as “trade,”
and their treatment of native Africans is part of a benevolent project of “civilization.” Kurtz, on
the other hand, is open about the fact that he does not trade but rather takes ivory by force,
and he describes his own treatment of the natives with the words “suppression” and
“extermination”: he does not hide the fact that he rules through violence and intimidation. His
perverse honesty leads to his downfall, as his success threatens to expose the evil practices
behind European activity in Africa. However, for Marlow as much as for Kurtz or for the
Company, Africans in this book are mostly objects: Marlow refers to his helmsman as a piece
of machinery, and Kurtz’s African mistress is at best a piece of statuary. It can be argued that
Heart of Darkness participates in an oppression of nonwhites that is much more sinister and
much harder to remedy than the open abuses of Kurtz or the Company’s men. Africans
become for Marlow a mere backdrop, a human screen against which he can play out his
philosophical and existential struggles. Their existence and their exoticism enable his
self-contemplation. This kind of dehumanization is harder to identify than colonial violence or
open racism. While Heart of Darkness offers a powerful condemnation of the hypocritical
operations of imperialism, it also presents a set of issues surrounding race that is ultimately
troubling.
- Madness as a Result of Imperialism
Madness is closely linked to imperialism in this book. Africa is responsible for mental
disintegration as well as physical illness. Madness has two primary functions. First, it serves
as an ironic device to engage the reader’s sympathies. Kurtz, Marlow is told from the
beginning, is mad. However, as Marlow, and the reader, begin to form a more complete
picture of Kurtz, it becomes apparent that his madness is only relative, that in the context of
the Company insanity is difficult to define. Thus, both Marlow and the reader begin to
sympathize with Kurtz and view the Company with suspicion. Madness also functions to
establish the necessity of social fictions. Although social mores and explanatory justifications
are shown throughout Heart of Darkness to be utterly false and even leading to evil, they are
nevertheless necessary for both group harmony and individual security. Madness, in Heart of
Darkness, is the result of being removed from one’s social context and allowed to be the
sole arbiter of one’s own actions. Madness is thus linked not only to absolute power and a
kind of moral genius but to man’s fundamental fallibility: Kurtz has no authority to whom he
answers but himself, and this is more than any one man can bear.
 - The Absurdity of Evil
This novella is, above all, an exploration of hypocrisy, ambiguity, and moral confusion. It
explodes the idea of the proverbial choice between the lesser of two evils. As the idealistic
Marlow is forced to align himself with either the hypocritical and malicious colonial
bureaucracy or the openly malevolent, rule-defying Kurtz, it becomes increasingly clear that
to try to judge either alternative is an act of folly: how can moral standards or social values
be relevant in judging evil? Is there such thing as insanity in a world that has already gone
insane? The number of ridiculous situations Marlow witnesses act as reflections of the larger
issue: at one station, for instance, he sees a man trying to carry water in a bucket with a
large hole in it. At the Outer Station, he watches native laborers blast away at a hillside with
no particular goal in mind. The absurd involves both insignificant silliness and life-or-death
issues, often simultaneously. That the serious and the mundane are treated similarly
suggests a profound moral confusion and a tremendous hypocrisy: it is terrifying that Kurtz’s
homicidal megalomania and a leaky bucket provoke essentially the same reaction from
Marlow.
- Futility
Several images throughout Heart of Darkness suggest the futility of European presence in
Africa. The first such image Marlow witnesses off the West African coast, where a French
warship fires pointlessly at an invisible enemy. Another image appears later, at the Central
Station, when Marlow watches as frantic Europeans pointlessly attempt to extinguish a
burning grass hut. In addition to these instances of useless action, Marlow takes note of
pointless labor practices at the Company Station. There he observes white Europeans
forcing Africans to blast a hole through a cliff for no apparent reason. He also nearly falls into
a random hole in the ground that slave laborers dug. Marlow speculates that the hole has no
purpose other than to occupy the slaves: “It might have been connected with the
philanthropic desire of giving the criminals something to do.” As with the examples of the
warship and the grass hut, the grossly inefficient labor practices at the Company Station
suggest the pointlessness of the European mission in Africa.
- Contradiction and Ambivalence
Contradictions appear everywhere in Heart of Darkness, and particularly with respect to
European characters, who serve as living embodiments of imperialism. For example, Marlow
insists that Fresleven, the Danish captain he replaced, was completely harmless, but he also
describes how the man ended up in a violent dispute over hens and died at the end of an
African’s spear. European imperial missions sought to civilize “savage” peoples and hence
appeared pure in their intentions, but all too often they inflicted terrible violence instead. The
accountant Marlow meets at the Company Station provides another important example of
contradiction. Despite the filth and chaos that reigns at the station, the accountant maintains
an immaculately clean suit and perfectly coiffed hair. Marlow respects the man for
maintaining a semblance of civility even in the wilderness. Such an image of civilization in
the jungle—or of light in the darkness—represents another contradiction of the European
civilizing mission. Contradictions also abound in Marlow’s outlook on colonialism, as well as
in his ambivalent views on life. He opens his story by describing his belief in the “idea” of
colonialism, yet he goes on to tell a long story about the horrors of the Belgian mission in the
Congo. The evident contradiction between the idea of colonialism and its reality doesn’t
seem to bother Marlow. A similar tension affects Marlow’s treatment of Africans. He finds it
repulsive that Europeans mistreat African laborers at the stations along the river. However,
Marlow fails to see Africans as equals. When he laments the loss of his late helmsman, he
describes the man as “a savage” and “an instrument,” yet he insists that the two men had “a
kind of partnership.” Marlow remains unaware of the contradiction in his description. A
further contradiction permeates the grim outlook that Marlow expresses near the novella’s
end, when he describes life as “that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile
purpose.” According to Marlow, life is at once full of “merciless logic” and yet has a
completely “futile purpose”—that is, it is at once meaningful and meaningless.
- Hollowness
Throughout his journey, Marlow meets an array of people characterized by their hollow
emptiness, reflecting the way imperialism robbed Europeans of moral substance. For
instance, Marlow refers to the chatty brickmaker he meets at the Central Station as a
“papier-mâché Mephistopheles” who has “nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe.”
Despite having a lot to say, the brickmaker’s words lack any real meaning or value. Like a
nut without the kernel inside—an image the narrator describes at the beginning of the
novella—the brickmaker’s speech is all form and no content, revealing his obvious idleness.
Marlow speaks of Kurtz in similar terms. He describes the African wilderness whispering to
Kurtz: “It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core.” Marlow comes to this
realization of Kurtz’s emptiness after observing the severed African heads on stakes, placed
there for no apparent reason. Like the brickmaker, Kurtz is showy with his talk but ultimately
doesn’t have much reason, since all his ideas are morally bankrupt. Marlow develops this
notion of Kurtz as a hollow man later in the story. Although he continues to speak forcefully,
Kurtz’s physical body wastes away, making the man a “hollow sham,” or imitation, of his
former self.

MOTIFS
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and
inform the text’s major themes.
- Observation and Eavesdropping
Marlow gains a great deal of information by watching the world around him and by
overhearing others’ conversations, as when he listens from the deck of the wrecked steamer
to the manager of the Central Station and his uncle discussing Kurtz and the Russian trader.
This phenomenon speaks to the impossibility of direct communication between individuals:
information must come as the result of chance observation and astute interpretation. Words
themselves fail to capture meaning adequately, and thus they must be taken in the context of
their utterance. Another good example of this is Marlow’s conversation with the brickmaker,
during which Marlow is able to figure out a good deal more than simply what the man has to
say.
- Interiors and Exteriors
Comparisons between interiors and exteriors pervade Heart of Darkness. As the narrator
states at the beginning of the text, Marlow is more interested in surfaces, in the surrounding
aura of a thing rather than in any hidden nugget of meaning deep within the thing itself. This
inverts the usual hierarchy of meaning: normally one seeks the deep message or hidden
truth. The priority placed on observation demonstrates that penetrating to the interior of an
idea or a person is impossible in this world. Thus, Marlow is confronted with a series of
exteriors and surfaces—the river’s banks, the forest walls around the station, Kurtz’s broad
forehead—that he must interpret. These exteriors are all the material he is given, and they
provide him with perhaps a more profound source of knowledge than any falsely constructed
interior “kernel.”
 - Darkness
Darkness is important enough conceptually to be part of the book’s title. However, it is
difficult to discern exactly what it might mean, given that absolutely everything in the book is
cloaked in darkness. Africa, England, and Brussels are all described as gloomy and
somehow dark, even if the sun is shining brightly. Darkness thus seems to operate
metaphorically and existentially rather than specifically. Darkness is the inability to see: this
may sound simple, but as a description of the human condition it has profound implications.
Failing to see another human being means failing to understand that individual and failing to
establish any sort of sympathetic communion with him or her.

SYMBOLS
- Fog
Fog is a sort of corollary to darkness. Fog not only obscures but distorts: it gives one just
enough information to begin making decisions but no way to judge the accuracy of that
information, which often ends up being wrong. Marlow’s steamer is caught in the fog,
meaning that he has no idea where he’s going and no idea whether peril or open water lies
ahead.
- The “Whited Sepulchre”
The “whited sepulchre” is probably Brussels, where the Company’s headquarters are
located. A sepulchre implies death and confinement, and indeed Europe is the origin of the
colonial enterprises that bring death to white men and to their colonial subjects; it is also
governed by a set of reified social principles that both enable cruelty, dehumanization, and
evil and prohibit change. The phrase “whited sepulchre” comes from the biblical Book of
Matthew. In the passage, Matthew describes “whited sepulchres” as something beautiful on
the outside but containing horrors within (the bodies of the dead); thus, the image is
appropriate for Brussels, given the hypocritical Belgian rhetoric about imperialism’s civilizing
mission. (Belgian colonies, particularly the Congo, were notorious for the violence
perpetuated against the natives.)
- Women
Both Kurtz’s Intended and his African mistress function as blank slates upon which the
values and the wealth of their respective societies can be displayed. Marlow frequently
claims that women are the keepers of naïve illusions; although this sounds condemnatory,
such a role is in fact crucial, as these naïve illusions are at the root of the social fictions that
justify economic enterprise and colonial expansion. In return, the women are the
beneficiaries of much of the resulting wealth, and they become objects upon which men can
display their own success and status.
- The River
The Congo River is the key to Africa for Europeans. It allows them access to the center of
the continent without having to physically cross it; in other words, it allows the white man to
remain always separate or outside. Africa is thus reduced to a series of two-dimensional
scenes that flash by Marlow’s steamer as he travels upriver. The river also seems to want to
expel Europeans from Africa altogether: its current makes travel upriver slow and difficult,
but the flow of water makes travel downriver, back toward “civilization,” rapid and seemingly
inevitable. Marlow’s struggles with the river as he travels upstream toward Kurtz reflect his
struggles to understand the situation in which he has found himself. The ease with which he
journeys back downstream, on the other hand, mirrors his acquiescence to Kurtz and his
“choice of nightmares.”
SETTING
Heart of Darkness primarily takes place in the late nineteenth century in the
Belgian-controlled Congo Free State. At that time, Europe controlled immense empires
around the world, meaning places like the Congo were subject to horrific violence in the
service of stripping away and exporting massive amounts of natural resources. In the case of
the Belgian Congo, traders forced Africans into slavery to support the extraction of ivory for a
quickly expanding global market. Marlow’s journey into the Congolese interior progressively
exposes the violence and greed of fellow representatives of the Company, the Belgian
enterprise Marlow works for. However, even though European empires were at their peak,
many Europeans remained in the dark about the colonies and what happened there. Marlow
indicates as much early in the novella: Though framed by his childhood excitement at the
possibility of exploration, Marlow’s discussion of the “blank spaces” on the map
demonstrates how, to those at home in Europe, the colonies appeared to be places of
obscurity and darkness. Most of the action happens in Africa, but Heart of Darkness begins
and ends in a boat on the River Thames, just outside of London. In the novella’s second
paragraph, the narrator describes a dark, ominous cloud that hangs over London: “The air
was dark . . . [and] seemed condensed into a mournful gloom brooding motionless over the
biggest, and the greatest town on earth.” There is clear irony here, with the insistence on
London’s greatness, paired with the “mournful gloom” that has condensed above it. The
meaning of the narrator’s irony becomes clearer by the novella’s concluding sentence, which
returns to the brooding darkness over the city: “The offing was barred by a black bank of
clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre
under an overcast sky—seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.” By opening
and closing the novella in this way, Conrad suggests that Africa may not be the real heart of
darkness after all. Perhaps London—and, by extension, all of Europe’s great towns—are the
real centers of darkness.

GENRE
Heart of Darkness draws on several literary genres, including romance, tragedy, symbolic
narrative, and colonial adventure. Romance and tragedy are the most traditional genre
categories in this list, and Conrad’s novella combines elements from both. Romance
narratives typically begin with characters being separated from each other, and the action of
the story takes the form of a quest or an adventure that results in a rescue or other form of
reunion. Likewise, Marlow’s journey begins with a quest to find and rescue Kurtz.
Furthermore, like other romance narratives, Heart of Darkness concludes with a kind of
transcendence, in which Marlow rises above the challenges he encounters on his journey.
The end of the novella is not, however, a happy one, and in this sense it resembles tragedy.
In tragedy, the resolution of the problem that initiated the story’s action often involves the
death, banishment, or diminishment of the protagonist. Marlow may have survived his
Congolese journey, but as the tone of his story indicates, the experience shook him to his
very core. Conrad’s novella also functions as symbolic narrative, which is also known as an
allegory. In an allegory, surface details imply a secondary meaning. Decoding these
secondary meanings provides the reader with a deeper understanding of the story. Often,
allegories involve characters who represent moral qualities, and these characters’ actions
have moral or spiritual meaning. In the case of Heart of Darkness, Marlow’s ignorance
towards the horrors of Belgian colonialism and the bewilderment he experiences throughout
his journey into the Congo could be said to represent a state of innocence. By contrast,
Kurtz could be said to represent corruption, or perhaps even evil, understood here as being
completely deficient of moral judgment. As Marlow travels further along the river and
eventually meets Kurtz, he undergoes a spiritual trial in which he is forced to reevaluate his
own moral grounding. When Marlow returns to Europe at the end of the novella, he has
survived his symbolic encounter with corruption and evil, but he comes away with a fuller
understanding of the power that evil can wield. Heart of Darkness also draws on the genre of
colonial adventure stories. Such stories sought to thrill readers who remained at home in
Europe, unable to venture to far-off colonies. For this reason, writers of colonial adventures
often used exotic settings at the margins of empire. These settings were made to appear
wild and strange in order to provide a backdrop for dramatic quests that tested the fortitude
of European heroes, who triumphed over physical struggles and had daring encounters with
the unfamiliar. For instance, the story takes place in the yellow Belgian territory that remains
unknown and unexplored, rather than the vast amount of red on the color-coded map
Marlow finds in the Company’s office in Brussels, indicating that “one knows that some good
works is done there.” While Conrad’s novella incorporates these elements, it distinguishes
itself from other colonial adventure stories through its pacing and tone. Whereas most
colonial adventures feature fast-paced and thrilling plots, Conrad’s novella has a slower plot
that is more ponderous than exciting.

STYLE
The linguistic style of Heart of Darkness is gloomy and foreboding. As Conrad announces
with his title, the novella is dominated both by a sense of “darkness” and by the anticipation
involved in going into darkness’s “heart.” This sense of an ominous journey is also
suggested when Marlow begins to speak to the passengers onboard the Nellie. Without
warning, Marlow suddenly makes a mysterious and sinister remark: “And this also . . . has
been one of the dark places of the earth.” Although he does not immediately explain himself,
his fellow passengers know that the story he wants to tell does not promise to be a happy
one. Thus, from the beginning of the novella, and even before the beginning if you count the
title, the linguistic style promotes a sense of obscurity, indicating that something unwelcome
lies on the horizon. Analyzing Conrad’s vocabulary in the novella reveals that he frequently
uses a series of terms related to “darkness,” including “mournful,” “gloomy,” “brooding,” and
“sombre.” Taken together, this rhetoric of darkness conjures an overwhelming sense of the
unknown, and what is unknown in Heart of Darkness is always morally and spiritually
threatening. Symbolically, darkness functions in opposition to light, and whereas light
symbolizes goodness and moral uprightness, darkness symbolizes evil and moral depravity.
Furthermore, without the illumination of light, darkness cannot be penetrated. In this sense,
darkness becomes symbolically thick, much like “the great wall of vegetation” that borders
each side of the river, which is so dense that Marlow cannot see into the jungle. By
concealing things from view, darkness renders the world imperceptible, or as Conrad often
writes, “inscrutable,” meaning impossible to understand or interpret. Conrad’s rhetoric of
darkness, therefore, shrouds the world in obscurity, making it difficult if not impossible to
make sense of anything. A second, related series of terms that is threaded throughout the
novella points to a distinction between appearance and reality. Starting on the very first
page, Conrad frequently uses verbs such as “resemble,” “seem,” and “appear” to qualify
observations and statements. For example, “the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with
the tide seemed to stand still,” and the Director of Companies “resembled a pilot.” The use of
qualifying verbs like these has a curious effect: by always pointing to how things appear and
never to what they actually are, they dampen the sense of reality. The verb “appear” is
slightly different, due to its close association with the term “apparition.” An apparition is an
unexpected or strange sight, but it can also refer to a kind of barely visible, ghostly figure.
Marlow encounters many such unexpected sights on his journey, and particularly Kurtz,
whose body and mind have faded so profoundly that he seems little more than a ghost. Just
like Conrad’s use of the rhetoric of darkness indicates the challenge of making sense of the
world, his rhetoric of appearing indicates the challenge of seeing things as they really are.
Conrad’s use of language in Heart of Darkness can also be described as dense. He often
writes sentences that compress a lot of information into a small amount of space. Take, for
instance, this sentence referring to the River Thames: “The tidal current runs to and fro in its
unceasing service crowded with memories of men and ships it has borne to the rest of home
or to the battles of the sea.” In this sentence, Conrad begins by referencing the river and its
natural flow. However, in mid-sentence the natural river seamlessly transforms into a human
instrument, something that can be used as a conduit for the passage of ships. But Conrad
does not stop there. The last third of the sentence takes another turn, this time referencing
not the river at all, but the men who have journeyed along this river, both on their way to
battle and on their way home. Thus, Conrad successfully condenses multiple ideas into one
sentence without the help of any internal punctuation. Elsewhere, however, Conrad’s
language is more complex, in that he uses longer compound sentences. One example
comes from Marlow’s description of the heads on poles that surround Kurtz’s hut: “These
round knobs were not ornamental but symbolic; they were expressive and puzzling, striking
and disturbing—food for thought and also for vultures if there had been any looking down
from the sky; but at all events for such ants as were industrious enough to ascend the pole.”
This sentence has a two-part structure, and each part links two different thoughts that are
expressed in short clauses. In the first half of the sentence, Marlow reflects on what the
ornaments mean and what kind of visual effect they have on the observer. The second half
of the sentence turns away from meaning and appearance and instead considers the fact
that the ornaments are made of flesh and may therefore attract carnivorous birds and
insects. In more general terms, the first half of the sentence considers the poles in an
abstract sense, whereas the second half of the sentence considers them in a concrete
sense. Taken altogether, the sentence offers a complex but complete analysis of the poles’
startling impact.

POINT OF VIEW
Conrad wrote Heart of Darkness as a first-person narrative. Marlow, the protagonist, tells his
own story from his own perspective. Thus, the reader experiences the story from Marlow’s
point of view. Owing to the subjective nature of first-person narration, a certain degree of
unreliability is unavoidable, and Marlow’s narration is no different. That said, what makes
Marlow’s narrative unreliable is not solely that he speaks from his own subjective point of
view, thus making it easy for the reader to be suspicious of what he says or what his
motivations for speaking are. Indeed, Marlow does not populate his story with exaggerated
tales or highly improbable occurrences, nor does he skimp on details. For this reason,
Marlow is not unreliable due to a suspicion that he is misreporting or underreporting. Instead,
he is unreliable due to his inability to make sense of his experience. Marlow frequently
emphasizes the difficulty he has interpreting his own story, and his doubt causes the reader
to be skeptical about Marlow’s capacity as a narrator in the first place. If he is not fully in
control of his story and the meaning it contains, why, the reader wonders, is he telling it at
all? Because Heart of Darkness makes use of a frame narrative, there is a second narrator.
This second narrator also speaks in the first person, and in his narrative, the reader sees
Marlow from an outside perspective. This narrator is skeptical of Marlow, and he uses irony
to indicate this. For example, when Marlow begins his story with the dramatic claim that
England is “one of the dark places of the earth,” the frame narrator explains that this sense
of drama is characteristic of the man and that his comment is “accepted in silence,”
suggesting that the other passengers are also familiar with Marlow’s storytelling. Although
the vast majority of the novella is told from Marlow’s perspective, the frame narrator
interrupts the story at several points, usually at moments when Marlow falls silent. At these
moments, the frame narrative reorients the reader’s perspective, serving as a reminder to
step back from Marlow’s story and evaluate it. These interruptions also provide the reader
with a sense of the passage of time. The novella opens near dusk, and by the time Marlow
goes silent for the first time (just before the end of part I), it is already dark.

TONE
The question of tone is notoriously tricky in Heart of Darkness, particularly because of
Conrad’s use of a frame story. It is very easy for the reader to forget about this framing
structure and to think about Marlow’s tale only. However, the frame narrative provides the
reader with an opportunity to step back from Marlow’s tale and evaluate the man and his
story from a distance. Marlow himself admits this when he pauses and reflects on his story
to his fellow passengers: “Of course in this you fellows see more than I could then. You see
me, whom you know.” For this reason, students of the novella must think about tone on two
levels: the tone of Marlow’s tale, and the tone of the frame narrator’s tale.
The tone of Marlow’s tale is ambivalent, meaning that it expresses contradictory attitudes
that remain unresolved. In particular, Marlow’s narrative expresses contradictory attitudes
about imperialism. This contradiction appears at the very beginning of his narrative, when he
condemns the brutality of empire, which he characterizes as “just robbery with violence.” By
contrast, Marlow believes that the project of colonialism can be redeemed. What
distinguishes colonialism from imperialism is, according to Marlow, the ideal of efficiency.
Unlike imperialism, which involves the powerful taking control of the weak and ruling over
them, colonialism involves the extraction of resources and honors values like productivity,
travel, and exchange. This is why Marlow asserts that “the conquest of the earth,” which is
repulsive when examined too closely, can be redeemed by the “idea” at its core. It should be
emphasized that Marlow’s distinction between imperialism and colonialism is not a technical
one, but an ideological one. As an Englishman, Marlow seems interested in justifying British
colonialism by distinguishing it from the comparatively more brutal Belgian example. But the
difference between British and Belgian colonialism is one of degree, not kind. Hence,
Marlow’s ambivalence points to a deeper uncertainty about whether colonialism is
defensible. The frame narrative’s tone is also ambivalent, but in a slightly different way.
Whereas Marlow is ambivalent about imperialism, the frame narrator is ambivalent about
Marlow himself. When Marlow begins to speak, talking about Roman imperialism and about
how England itself has also “been one of the dark places of the earth,” his companions do
not seem interested; no one even bothers to grunt in response. Nevertheless, Marlow tells
his story anyway. The narrator concludes that by doing so, Marlow demonstrates “the
weakness of many tellers of tales who seem so often unaware of what their audience would
best like to hear.” The narrator’s remark is ironic, and it clearly comes from a sense a
familiarity: “It was just like Marlow,” he says, referencing the morose statement his
companion has just made. Although the frame narrator does not characterize Marlow as a
bad or repulsive person, the fact that no one wants to hear his story certainly has a
distancing effect on the reader. Why should the reader continue if none of Marlow’s fictional
audience wants to listen? Will his tale be remorselessly pessimistic? These kinds of
questions point to the ambivalence of the frame narrator’s tone.

FORESHADOWING
Conrad’s use of foreshadowing in Heart of Darkness is peculiar because it does not function
to foretell future events so much as it serves to prefigure the darkening “mood” of Marlow’s
story, which grows progressively bleaker the further he and his crew travel into the jungle.
The opening pages of the novella provide a strong example of this technique. Take, for
instance, the ominous sky that the passengers of the Nellie observe to their west, where the
River Thames flows into the North Sea. The sky is luminous and gauzy above the Nellie, but
over the sea—that is, in the direction a ship would need to take to leave England for
Continental Europe or Africa—there is a “brooding gloom” that “became more sombre every
minute as if angered by the approach of the sun.” The play of light in the opening pages of
the novella foretell the darkness to come, both literally, as the sun is about to set, and
figuratively, as Marlow begins to tell his story of his journey into moral obscurity in a largely
unknown part of the Congolese jungle. Foreshadowing in Heart of Darkness also occurs
through symbolism. For example, when Marlow travels to Brussels to get his assignment, he
encounters two mysterious women who are knitting black wool. Marlow finds their “swift and
indifferent placidity” troubling, and he comments that they “seemed uncanny and fateful.”
Here, Marlow alludes to the Greek Moirae, three sisters who in English are known as the
Fates. According to Greek myth, the Fates have the gift of foresight and know each human
being’s destiny. One of the Fates spins the life-thread for each human, another one
measures it, and when the time comes for the individual to die, the third one cuts it. Marlow
feels uneasy in the presence of these women, who he feels may portend his death.
Regarding one of the women, Marlow reflects: “Not many of those she looked at ever saw
her again—not half—by a long way.” He fears that he, too, may be one of these men who
never return. Conrad also treats foreshadowing itself as a theme, as when Marlow frames
his story as a tale about how history repeats itself. Marlow begins his narrative by talking
about Roman imperialism in England, which is a history that foreshadows the modern form
of imperialism that he examines in his story. Marlow imagines an ancient Roman commander
coming to the wilds of England, where he would be surrounded by savagery and could
submit to “the fascination of the abomination.” This imaginary commander clearly
foreshadows Kurtz, who travels to the wilds of Africa and submits to his own fascination with
abomination. The theme of foreshadowing returns again, early in Marlow’s journey along the
West African coast. Standing on a hill, Marlow observes the suffering of African slave
laborers. He then has a prophecy about the evil he will face later in his journey: “I foresaw
that in the blinding sunshine of that land I would become acquainted with a flabby,
pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly.” As Marlow goes on to explain,
this ominous “warning” would come true, “several months later and a thousand miles
farther.”