Moise Loredana – Elena (Nistor)

Programul de Conversie, Anul II

“Heart of Darkness”,
by Joseph Conrad - from a narratological point of view

“Heart of Darkness”, written by Joseph Conrad, a polish origin novelist, was

published in 1902 and it is based on author experience of life as sailor in Belgian Congo, but
because of its narrative technique, it can represent the beginner of the Modern English
Literature. Since its publication in volume Youth, the novel has fascinated numerous readers
and critics, almost all of whom regarded the novel as an important one because of the ways it
uses ambiguity and (in Conrad’s own words) "foggishness" to dramatize Marlow’s
perceptions of the horrors he encounters.
The context in which the novel was written is linked on King Leopold II of Belgium
(that ruled 1865—1909) who possessed an insatiable greed for money, land, and power—and
looked to Africa to find them. He ordered one of the most notable examples of imperialism
and genocide in modern memory.
Leopold’s agents, therefore, comprised a chaotic, unforgiving, and hateful force
determined only to make the most money possible by exploiting the natives—often whipping
them with a piece of sun-dried hippopotamus hide called a “chicotte”, chopping off their
hands and heads, or killing them by dozens at a time. In his recent study of the Congo, King
Leopold’s Ghost, the historian Adam Hochschild estimates that during the period of
Leopold’s pillage of the Congo, the population dropped by ten million people. Disease,
starvation, a low birth rate, and outright murder all combined to turn the Congo into what
“Heart of Darkness” later portrayed as a "nightmare."
The device used by Conrad was the frame narrative, which is also known as narrative
within narrative. The narrator in this technique does not involve himself in the events, but
keeps himself at a distance so as he could observe all the accounts of the characters and
delivers it to us. There are two narrators who describe the events one after another. In frame
narrative, one narrator makes frame by introducing and explaining the events at the beginning,
then handing over the narrative to another narrator and at last again resuming the narrative
himself. The first narrator remains apart, but still he is with the crew members and is one of
them.
In this case the first narrator is an anonymous narrator who listens to Marlow on the
deck of the Nellie, he is a witness. This narrator begins speaking as the day is drawing to a
close; his descriptions of the sky and weather suggest both beauty and mystery. While his

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Moise Loredana – Elena (Nistor)
Programul de Conversie, Anul II

descriptions contribute to the atmosphere aboard the Nellie, they also reflect the moral "haze"
and "mist" in which Marlow finds himself as his journeys closer and closer to Kurtz. The
afternoon is similar to that from the tale that Marlow will tell: ambiguous, brooding, and,
above all, "dark." This narrator speaks at third person, he is omniscient, he helps the readers
to enter in the atmosphere of the novel.
This third person narrator indicates us the time and the place of the story from the first
paragraph: “The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and
was at rest. (…) The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an
interminable waterway. (…) The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed
condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest
town on earth.” And the time is specified in the fourth paragraph: “The day was ending in a
serenity of still and exquisite brilliance.” Through this description the narrator introduces the
readers in the atmosphere of the novel and provides clues about the story that will be told by
Marlow.
Another role of this unknown narrator is to present us the characters who take part on
Marlow’s story:, the Director of Companies, the Lawyer, the Accountant, Marlow and the
anonymous narrator. He indicates their role or provides some of their features: “The Director
of Companies was our captain and our host. (…) He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is
trustworthiness personified”, “The Lawyer – the best of old fellows – had, because of his
many years and many virtues, the only cushion on deck. The Accountant had brought out
already out already a box of dominoes, and was toying architecturally with the bones”. The
Marlow’s portrait is the most detailed on all: “he had sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a
straight back, an ascetic aspect, and, with his arms dropped, the palms of hands outwards,
resembled an idol.”
After these portraits the third person narrator continues the description of place and
time. The moment of sunset and the darkness of the night act as a epiphany for Marlow, who
starts his story: “And this also has been one of the dark places of the earth.” And then the
omniscient narrator finishes in a long paragraph Marlow’s portrait: he resembles to a
traditional hero: tough, honest, an independent thinker, a capable man. Yet he is also “broken”
or “damaged,” because the world has defeated him in some fundamental way, and he is
weary, sceptical, and cynical. Marlow also mediates between the figure of the intellectual and
that of the “working tough.”

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Moise Loredana – Elena (Nistor)
Programul de Conversie, Anul II

Marlow begins sharing to the other men some of his believes about Imperialism and
then he is telling about a time he journeyed in a steamboat up the Congo River. For the rest of
the novel (with only minor interruptions from the omniscient narrator), Marlow says his tale.
As a young man, Marlow desires to visit Africa and pilot a steamboat on the Congo
River. After learning of the Company—a large ivory-trading firm working out of the Congo
—Marlow applies for and received a post. He left Europe in a French steamer. At the
Company’s Outer Station in the Congo, Marlow witnesses scenes of brutality, chaos, and
waste. Marlow speaks with an Accountant, whose spotless dress and uptight demeanour
fascinate him. Marlow first learns from the Accountant of Kurtz—a "remarkable" agent
working in the interior. Marlow leaves the Outer Station on a 200-mile trek across Africa, and
eventually reaches the Company’s Central Station, where he learns that the steamboat he is
supposed to pilot up the Congo was wrecked at the bottom of the river. Frustrated, Marlow
learns that he has to wait at the Central Station until his boat is repaired. Marlow then meets
the Company’s Manager, who told him more about Kurtz. According to the Manager, Kurtz is
supposedly ill, and the Manager feigns great concern over Kurtz’s health—although Marlow
later suspects that the Manager wrecked his steamboat on purpose to keep supplies from
getting to Kurtz.
Kurtz resembles the archetypal “evil genius”: the highly gifted but ultimately
degenerate individual whose fall is the stuff of legend. Kurtz is a man of many talents—we
learn, among other things, that he is a gifted musician and a fine painter—the chief of which
are his charisma and his ability to lead men. Kurtz is a man who understands the power of
words, and his writings are marked by an eloquence that obscures their horrifying message.
Although he remains an enigma even to Marlow, Kurtz clearly exerts a powerful influence on
the people in his life. His downfall seems to be a result of his willingness to ignore the
hypocritical rules that govern European colonial conduct: Kurtz has “kicked himself loose of
the earth” by fraternizing excessively with the natives and not keeping up appearances; in so
doing, he has become wildly successful but has also incurred the wrath of his fellow white
men. Kurtz is also characterized by other characters, so for his cousin, he was a great
musician; for the journalist, a brilliant politician and leader of men; for his fiancée, a great
humanitarian and genius.
From Marlow’s tale we can also perceive what the image of Africa was for Europeans,
It is a place of wilderness, of unknown, of evil and of temptation, named in those times “the
dark continent”. Africa is "the other world," the antithesis of Europe and therefore of

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Moise Loredana – Elena (Nistor)
Programul de Conversie, Anul II

civilization, a place where man's vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by
triumphant bestiality. Marlow’s description of the jungle is marked by an increased emphasis
on what he sees as its prehistoric nature. "Going back to that jungle was like traveling back to
the earliest beginnings of the world," he states, and in subsequent passages reinforces this
impression. For example, he calls himself and his crew "wanderers on a prehistoric earth" and
the natives examples of "prehistoric man.” This attitude may seem patronizing—as if Marlow
implies that Africa is unfinished and is ages behind Europe in terms of civilization. However,
much of Conrad’s novel is a critique of civilization and those who want (like Kurtz) to bring
his "light" into the heart of "darkness."
Maybe from this conception of Africa derives the image of Black - „still belonged to
the beginnings of time," they never attack their White superiors—which would have been an
easy feat for them. Marlow argues that "the devilry of lingering starvation" is the most
impossible force to defeat, because it outweighs any "superstitions, beliefs, and what you may
call principles." Unlike the Company (and its greatest prodigy, Kurtz), the "savage" Africans
show a humane and honourable restraint that their "superiors" obviously lack, as seen in their
insatiable hunger for ivory and the brutal means by which they acquire it.
The black people are staying in the dark, in the shadow of the forest, they are hiding
from white people eye; they are presented as cannibals and were paid "royally", for their
services, with useless wire with which they were expected to procure food: “they had given
them every week three pieces of brass wire, about nine inches long; and the theory was they
were to buy their provisions with that currency in river-side villages.”
Some of the natives are dying without anyone seeming to notice or care. Calling them
"nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation" and "bundles of acute angles," Marlow
attempts to show some charity by offering one of them a biscuit; the dying native, however,
can only grasp it in his hand, too weak to even bring it to his mouth. Marlow notices that this
man has "a bit of white worsted" tied around his neck and puzzles over its meaning, but the
reader can see that the wool is symbolic of the Company’s "collaring" the natives and treating
them like animals.
In contrast the White are presented as intelligent, superior to Black, with a civilized
behaviour as “reading” or living in small cottages, standing in the light of sun, smoking,
wearing white clothes. They are supposed to bring "civilization" and "light" to Africa in the
name of Christian charity, but really raping the land and its people in the name of profit and
the lust for power. Although the Company professes to be a force of "White" moral

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Moise Loredana – Elena (Nistor)
Programul de Conversie, Anul II

righteousness, it is actually "spotted" with "black" spots of sin and inhumanity, and the
corpses of the black natives that are found throughout the Congo. The Europeans may appear
to be “white” and pure, but it is actually quite the opposite.
Marlow offers us the mentality of those times society and he does speak well of the
cannibals on board his steamboat, for they possess a quality that Marlow sees less and less
during his time in Company-controlled Africa: restraint. Although these men "still belonged
to the beginnings of time," they never attack their White superiors—which would have been
an easy feat for them. Marlow argues that "the devilry of lingering starvation" is the most
impossible force to defeat, because it outweighs any "superstitions, beliefs, and what you may
call principles." Unlike the Company (and its greatest prodigy, Kurtz), the "savage" Africans
show a humane and honourable restraint that their "superiors" obviously lack, as seen in their
insatiable hunger for ivory and the brutal means by which they acquire it. Even if the jungle
grows more frightening and mysterious, Marlow struggles to keep himself calm and
"European."
At the end of the novel Marlow’s tale has significantly changed the narrator’s attitude
toward European imperialism. The narrator compares him to "a meditating Buddha"—clearly
he has been touched by Marlow’s teachings. While the Director of Companies remarks, "We
have lost the flow of the ebb" because he wants to break the uncomfortable silence created by
the power of Marlow’s story, the narrator has been too affected by Marlow’s ideas, and his
enlightenment affects his description of what he sees as he looks at the Thames: a dark river
leading to "an immense darkness." Only the narrator—and the reader—understand Marlow’s
initial point: "Civilized" Europe was once also a "dark place," and it has only become more
morally dark through the activities of institutions such as the Company.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
1. Achebe, Chinua. "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'"
Massachusetts Review. 18. 1977. Rpt. in Heart of Darkness, An Authoritative Text,
background and Sources Criticism. 1961. 3rd ed. Ed. Robert Kimbrough, London: W.
W Norton and Co., 1988, pp.251-261.
2. Conrad, Joseph, ”Heart of Darkness”, Penguin Books, 1994.

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Moise Loredana – Elena (Nistor)
Programul de Conversie, Anul II

3. Svensson, Morgan, “Critical responses to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness”,

Sodertorn University, 2010.
4. http://www.ironmaidencommentary.com/?url=album10_xfactor/
heartofdarkness&lang=eng&link=albums#top.