“Heart Of Darkness” – By Joseph Conrad

Author: Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad is remembered for novels like Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim, which drew on his experience as a mariner and addressed profound themes of nature and existence. Joseph Conrad is remembered for novels like Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim, which drew on his experience as a mariner and addressed profound themes of nature and existence. A writer of complex skill and striking insight, but above all of an intensely personal vision, he has been increasingly regarded as one of the greatest English novelists.

Type of Work: novella

Setting: on the deck of the Nellie; the Congo River 

Main Characters: Marlow, Mr.Kurtz, The Manager, The Accountant, The Harlequin, The Intended, Kurtz’s Native Mistress

Motifs: journey; darkness of civilization

About The Novella:

Heart of Darkness is structured as a Frame tale, not a first-person narrative. Marlow's story is told by the anonymous narrator who listens to Marlow on the deck of the Nellie. Conrad's frame narrator, like the reader, learns that his ideas about European imperialism are founded on a number of lies that he wholeheartedly believed. By the end of the novella, Marlow's tale significantly changes the narrator's attitude toward the ships and men of the past. Only the narrator — and the reader — understand Marlow's initial point: "Civilized" Europe was once a "dark place," and it has only become more morally dark through the activities of institutions like the Company.

Charlie Marlow finds work as a ship's commander for a trading company in Africa, near the Congo River. He travels from France to the western African coast on a steamer, then takes a boat to the trading company's Inner Station.

On his journey, Marlow is appalled by the conditions of the black slaves. He arrives to find that the boat he was to command has sunk to the bottom of the river. It will take months to repair.

Marlow repeatedly hears about a man named Kurtz, who also works for the trading company. There are many rumors about Kurtz: that he's ill, that he's going to be promoted, that he and Marlow are alike.

Marlow later learns that Kurtz was the one who ordered an attack on the boat. He appears to have gone mad, and the natives worship him like a god. After Kurtz dies, Marlow returns to Europe.