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JOSEPH CONRAD: THE AUTHOR AND HIS TIMES Joseph Conrad didnt set out to become one of the great English novelists. He didnt set out to be a novelist at all, but a sailor, and besides, he wasnt English. English was his third language and he didnt begin learning it until after he was 20 years old! He was born Jozef Terror Konrad Korzeniowski in 1857, in an area of Poland that was part of Russia and is now part of the Soviet Union. The Poles were fighting for independence from Russia, and both parents were fiercely engaged in the struggle. Conrad's father was arrested in 1861 for revolutionary activity, and the family was exiled to the remote Russian city of Vologda.
On the journey there, four-year-old Conrad caught pneumonia. He remained a sickly child, and he suffered from ill health for the rest of his life. Conditions in Vologda were grueling. They were too much for Conrad's mother, and although the family was eventually allowed to move to a milder climate, she died of tuberculosis when Conrad was only seven years old. His fathers spirit was broken, and so was his health. The Czarist government finally let him return with Conrad to the Polish city of Cracow, but he died there after a year, when Conrad was eleven.
For the next several years Conrad was raised by his maternal grandmother. A stern but devoted uncle, Tadeusz Bobrowski, saw to his education. Bobrowski had a lot to put up with. Conrad wasnt much of a student. (Surprisingly, he didnt show any particular talent for languages; even his Polish could have stood improvement. ) What was worse, at the age of 14 the boy got the unheard-of notion unheard-of in land-locked Poland, that istat he wanted to become a sailor.
Bobrowski packed him off for Europe with a tutor who was supposed to talk sense into him, but the tutor ended up pronouncing Conrad hopeless and giving up the struggle. In 1874, at the age of 16, Conrad traveled to Marseilles to learn the seaman's trade. During his four years in the French merchant marine, Conrad sailed to the West Indies and possibly along the coast of Venezuela, and he had an adventure smuggling guns into Spain. He participated fully in the cultural life of Marseilles, and a little too fully in the social life. He got himself into a spectacular mess. Deeply in debt, he invited a creditor to tea one evening and shot himself while the man was on his way over.
His uncle received an urgent telegram: Conrad wounded, send money come. He did, and he was relieved to find young Conrad in good shape (except for his finances) handsome, robust, well mannered and, above all, an excellent sailor. The author would later claim, rather romantically, that he got a scar on his left breast fighting a duel. Since the young man couldnt serve on another French ship without becoming a French citizen, which would have entailed the possibility of being drafted, he signed on at the age of 20 to an English steamer.
The year was 1878. For the next 16 years he sailed under the flag of Britain, becoming a British subject in 1886. Life in the merchant marine took him to ports in Asia and the South Pacific, where he gathered material for the novels he stillamazinglydidnt know he was going to write. His depressive and irritable disposition didnt make sea life any easier for him. He quarreled with at least three of his captains, and he continued to suffer from periods of poor health and paralyzing depression. In 1888 Conrad received his first command, as captain of the Otago, a small ship sailing out of Bangkok.
It was grueling journey: three weeks to Singapore owing to lack of wind, and the whole crew riddled with fever; from there to Melbourne, Australia, where he decided to resign the command and return to England. The maddening calms of the voyage, and his uncomfortable position as a stranger on his first command, provided the inspiration 21 years later for the outlines of The Secret Sharer. Back in England, Captain Korzeniowski (as he was still known) wasnt able to find another command, and so through the influence of relatives in Brussels he secured an appointment as captain of a steamship on the Congo River: At the age of 9, he had put his finger on the blank space in the middle of a map of Africa and boasted, when I grow up I shall go there; at 32, he was fulfilling a lifelong dream. But the dream quickly turned into a nightmare. Everything is repellent to me here, he wrote from the Congo, Men and things, but especially men.
The scramble for loot disgusted him; the maltreatment of the black Africans sickened him; and as if that werent enough, he suffered from fever and dysentery that left his health broken for the rest of his life. Though his experiences in Africa were to form the basis of his most famous tale, Heart of Darkness, he returned to England traumatized. His outlook, already gloomy, became even blacker. Though Captain Korzeniowski didnt know it, his sea career was drawing to a close. In 1889 he had started a novel based on his experiences in the East. He worked on it in Africa and on his return, and in 1895 it was published as Al mayers Folly by Joseph Conrad. (Years of hearing the British garble Korzeniowski convinced him to put something they could pronounce on the title page. ) It was, like most of his books over the next two decades, a critical but not a popular success.
Writing was an agony for Conrad: he was painfully slow at it, though the necessity of getting paid made him work faster than he liked. As a result of hurry, he never felt satisfied with the finished product. (Of the masterful Heart of Darkness he wrote at the time, it is terribly bad in places and falls short of my intention as a whole. ) Marriage and the birth of two sons made his financial strain even more desperate. Periods of intense productivity (such as the mere two months in which he completed Heart of Darkness) alternated with periods of despair in which nothing got written, as well as with his recurrent bouts of nervous exhaustion and gout. A description Conrad gave of his father could have described himself: A man of great sensibilities; of exalted and dreamy temperament; with a terrible gift of irony and of gloomy disposition. Although Conrad's income from writing remained small, his reputation steadily grew. He could count among his friends and admirers such famous names as Ford Madox Ford, Stephen Crane, H.
G. Wells, Bertrand Russell, and his idol, Henry James. Financial security eventually came: in 1910 he was awarded a small pension; an American collector began purchasing his manuscripts; and his novel Chance, serialized in 1912 and published in book form two years later on both sides of the Atlantic, became his first bestseller. Conrad died in 1924 at the age of 66. He had attained international renown, but even then he was popularly regarded mainly as a teller of colorful adventures and sea stories. But his experiments in style and technique exerted a major influence on the development of the modern novel.
Since his death, the profundity and darkness of his vision have become widely recognized. HEART OF DARKNESS: THE PLOT On a boat anchored in the Thames River outside London, a sailor by the name of Marlow observes to several friends that this land was once a place of darkness, an uncivilized wilderness. This reflection leads him to remember an incident in his past, when he commanded a steamboat on the Congo River; his story forms the remainder of the novel. In his tale Marlow is a young man eager to see the unexplored African jungles. An influential aunt in Brussels secures him an appointment as captain of a Congo steamer. But when he reaches the Companys Outer Station in Africa, hes confronted with a spectacle of black slavery and white greed.
In a shady grove he discovers a crew of sickly African workers who have crawled away to die. He also meets the Companys very proper chief accountant, who mentions a certain Mr. Kurtz remarkable agent who has sent more ivory back from the jungle than the other agents combined. Marlow's interest in Kurtz will grow eventually into an obsession and become the focus of the story.
After a difficult overland trek, Marlow arrives at the Companys Central Station, where he learns that the steamer he was supposed to command has been wrecked. He meets the local manager, an unlikable and unfeeling man, who mentions that Mr. Kurtz is rumored to be ill at his station upriver and that its essential to get to him as soon as possible. One night as the others are fighting a blaze in one of the sheds, Marlow talks with one of the agents at the station, a brickmaker, who speaks of Kurtz with admiration but also resentment at the talents that make him such a likely candidate for promotion. Kurtz, he says, is one of those men who have come to Africa not merely for gain but with the noble idea of spreading enlightenment across the backward continent. Dozing one evening on the deck of his steamer, Marlow overhears a conversation between the manager and his uncle, an explorer.
Its obvious that the manager despises Kurtzpartly for his high ideals and partly because, like the brickmaker, he resents Kurtz's abilities. After three months of repairs, Marlow, the manager, and a crew of three or four whites and some 30 Africans begin the tedious voyage upriver to Kurtz's station, through a jungle that strikes Marlow as weird, foreboding, and gigantic. Fifty miles below the station they come upon a reed hut with wood stacked for the steamboat and a message for them to approach cautiously. A couple of mornings later they awaken surrounded by a thick fog through which they hear a tumult of threatening cries. Once the fog lifts they set sail again.
Suddenly theyre assailed by a shower of arrows. As the white men on board fire hysterically (and ineptly) into the brush, Marlow steers close to the shore to avoid a snag, and his African helmsman gets a spear between the ribs. Marlow jerks at the steam whistle, and as it screeches the attackers flee in terror at the noise. He casts the dead helmsman overboard in order to keep the hungry cannibal crew from being tempted by such a meal.
Soon they arrive at the Inner Station, where theyre greeted enthusiastically by a young Russian sailor who has been nursing Kurtz through a grave illness; it was he who left the pile of wood and the message. The wilderness, we learn, preyed on Kurtz's nerves, and he began to go mad; he participated in unspeakable rites and scrawled at the end of a high-toned, idealistic report about improving the savages through benevolence, Exterminate all the brutes! Although the Russian is a fanatical admirer of Kurtz's brilliance, he admits that Kurtz seized his ivory from the Africans through violence, brutality, and intimidation. Even as hes chattering, Marlow notices that the posts in front of the station house are crowned with heads. Mr. Kurtz finally appears, borne on a stretcher.
Marlow, well aware that Kurtz doesnt really want to leave the jungle where hes treated as a god, knows that with a word to his African army Kurtz could have them all slaughtered. But Kurtz allows himself to be carried aboard the steamer, although a magnificent and ferocious African woman seems ready to lead another attack. The manager tells Marlow he disapproves of Kurtz not because of his brutality, but only because his methods have made further plundering of the district temporarily difficult. The young Russian visits Marlow and discloses that the earlier attack on the steamer was ordered by Kurtz; then he steals away into the jungle. He fears the manager who hates the Russian because his ivory trading gives the Company competition. Late that night Kurtz escapes and crawls ashore, but Marlow discovers his absence and cuts him off before he reaches his followers camp.
They make a tense departure the next day, surrounded by warriors who seem ready to attack under the leadership of the barbaric woman. But Marlow sounds the whistle and frightens them off. As they steam back downriver, Kurtz's life slowly ebbs away. On his deathbed he has what seems to be a moment of illumination, of complete knowledge, and he cries out, The horror!
The horror! before he dies. Then Marlow too is taken by the fever and very nearly dies. But he survives and returns to Brussels, where, more than a year after Kurtz's death, he pays a visit to Kurtz's Intended, the woman he was engaged to marry.
Shes still in mourning, heartbreakingly devoted to the memory of a man she thinks was noble and generous to the end. When she pleads that Marlow repeat Kurtz's last words to her, he cant bear to shatter her illusions: The last word he pronounced was your name, he lies. She cries out and collapses in tears. HEART OF DARKNESS: CHARLIE MARLOW Through the first two thirds of Heart of Darkness, our curiosity about Kurtz is raised to such a pitch that we may realize only afterward, in thinking about the novel, that the main character isnt Kurtz at all, but Marlow. We find out less about Kurtz than about his effect on Marlow's life. Heart of Darkness tells the story of Marlow's spiritual journey voyage of discovery and self-discovery.
It seems safe to assume that Marlow is Conrad's stand-in. Marlow was born in England, not Poland, and he never gave up sailing to write; but otherwise the differences between the two men arent striking. And we know that Heart of Darkness, especially in its first half, is heavily autobiographical. Marlow tends to keep his own counsel: hes always observing and judging, but his politeness covers up the harshness of his judgments and encourages others to speak their minds.
The brickmaker and the manager both speak frankly to him because his mask of courtesy hides his contempt for them. (Later, when his experiences have so upset him that hes on the verge of a breakdown, Marlow does speak sarcastically to the manager, and hes never forgiven for it. ) We dont learn much about Marlow's life before the Congo voyage, beyond the simple fact that he is an experienced sailor who has seen the world. But we do get to know Marlow quite well. He is a man of modesty and courage. We know about his modesty from his embarrassment at his aunts high praises. And we see many examples of his courage, most notably during the attack on the steamer and at Kurtz's escape.
At such times Marlow always keeps a cool head; but in telling the story he never emphasizes his own daring or heroism. Marlow is obviously an excellent sailor, devoted to his work; he enjoys remembering, and making us attentive to, the technical details and difficulties of getting an old steamboat up a shallow river. His fondness for work is at the very base of his system of values. Although you may not like work nobody does, he admits its what keeps you sane, just as it keeps Marlow sane in the jungle. It provides a structure for your life, and if you concentrate on the details of your duties, you wont be tempted by the call of madness, the darkness of the unknown that surrounds us.
Marlow is the moral grounding point of the novel, the only white man in the Congo who recognizes the evils of colonialism in Africa. The spectacle of death and enslavement there is overwhelming, so Marlow's responses (as he would probably argue) arent extraordinarily moral, just normal, the only normal ones we see amid the demented greed of the traders. But Marlow is also the everyman of the novel, the basically decent and intelligent character who stands for all of us. The ugly truths he confronts are truths we all have to face. Marlow learns that he has to acknowledge his own heart of darkness, the call of the primitive in his own nature. (Conrad puts this symbolically when, late in the story, Marlow confuses the pounding of the savage drum with the beating of his own heart. ) And this is the lesson he tries to impart to his listeners and to us. HEART OF DARKNESS: KURTZ Almost from the moment Marlow arrives at the Outer Station he starts hearing about Mr.
Kurtz from the accountant, the manager, the brickmaker, and finally from the Russian. And he tells us a lot about Kurtz himself, especially during the long digression that comes just after the attack, a few pages before the end of Chapter II. But Kurtz himself is on the scene for only a few pages, and we learn less about him from observation than we do from what these other characters say about him. In fact, after all the build-up, his appearance may even seem a little disappointing: he never turns out to be as exciting as the unspeakable rites were told he participated in.
But Kurtz is more important for what he represents than for what he does dont get to see him do much of anything. Although he isnt the subject of the novel (Marlow's spiritual journey is), you could call him the focus, the catalyst to whom the other characters react. Hes more present in his effect on others than in himself. Some characters, such as the Russian and the Intended, are defined almost solely by their relationship to him. But though he isnt strongly present as a personality, as a symbol hes a figure rich with meaning. Kurtz is a microcosm whole in miniature of the white mans failure in Africa: he goes equipped with the finest technology and the highest philanthropic ideals and ends up injuring (even killing) the Africans and stealing their ivory.
He reduces technology to the guns he uses to plunder ivory. Kurtz also shows us the consequence of inadequate self-knowledge. He journeys to Africa eager to do good, and completely unaware of the dark side of his nature, the side that will respond to the call of the primitive. (Its Marlow who comes to know this side of himself. ) Kurtz points up one of the morals of Marlow's tale: if you arent aware of the darkness within you, you wont know how to fight it if you ever need to. If Marlow stands for work, Kurtz represents the opposite value, talk.
Before meeting him, Marlow can imagine him only talking, not doing; and when Marlow does finally come face-to-face with him, Kurtz is so thin from disease that he seems to be little more than a strong, deep voice. His influence on people (the Russian, the Intended, even the accountant and the brickmaker) comes through his eloquent words. He is, fittingly, a journalist (a profession for which Conrad seems to hold little regard: Marlow is disgusted by the rot let loose in print in the Belgian papers). One of his colleagues thinks he would have made a fine radical politician: after all, if he could sway individuals by his words, couldnt he sway masses as well? Conrad was conservative in his own politics; he would have disapproved of Kurtz the demagogue, the radical orator. Actions, Marlow seems to be saying, cant lie; but words can and do.
And Kurtz is associated with lies. After explaining that Kurtz (kurz) is German for short, Marlow tells us: Well, the name was as true as everything else in his life and death. He looked at least seven feet long (Chapter III). Kurtz's ideals turn out to be lies when he drops them to become a devil-god in the jungle. In fact, there is something contaminating in the aura of lies that surrounds him. Thus, as Marlow is drawn to him, he finds himself almost irresistibly lying (to the brickmaker), and he continues lying even after Kurtz's death (to the Intended).
But Kurtz has one quality that even in his degradation places him on a level above most of the other whites Marlow encounters in Africa. That quality is consciousness. Kurtz recognizes the evil of his actions; in fact, as the Russian informs us, he suffers from that knowledge. The other whites in Africa commit acts (the enslavement and massacre of huge numbers of people) that they dont even recognize as wrong.
So when Marlow talks about the choice of nightmares represented by the manager and Kurtz, he puts his loyalty with Kurtz, who at least isnt petty, though he is brutal. The manager, on the other hand, is a talentless nobody who in his pettiness still brings suffering to others. The depths to which Kurtz sinks is a measure of the heights he could have risen to. HEART OF DARKNESS: THE RUSSIAN When Marlow finally arrives at Kurtz's Inner Station, he encounters a young Russian sailor whose outfit is so colorfully patched that he reminds Marlow of a harlequin, the traditional Italian clown who dresses in motley.
And hes as simple-minded and almost as ridiculous as a clown startling instance of innocence in the midst of depravity, and a peculiar contrast to Kurtz. (He also serves as a plot device, filling us in on details about Kurtz we need to know. ) Though he is Kurtz's last disciple and apparently even witnessed the unspeakable rites Kurtz participated in, hes too childlike to have taken part himself. Marlow even admires his adventurous spirit, though he disapproves of his devotion to Kurtz. But even his devotion makes him sympathetic. He nursed Kurtz through two serious illnesses without medical supplies, and he received little gratitude in return. (Kurtz even threatened to shoot him to get his small hoard of ivory. ) In addition to loyalty, his character is marked by the glamour of youth and the absolutely pure, un calculating, unpractical spirit of adventure. He has wandered the jungles for two years, mostly alone; and he makes his exit headed for more lonely wanderings. He is full of self-doubt, he has no great thoughts and no abilities, he tells Marlow.
No wonder such an impressionable youth is mesmerized by Kurtz's magnificent eloquence. But the Russian sailor is also a fool. Marlow tells us that a fool is safe from madness in the jungle: you can be too dull even to know you are being assaulted by the powers of darkness (Chapter II). The Russian is so awed by Kurtz's ideas (That man has enlarged my mind, he exclaims) that he becomes morally blind to the evil Kurtz does. Yet he is not malicious himself; in fact, hes one of the very few whites along the Congo who isnt a scoundrel. So its appropriate that he doesnt work for the odious Company. (His free-agent status, in fact, is what makes the manager want to hang him. ) HEART OF DARKNESS: THE MANAGER If Heart of Darkness has a villain, its the manager of the Companys Central Station, who accompanies Marlow on the steamboat to the Inner Station.
But hes a villain in a rather general sense, standing in Marlow's eyes for all the bloodless bureaucrats who calmly oversee the Companys mass enslavement of the Africans. He has no moral sensibility, just a business sensibility: Kurtz's foulest crimes are, to his mind, deplorable only because the trade will suffer on account of them (Chapter III). The manager is a talentless nobody with no special abilities. His Central Station is a chaotic mess.
The only claim he has to his position is his hardy constitution: he doesnt catch the tropical diseases that overwhelm other whites (including Kurtz and Marlow). That gives him staying power. Practically the first thing Marlow says about the manager is, He was commonplace in complexion, in feature, in manners, and in voice (Chapter I); and the long description that follows emphasizes his commonness. In this he is certainly the opposite of his rival, Kurtz, of whom Marlow remarks, Whatever he was, he was not common (Chapter II). He resents Kurtz so much that he seems to be willing to let the trade suffer by sabotaging him. Marlow hints that he intentionally sank the steamer so that Kurtz, already ill, would die before help reached the Inner Station.
So his blandness conceals a deeper malignancy, which becomes most apparent as he watches Kurtz's slow death with satisfaction: the affair had come off as well as could be wished (Chapter III). He half-starves the boats African crew by refusing to stop to let them trade for food on shore. (He has plenty of his own. ) Unlike Kurtz, he can exercise restraint: He was just the kind of man who would wish to preserve appearances. That was his restraint (Chapter II). He cares a lot more about the appearance of being an upright manager than about the actual wrongs he commits. His crimes have the approval of society most of them just involve carrying on the business of the big bureaucratic death-machine known as the Company. Incidentally, the manager is based on the real-life Camille Delcommune, manager of a Congo trading station at which Conrad was stationed in much the same capacity as Marlow.
He wrote to his aunt (September 26, 1890): The manager is a common ivory-dealer with sordid instincts who considers himself a merchant though he is only a kind of African shop-keeper. His name is Delcommune. I can hope for neither promotion nor increase of salary while he remains here. The dislike was mutual, so we can be sure that the portrait of the rotten manager is at least partly an act of revenge. HEART OF DARKNESS: THE BRICKMAKER The brickmaker of the Central Station takes Marlow aside and tries to pump him for information under the mistaken impression that Marlow has highly influential connections in Europe. He would seem like more of a villain if he werent so pathetically ineffective Marlow observes, he cant even manage to make bricks. (His attempt to get information from Marlow is so obvious and incompetent that its comical. ) He is a young aristocrat who toadies shamelessly to the manager, doing his menial secretarial tasks.
The alliance has brought him a few special privileges, and also the dislike of the other pilgrims, who think hes the managers spy. Hes capable, as he demonstrates with Marlow, of fawning one minute and making veiled threats the next. Like his ally the manager, he resents Kurtz because he fears that if the highly efficient Kurtz is promoted to general manager, his own position will be endangered. The brickmaker is typical of the malaise that cripples all the Companys trading stations.
Instead of a devotion to efficiency (which Marlow says early on is the saving grace of colonialism), hes devoted to himself. Trade and progress concern him a lot less than a possible promotion. HEART OF DARKNESS: THE ACCOUNTANT On first arriving at the Outer Station, Marlow becomes acquainted with the Companys chief accountant for Africa, a man who, in his devotion to efficiency, is the very opposite of the brickmaker and the other pilgrims of the Central Station. His books are in apple-pie order, and he really does care about his job, just as he cares about his appearance, which is immaculate. Marlow admires him. Further, the accountant thinks highly of Kurtz.
After all, such an efficient worker would have no reason to fear for his job (unlike the manager and the brickmaker) if Kurtz were promoted, which he calmly predicts is what will happen. He holds the rest of the agents of the Central Station in little regard, and even suggests that to send Kurtz a letter through there would be imprudent because the agents there might snoop into it. However, the accountants devotion to efficiency blinds him to the sufferings of both whites and blacks in Africa. When a sick agent is brought into his office, he complains that the groans distract him from his work; he is not particularly concerned that the man is dying. He hates the Africans to the death simply because they make noise. Perhaps Conrad is suggesting though not explicitly that even at its best the Company is inhumane, caring more about numbers than about people.
When Marlow last sees the accountant, he tells us he is bent over his books, making correct entries of perfectly correct transactions; and fifty feet below the doorstep I could see the still tree-tops of the grove of death where a group of exhausted natives have crawled to die (Chapter I). Perfectly correct transactions is an ironic way of phrasing it. How could transactions that lead to wholesale death be perfectly correct? HEART OF DARKNESS: KURTZS INTENDED Marlow meets the woman Kurtz was engaged to marry, his Intended (it is always capitalized), after Kurtz has been dead for more than a year. She is living under the delusion that Kurtz was generous, kind, and noble to the end, and Marlow doesnt choose to enlighten her. He lies that Kurtz died with her name on his lips. (Proper Victorian that he is, Marlow thinks it fitting and just that women be relegated to the world of beautiful illusions. ) But he pays a price for his dishonesty.
The sudden recognition of how intimately goodness and lies are mingled in the world almost drives him to despair. Though theres something saintly about the Intended, theres also something slightly repellent in the intensity of her delusion. Shes linked by a gesture to Kurtz's savage mistress. And just as that woman represents the soul of the jungle in all its cruelty, the Intended is the soul of civilization, a civilization woven partly of truth and partly of the lies we need to go on living. The Belgian public needs the lie of the Companys high ideals and philanthropic intentions in order to stomach the colonization of the Congo; likewise, the Intended needs the lie of Kurtz's ideals and intentions to believe that he died for a worthwhile cause. But as Marlow perceives how necessary it is to lie, Kurtz's final judgment The horror!
The horror! rings in his ears, and it suddenly seems like a judgment not just on Kurtz's own life and the darkness of Africa, but a judgment on even the best, the most beautiful parts of civilization including the drawing room of this loyal, tragic woman. HEART OF DARKNESS: KURTZS MISTRESS Talking of Kurtz, Marlow says that the wilderness had loved him, embraced him (Chapter II), and Conrad gives us a vivid symbol of that embrace in Kurtz's savage mistress. Marlow calls her the soul of the jungle wild and, gorgeous, savage and superb, and like the jungle, dangerous.
She seems to be a leader of Kurtz's army; at least, shes the most fearless of his followers, the only one not petrified by the shriek of the steam whistle. As the boat departs, Marlow reports she stretched tragically her bare arms after us over the sombre and glittering river (Chapter III); and its this gesture that reminds Marlow of her when he sees the Intended put out her arms as if after a retreating figure across the fading and narrowing sheen of the window in her drawing room. One woman represents the civilization that loses Kurtz; the other symbolizes the jungle that destroys him. HEART OF DARKNESS: THE PILGRIMS The pilgrims, as Marlow sarcastically calls them, are the 20 or so agents at the Central Station who carry long staves like actual religious travelers and talk so much about ivory that You would think they were praying to it. Lazy and self-satisfied, they represent the worst of the whites in Africa: as to effectually lifting a little finger, no (Chapter I). At one of the Congo trading stations Conrad visited, he recorded in his diary: Prominent characteristic of the social life here; people speaking ill of each other.
He must have been remembering this behavior when he wrote that the pilgrims beguiled the time by backbiting and intriguing against each other in a foolish kind of way (Chapter I). Although he despises them, Conrad uses the pilgrims for comic relief, especially on the trip upriver. (Three or four of them accompany Marlow and the manager. ) During the attack, their terror and their wild gunfire are incongruously funny. But the pilgrims are also bloodthirsty; they enjoy massacring Africans. Dont!
dont you frighten them away, they cry when Marlow scares off their human targets with the screech of the steam whistle (Chapter III). HEART OF DARKNESS: THE CANNIBALS On the trip upriver Marlow enlists a crew of about 30 cannibals to do the boats manual labor. In contrast to the idiotic pilgrims, Conrad portrays the cannibals with dignity. They grow increasingly hungry on board, especially after the pilgrims throw their provision of stinking hippo meat overboard and the manager refuses to stop to trade for food on shore.
Marlow tries to imagine why they dont eat him and the pilgrim, and the only answer he can offer is the restraint he values so highly in civilized people: Restraint! I would just as soon have expected restraint from a hyena prowling amongst the corpses of a battlefield. But there was the fact facing me (Chapter II). Marlow respects them: They were men one could work with, and I am grateful to them. Work is one of Marlow's highest values, and the pilgrims, we know, are terrible workers.
In fact, the pilgrims are always behaving on a level beneath what you would expect of civilized men, while the cannibals keep acting on a level above what you would expect of savages. HEART OF DARKNESS: THE FIREMAN The fireman is an African who has been trained to operate the boats vertical boiler. Marlow says, ironically, that through instruction hes an improved specimen, but he doesnt really understand the machine thinks theres an evil spirit inside who gets angry if you dont give him enough water. The fireman is an expression of Conrad's pessimism about civilizing the jungle.
It can be doneperhapsbut it will be a long, slow process, much more difficult than all the glib, idealistic talk about weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways (Chapter I) takes account of. HEART OF DARKNESS: THE HELMSMAN The African helmsman who steers the boat is an athletic black belonging to some coast tribe who dies from a spear wound during the attack on the steamer. Hes a poor worker, swaggering and undependable, and Marlow (who calls him a fool) has to watch over him constantly. His death is largely his own fault, since he abandons his post to stand at the window and shoot wildly at the attacking tribe. He had no restraint, Marlow comments, no restraint just like Kurtz (Chapter II).
Nevertheless, Marlow clearly values him. A subtle bond has grown between them through working together (Marlow is always thinking about the rewards of work), and he doesnt think getting to Kurtz was worth the death of his helmsman. HEART OF DARKNESS: THE MANAGERS UNCLE The managers uncle arrives at the Central Station while Marlow is delayed there repairing his boat. Hes a short, fat man who heads something called the Eldorado Exploring Expedition group pretending to be interested in geography but really just out to get rich.
Marlow compares them to burglars. He also overhears a conversation between the manager and his uncle in which the uncle proves to be particularly bloodthirsty, urging his nephew to exercise his authority and hang whomever he wants to. HEART OF DARKNESS: THE BOILER-MAKER Marlow's foreman is a mechanic at the Central Station, a boiler-maker by trade. His rough manners make him an object of disdain to the pilgrims, but he appeals to Marlow because of his capacity and enthusiasm for work. He makes only a brief appearance, just after Marlow's long talk with the brickmaker.
His simple bluntness is a relief after the brickmaker's caginess, and his unrefined, working-class bearing forms an effective contrast to the brickmaker's effete, upper-class smugness. HEART OF DARKNESS: MARLOWS AUNT Marlow's aunt is based, at least in part, on Marguerite Poradowska, who was related to Conrad by marriage. (She was not a true aunt, but he addressed her that way in his letters. ) Like Marlow's aunt, Poradowska lived in Brussels and intervened on Conrad's behalf to secure him an appointment as captain of a Congo steamer. If Conrad was trying to depict Marguerite Poradowska realistically, the portrait was not a very flattering one. The aunt has been swayed by all the rot let loose in print and talk just about that time, and she prattles about the high (and false) ideals shes been hearing about civilizing the ignorant masses, and so forth until finally Marlow has to remind her that the Company is run for profit. Her chatter prompts the first of several passages on how out of touch with truth women are (Chapter I) a reflection that comes home during Marlow's encounter with Kurtz's Intended at the end of the novel. HEART OF DARKNESS: THE NARRATOR We learn very little about the actual narrator of the novel, the man who, aboard the Nellie anchored at the mouth of the Thames, hears Marlow spin his yarn and later reports it to us.
But we can see that he has been affected by what he hears, as the change in imagery from the beginning to the end of the book indicates. At the outset hes impressed by all the light on the Thames, and he thinks about English nautical history in terms of lighter instance, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. By the end, his imagination is full of darkness. If Marlow intends his tale as a warning that we need to pay more heed to the darkness the incomprehensible, the opposite of civilization and progress then in the case of the narrator, at least, hes made his point. HEART OF DARKNESS: SETTING Although most of the action in Heart of Darkness is set in the jungles of the African Congo, the tale itself is narrated by a sailor aboard a pleasure boat at the mouth of the Thames River outside London. Both the time of day and the spot are significant.
Its sunset; as the tale turns gloomier, images of darkness get more and more pervasive. The evening grows gradually darker, so that by the time Marlow finishes, late in the night, his listeners have literally been enveloped in darkness. The setting right outside London would put them next to the great seat of civilization (for an English novelist, at least) a strategic place from which to hear a tale of the wilderness. In fact, for an English sailor the mouth of the Thames would mark the point between the light of civilization and the unknown ends of the earth. But by the end Marlow has made it clear that the darkness he is talking about has almost as much to do with the city as with the jungle. Marlow's adventure takes place in the Congo Free State, an area that at the time was the personal property of Leopold II, king of the Belgians.
There had been a lot of empty talk about Leopold's philanthropic and civilizing activities in the Congo, but by 1899, when Heart of Darkness first appeared, the grim conditions that actually prevailed there and the grotesquely inhumane treatment of the African natives were becoming widely enough known to create an international scandal. Conrad, who served as skipper of a Congo steamer himself in 1890, knew the true conditions, and much of the gruesome detail is drawn from observation. But he exaggerated a few points for literary purposes. Specifically, the Congo was already far more tamed by Conrad's time than the novel suggests. The river was dotted with active trading stations, and the station that would have been the equivalent of Kurtz's Inner Station had a number of company agents, not just one. Conrad's departures from the reality serve to emphasize the isolation of his characters, and thus to intensify the theme of solitude.
HEART OF DARKNESS: THEME The darkness of the title is the major theme of the book, but the meaning of that darkness is never clearly defined. On the whole it stands for the unknown and the unknowable; it represents the opposite of the progress and enlightenment that dominated the 19 th century. Not many years before, it had been widely believed that science was eventually going to cure the ills of the world; but by the end of the century a deeper pessimism had taken hold, and the darkness is Conrad's image for everything he most dreaded. Science had turned out to be a sham, at least as a route to human happiness the world wasnt getting any better.
Was the darkness something that was simply a part of the universe, something that could never be defeated? Or did it come from within human beings? The heart of darkness stands for many things the interior of the jungle, the Inner Station, Kurtz's own black heart, perhaps the heart of every human being. Conrad leaves the meanings of this darkness hazy on purpose.
As the narrator tells us, for Marlow the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze (Chapter I). He also calls the story inconclusive. In other words, you cant easily reduce the meaning to a couple of sentences. Conrad doesnt declared hints and suggests. This quality sometimes makes it difficult to put your finger on exactly what it is about a passage that disturbs or moves or excites you, and it makes it difficult to explain the full meaning of certain symbols especially the darkness. But its exactly this quality that makes the book so creepy and unsettling that it lingers in the mind.
There are several running sub themes that you should note. Foremost among these is the notion of work. Whatever the darkness is, the best way to fend it off, and to stay sane, is by working. Conrad doesnt pretend that work is enjoyable, but it strengthens your character and makes you less likely to lose your grip in difficult situations. (One reason most of the white characters in the novel are so unattractive is that they dont do their work. ) Another value he holds in esteem is restraint.
Self-restraint takes determination, but it may save you from the grim consequences of thoughtless action. Conrad shows us two unsettling examples of individuals who lack restraint. One is the black helmsman on Marlow's boat; his inability to restrain himself leads to his death. The other example is Mr. Kurtz, whose lack of restraint is to a large degree the subject of the plot. Another running theme could be called the unreliability of high ideals, or simply of words. (This is surprising from a novelist whos so verbose himself. ) Conrad and his alter ego, Marlow, dont trust words.
Actions are what you have to judge people by: actions cant lie, but words can. A related topic is the theme of illusions, and of delusions. Conrad believes that some illusions are necessary, especially for his women characters. But how necessary? And is a lie excusable, or even commendable, when it supports such an illusion? HEART OF DARKNESS: STYLE Since Marlow's tale is told aloud, Conrad makes his prose resemble a speaking voice.
Thus we get pauses, hesitations, repetitions, digressions all of which we normally associate with a speaker, not a writer. You get the sense of Marlow being at times completely absorbed by his memories, at others becoming abstracted and letting his mind wander; of his constantly trying to understand the meaning of his own tale. He is remarkably (sometimes painfully) wordy, testing a formulation, then backing off and trying another, until hes reached one he feels satisfied with. Its almost as if he wants to trap his worst memories in a soft cocoon of words. Conrad's so-called impressionist method lets us experience Marlow's sensations along with him. The author mounts detail on detail before finally putting them all together to find their significance.
For example, at the Inner Station where Marlow has gone to retrieve Kurtz, he spies six posts with ornamental balls on top and assumes that they must be the remainder of some kind of fence. Later, looking through a telescope, the balls come into focus and he realizes theyre human heads. We experience his misperception as well as his sudden revelation, and even the revelation comes in stages: first his surprise its first result was to make me throw my head back as if before a blow (Chapter III) and then his deduction. So we take part in the mental process. This kind of immediacy, this emphasis on sensation, makes the jungle seem very real, and its particularly effective during such episodes as the attack on the steamer. But it has a further implication.
The emphasis is on what you can know with your senses these facts are reliable. Marlow, of course, is constantly examining his sensations to find the meaning in them, expressing opinions and doubts, but seldom coming to firm conclusions. Marlow's experiences, as the narrator tells us (Chapter I), are inconclusive, and for such inconclusiveness Conrad's impressionist style is appropriate. HEART OF DARKNESS: POINT OF VIEW Marlow is clearly Conrad's alter ego; his opinions dont differ significantly from what we know about the authors own. But Marlow has tremendous importance as a literary device. By using an actual speaking sailor to tell the story, Conrad goes just about as far away as you can get from the typical 19 th-century novels omniscient narrator the all-knowing voice of an impersonal author who told you not only what happened to the characters but also what went on in their minds.
Were never allowed to know more than Marlow himself, and Marlow knows only what he perceives through his senses. Thus, were never directly told what motivated, say, the manager or Kurtz. Instead, we get Marlow's speculations on what their motivations might have been. Whats most unusual about the point of view in Heart of Darkness isnt the use of Marlow as narrator, but that his tale is framed by the narration of another, nameless observer. As a result, Marlow's whole story appears somewhat cumbersomely enclosed in quotation marks. Why couldnt Conrad just make Marlow the primary narrator and drop the nameless voice at the beginning and the end?
One reason is that by having Marlow in front of us on the cruising yawl Nellie, we feel the immediacy of his speaking voice, we get the actual sensation of a crusty sailor spinning a yarn before us. If Conrad had written the whole novel in the first person, dispensing with the primary narrator, hed have ended up with a more writer book, in which Marlow's hesitations and digressions which are such an important element in the style would have no place. We would also miss the feeling that Marlow was working out the meaning of his tale as he went along, and that we were a part of that process. A writer, unlike a talker, usually has things worked out beforehand. The meaning of the novel lies not only in what happened in Africa, but also in Marlow's conviction that he has to tell others about these events as a kind of warning. The representative Victorians aboard the Nellie need to be told about the threat of the darkness, the threat to progress and enlightenment, because for the most part the Victorian world hadnt acknowledged that threat.
By putting his audience, especially the primary narrator, on the deck of the Nellie with Marlow, Conrad emphasizes this warning aspect of Marlow's talent its effect on his listeners. HEART OF DARKNESS: FORM AND STRUCTURE Heart of Darkness is structured as a journey of discovery, both externally in the jungle, and internally in Marlow's own mind. The deeper he penetrates into the heart of the jungle, the deeper he delves within himself; by the climax, when Kurtz has been revealed for the disgrace he is, Marlow has also learned something about himself. And he returns to civilization with this new knowledge. Formally, Heart of Darkness looks forward to many of the developments of the modern novel most notably the fracturing of time. Marlow doesnt tell his tale straight through from beginning to end; hell skip from an early event to a late event and back again.
Thus, we get several pages about Kurtz Marlows impressions and evaluation of his behavior close to the end of Chapter II, but Kurtz himself doesnt appear on the scene until some way into Chapter III. Nor would a typical 19 th-century narrator interrupt a buildup of suspense like the depiction of the boat waiting to be attacked in the fog with a lengthy digression on cannibalism and self-restraint. But Marlow does. Hes describing the fog and the fright of the white pilgrims on board, which leads him to recall the reactions of the black Africans on board, and suddenly hes off on a tangent about cannibalism that brings the development of the action to a complete halt. In a more traditional novel this passage would have been reserved for a more appropriate place, for example, when the author first introduced the cannibals.
But Marlow imparts his thoughts as they occur to him. Conrad was trying to find a form that more closely followed the contours of human thought less artificial form than the traditional novel. (Later novelists notably James Joyce and William Faulkner, took these experiments with fractured time and space much further. ) Hence the forward and backward leaps, the interruptions, the thoughts left dangling. HEART OF DARKNESS: THE STORY Conrad divided Heart of Darkness into three longish chapters. To make discussion easier, they can be subdivided as follows: HEART OF DARKNESS: CHAPTER I 1. Prologue: Marlow Begins His Tale. 2. The Sepulchral City.
The Company. 3. Africa. The Outer Station. 4. The Trek. The Central Station. 5.
The Brickmaker. 6. The Boiler-maker. The Eldorado Expedition. HEART OF DARKNESS: CHAPTER II 1. The Manager and His Uncle. 2. The Journey Upriver. 3.
The Message. The Fog. Cannibals. 4. The Attack. 5. Kurtz. 6. The Inner Station.
HEART OF DARKNESS: CHAPTER III 1. The Russians Story. 2. Kurtz. His Mistress. Departure of the Russian. 3. Kurtz's Escape.
Departure. 4. Kurtz's Death. 5. Marlow's illness and Return. 6. The Lie. 7. Epilogue.
Be sure to note that these subdivisions arent Conrad's. They are used in this guide only to make the novel easier to analyze and discuss. Quotations cited can usually be found in the subdivision being discussed. When a quotation is from a subdivision other than the one under discussion, it will be identified this way: (III, 5), meaning Chapter III, subdivision 5 the subdivision titled Marlow's Illness and Return.
HEART OF DARKNESS: PROLOGUE: MARLOW BEGINS HIS TALE Five Englishmen are enjoying themselves one pleasant afternoon aboard a sailboat close to the mouth of the Thames River outside London. Since there isnt much wind, theyre stranded when the tide turns (The flood had made); all they can do is drop anchor and wait several hours until the tide shifts again. The men on board are our nameless narrator; a weathered sailor by the name of Marlow; and three typical representatives of Victorian professional society: a lawyer, an accountant, and a director of companies (who owns the boat). Sunset: the light on the Thames is brilliant. Our narrator patriotically reca
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