Heart of Darkness

Author: Joseph Conrad

Year: Published: 1899
Type: Novella
Genre: Adventure
Perspective and Narrator: Heart of Darkness has two first-person
narrators. An unidentified man sets the scene of the story: a group of
friends have gathered on a yacht on the River Thames, waiting for the
tide to turn so they can head to sea. Three are identified by their
former professions: the Lawyer, the Accountant, and the Director of
Companies. Only Marlow is named. His account, a retrospective of his
time in Africa, dominates the narrative. Marlow’s tale is framed by the
commentary of the fifth, unidentified, man.
Tense: Heart of Darkness is narrated primarily in the past tense.
About the Title: The title alludes to the essential concerns of this
modernist novella: the mysteries of Africa, “the dark continent,” from
the colonialist point of view and the equally compelling mysteries of
the ignorance, evil, and fear residing in the human heart.
Characters
 Marlow
 Kurtz
 Jungle
 Manager
 Russian
 Helmsman
Symbols
 Darkness
 Ivory
 Dark Wool
 Harlequin
 Drums
Themes
 Racism
 Greed and Imperialism
 Hypocrisy and Indifference
 Civilization versus Barbarism

Timeline of Events
Introduction
 Resting on a yacht on the Thames, Marlow begins his tale.
Rising Action
 Marlow gets a job with an ivory trading company.
 Marlow travels to Africa, stopping at every port.
 At the outer station, Marlow hears of Kurtz.
 Marlow hikes 200 miles (320 km) to the Central Station.
 Marlow learns why the manager wants to pick up Kurtz.
 Marlow pilots the repaired steamer upriver.
 The steamer is attacked on the river.
 Marlow arrives at the Inner Station.
 Marlow finds Kurtz in the jungle.
Climax
 Kurtz dies on the steamer, crying, “The horror! The horror!”
Falling Action
 Heading downriver, Marlow contemplates Kurtz’s life.
 Marlow gives Kurtz’s report to a journalist.
 With Kurtz’s fiancée, Marlow protects Kurtz’s memory.
Resolution
 Having told his tale, Marlow reflects quietly on the yacht.

Part-wise Summary
Part 1: (The Novel Opens)
Summary
As Heart of Darkness opens, five friends sit on a yacht, waiting for the
tide to change on England’s Thames River so they can head out to sea.
It is 1891, and European colonization of the African continent is at its
height. The five friends are the Director of Companies, the Lawyer, the
Accountant, Charlie Marlow (a seaman and an adventurer), and an
unnamed narrator of the story, whose words begin and end the novella
and thus frame Marlow’s tale. The friends are used to telling stories to
one another.
Marlow, the best yarn spinner of the group, begins his story by saying,
“And this also … has been one of the dark places of the earth,” and then
discusses the attitudes of the Romans who conquered Britain in ancient
times. At the end of the section, he begins to tell his tale. He speaks of a
time some years before when he once turned “freshwater sailor” and
begins what the narrator calls one of “Marlow’s inconclusive
experiences.” Marlow talks of being frustrated over not having a ship
and then seeing a map in a shop window and remembering a place he
wanted to explore as a child. He had been drawn to a particular
“inviting” blank place on the map. Although much of that “blank space
of delightful mystery” had since been filled in by explorers, leaving the
area “a place of darkness,” there is a river, one that resembles “an
immense snake uncoiled,” that remains mysterious. He recalls that
there’s a trading company with business on the river and resolves to
seek employment with the Company.
Analysis
Marlow contrasts the darkness of ancient Britain with the present,
saying, “Light came out of this river since,” but adds that this light,
which is civilization, is like “lightning in the clouds.” In commenting,
“We live in the flicker … darkness was here yesterday,” he suggests that
the darkness is not so distant and that the brief flash of illumination or
enlightenment may not last. This passage both connects modern
humans to the ancient darkness and foreshadows the triumph of
darkness over the so-called civilized Europeans at the end of the
narrative.
As Marlow speaks about why the Romans felt it was acceptable to
plunder England, a people they considered savage, he foreshadows the
way in which the Company does the same in Africa. He says that the
ancient Romans were “conquerors” and that for conquest all that is
required is “brute force.” Modern Europeans, in contrast, have a
“devotion to efficiency.” This suggests that their conquest is more
thorough than the Roman one, introducing the idea of the exploitation
of Africa and its people. Modern imperialists, arrogant in their power,
believe they have a better life to offer the “savage” peoples of Africa,
although King Leopold’s version of colonization is particularly
barbarous.
The first section also introduces the darkness of Africa when Marlow
speaks of the unnamed river. Its mystery attracted him as a child and
lures him at this time as well. He compares the course of the river to a
snake, which “charmed” Marlow and convinced him to seek a job with
the Company. The snake and associated images foreshadow evil and
danger. The snake recalls Satan, who took the appearance of a serpent
when tempting Eve in the story of the fall of humankind recounted in
Genesis. Marlow also said that the river “fascinated me as a snake
would a bird,” adding, “silly bird,” because some snakes are dangerous
to birds. The metaphor is a warning about succumbing to the heart of
darkness and being swallowed, as happens to Kurtz. Finally, in saying
that the snake-like river “charmed” him, he reverses the dynamic of the
popular figure of the snake charmer. Here, human is not in control of
nature, but vice versa.
The narrator says that Marlow is not a typical storyteller. When he
spins a yarn, he envelops it “as a glow brings out a haze.” He means the
tale is not straightforward; its meaning will be hazy, and different
listeners may interpret it in different ways. The “glow” and the earlier
image of lightning also suggest a kind of understanding that is not easily
articulated. The narrator also wryly calls Marlow’s story “inconclusive,”
and yet he relates it, suggesting there is meaning to it. Readers must
construct meaning from Marlow’s tale on their own.
Part 1 (Marlow Seeks a Position)
Summary
Marlow travels to the continent to seek a job with the Company. His
aunt knows someone who works for the Company and is able to
introduce him.
Marlow applies for a position made vacant when a captain named
Fresleven is killed by the native people. In a flash forward (a narrative
technique in which the story skips ahead before coming back to the
present), Marlow tells how he later encounters the corpse of the man
in the jungle, unburied but surrounded by grass high enough to hide his
bones. Marlow arrives at the Company offices and finds two women
knitting with black wool and looking at him with downcast eyes. He is
ushered into a room, signs some papers, and is examined by a doctor.
The doctor asks whether there is any madness in Marlow’s family and
tells him that it would be interesting for science to watch the mental
changes that take place in people “out there.”
Marlow goes to say good-bye to his aunt before taking his job as a pilot
on a steamer. His aunt relishes the idea that the Company is there to,
as she sees it, wean the savages from their horrid ways. This
assessment makes Marlow uncomfortable because he knows that the
Company is there to make a profit, not civilize the population.
Analysis
Conrad’s text does not name the the city of these early scenes, but
most scholars consider the city to be Brussels, Belgium. He also does
not explicitly identify the Congo River, though it is widely accepted to
be the location of the Company’s trading stations. By not naming the
exact locations in the novella, Conrad implies that this story of
depravity, theft, and barbarism could take place at any time and in any
place. It is a universal story of condemnation and serves as a cautionary
tale. Evil has the potential to arise in the hearts of humans everywhere.
He refers to it as the “sepulchral city” and says it looks to him like a
“whited sepulchre.” With these comments, Conrad makes reference to
the Gospel of Matthew 23:27, in which Jesus compares the Jewish
Pharisees to “whitewashed tombs” that look beautiful “on the outside”
but hold the “bones of the dead.” In that passage Jesus charged the
Pharisees with being hypocrites, more interested in collecting taxes
than in upholding God’s law. Brussels, a city of commerce, is thus a city
of hypocrites, guided by imperialist greed and its accompanying abuses
rather than by the proclaimed civilizing mission. This point is
underscored by Marlow’s last conversation with his aunt. She is thrilled
that he is about to join the Company and promote what she sees as its
glorious civilizing mission. Marlow counters that the Company cares
only about making profits. Should there be any uncertainty as to which
view is correct, he reflects on how “out of touch with truth women
are.” This comment, albeit sexist, destroys any inclination to accept the
aunt’s view.
The white city is further associated with a tomb and with death in the
image of the two women knitting funeral shrouds in the Company
offices. The whiteness of the “whited sepulchre” serves as a false
veneer covering the darkness inside. The concept of whiteness covering
darkness may also suggest that skin color is of little consequence in an
ethical world.
Further foreshadowing takes places when the secretary in the office is
“full of desolation and sympathy.” Marlow also runs into a Company
employee with whom he shares a drink. This man “glorified the
Company’s business,” but when Marlow asks why he himself does not
make the journey to Africa, the man says, “I am not such a fool as I
look.” The Company’s business may be glorious, but let someone else
do it. The doctor who tells Marlow it would be interesting to watch
mental changes “on the spot” warns Marlow, and the reader, that
something momentous could happen “out there.” His comment that
the Europeans who go to Africa change on the “inside,” in their minds,
foreshadows the madness that overtakes Kurtz.
Part 1 (Journey to the Outer Station)
Summary
Marlow leaves for Africa on a French steamer that stops at ports along
the African coast. At one point the steamer encounters a man-of-war
(an armed sailing ship) firing at native people hidden in the jungle.
Sometimes the steamer travels in and out of rivers near the shore.
Thirty days after leaving, the steamer anchors in an African capital city,
and Marlow books passage on a smaller steamer to travel 30 miles (48
kilometers) upriver. Here, he sees a forced-labor camp where black
men, who are chained together, build a railway. Explosives go off here
and there. The workers hide from the steamer as best they can, but
Marlow observes that they seem to be dying of disease and starvation.
As Marlow nears the Outer Station’s buildings, he encounters a white
man—the Company’s chief accountant—who is full of life and elegance.
Occasionally a sick person is brought into his office and placed on a
trundle bed; the accountant complains when the patient groans. The
accountant is the first person to tell Marlow about Kurtz, describing
him as a “first-class agent” who sends in as much ivory as all the other
agents combined.
Analysis
Through the use of personification (attributing human characteristics to
inanimate objects or ideas), Conrad animates the jungle, deepening the
motif of darkness and creating a sense of foreboding. An example of
this technique occurs when Marlow imagines that “Nature herself had
tried to ward off intruders” and that the contorted mangroves “seemed
to writhe at us.”
Verbal irony is a literary technique in which the intent of the words in a
text carry the opposite meaning. A character may or may not know the
full significance of the words, but the careful reader does. There are
several examples of verbal irony in this section of the novella:
Marlow says, “I also was a part of these high and just proceedings.” The
reader knows that the proceedings are the opposite of high and just
and that Marlow is expressing concern over what is really going on.
Marlow says the vast hole he encounters must be “connected with the
philanthropic desire of giving the criminals something to do.” Again, the
reader knows that the Company agents are not acting with charitable,
or philanthropic, intentions.
Verbal irony works in this section because Marlow relates this story to
his friends after he returns from Africa. He is able to reflect on the
experience, knowing full well the proceedings are not just or
philanthropic.
Part 1 (At the Central Station)
Summary
Marlow makes a 200-mile (500-kilometer) trek to the Central Station
with one white man and almost 60 African men. He is lonely and bored
on a journey that takes 15 days. When the crew hobbles into the
Central Station, Marlow learns that the paddle-wheeled steamboat he
is meant to pilot to the Inner Station is lying at the bottom of the river.
The station manager tells Marlow that two days earlier he had left to go
to the stations upriver with a volunteer skipper in command of the boat
but they had run over stones in the riverbed that tore holes in the
boat’s hull.
Marlow meets with the general manager of the Central Station—a man
who inspires uneasiness. The manager is agitated about the situation at
the Inner Station, although he echoes the accountant’s assessment of
Kurtz, calling him “an exceptional man, of the greatest importance to
the Company.”
A fire burns up a grass shed. Marlow sees one of the pilgrims, or
Company agents, taking a small bucket to bring water to put out the
fire. He only adds a quart of water, though, and Marlow notices that
the bucket has a hole in it. An African man is accused of setting the fire
and is beaten severely. Marlow hears his moans during the night.
Over his months at the Central Station awaiting the repair of the
steamer, Marlow comes to view the Company employees as foolish and
life there as absurd. One man is supposedly in charge of a small group
of pilgrims whose job is to make bricks, but there are no brickmaking
materials, so no work is done. The Company employees show no
interest in work but only jealousy. There is backbiting and bickering.
Marlow has a long conversation with the brickmaker, whom he dislikes.
In that man’s quarters, Marlow sees a curious painting the brickmaker
said Kurtz did. Marlow is at first annoyed when the brickmaker prods
him for information, but he eventually realizes the brickmaker thinks
that Marlow has connections to top officers of the Company. The
brickmaker thinks that Kurtz and Marlow represent “the gang of
virtue”—people who believe the Company propaganda. Because the
brickmaker believes that Kurtz will rise higher in the organization if
Kurtz is left in charge of the Inner Station, he tries to ingratiate himself
to Marlow. When Marlow asks the brickmaker about Kurtz, the
brickmaker gives a glowing report: “He is a prodigy,” the brickmaker
explains, “an emissary of pity and science and progress, and devil know
what else.”
Marlow waits for rivets he can use to attach new steel plates to the hull
of the steamer to repair it. One night he climbs onboard the steamer
and meets one of the Africans, the foreman of a work crew. Marlow
tells the man that they will have the rivets soon, and the two of them
dance on the boat’s deck. As time passes white men in fresh clothes
arrive, followed by a team of black men carrying tents, camp stools, and
other supplies for a journey. The group is called the Eldorado Exploring
Expedition, and the station manager’s uncle heads up the team. They
say they have come “to tear treasure out of the bowels of the land.”
Analysis
This section reveals the themes of hypocrisy and indifference in the
details Marlow relates:
The brickmakers have no materials they need to build bricks.
One of the pilgrims fills a pail that has a hole in the bottom with only a
quart of water to douse the flames.
Though Marlow makes many requests for rivets from the Outer Station,
which has plenty of them, and many deliveries of trade goods are
received from the Outer Station, the rivets are never delivered.
The term pilgrim is another example of verbal irony. Marlow uses the
term to refer to the Company agents because they carry staffs, as
Christian pilgrims did in the Middle Ages. While the name and the staffs
suggest holiness, they actually underscore the hypocrisy of these men,
who claim to have come as noble travelers but actually want to pillage
the land. Their presence is “as unreal as everything else,” Marlow says,
as unreal as “the philanthropic pretence of the whole concern.” The
themes of hypocrisy and indifference also come out in Marlow’s
conversations with the brickmaker, after which he tells his listeners on
the Thames how much he hates lies: “There is a taint of death, a flavor
of mortality in lies,” he concludes. This is a text in which language itself
is corrupted, paralleling the corrupt practices recounted in the
narrative.
The brutality of imperialism is underscored by the treatment of the
African man accused of burning the hut. There is no semblance of a trial
or any attempt to determine if he really was responsible. He is believed
to be responsible, and that is enough to warrant punishment. That
punishment is harsh and continues for some time. The words of one of
the Company agents captures the imperialist mentality: “Transgression
—punishment—bang!” They must be “pitiless,” he says, making an
example of the man to prevent any such rebellion in the future. The
reputed forces of civilization, it seems, have no use for seeking truth or
dispensing real justice. They only wish to maintain order and command
obedience.
The theme of civilization versus barbarism appears in this chapter in
Kurtz’s painting, hanging in the brickmaker’s quarters. The painting
shows a woman “draped and blindfolded” carrying a bright torch. Its
background is “sombre—almost black.” The painting seems to visually
represent the civilizing mission. The woman, blindfolded (as the figure
of justice is often depicted), carries a torch; light is usually associated
with knowledge, learning, and civilization. The dark background
represents the barbarism this civilizing mission is meant to combat. The
painting has an unsettling detail though. The torchlight makes the
woman’s face look “sinister,” or evil and malevolent. Near the end of
the book, Marlow says he had thought Kurtz might be “a painter who
wrote for the papers, or … a journalist who could paint.” This
assessment suggests the painting was skillfully done, and the sinister
expression was not due to inability to execute an intention. Perhaps it
reflects Kurtz’s ambivalence about the civilizing mission.
Corruption and greed are rampant as well. The pilgrims have no
interest in doing any work, only in being sent to a trading post “so that
they could earn percentages.” The brickmaker tries to befriend Marlow
in hopes of advancing; at the same time, he is the station manager’s spy
and all the other Company agents avoid him. Marlow concludes that
the steamer might have been intentionally damaged and repairs
intentionally delayed to postpone his trip to the Inner Station. While
the station manager speaks at first about Kurtz and other station agents
being ill and the need to get the steamer repaired so that Marlow can
reach them and assist them, he does nothing to obtain the needed
rivets or hurry those repairs. He seems to hope that in the delay Kurtz
will either die or become incapacitated and therefore no longer be a
threat to the manager’s position with the Company.
Marlow becomes so disgusted with them all that he falls into
corruption himself, though in a minor way, comparatively speaking. He
allows himself to lie, even though he detests lying, by letting the
brickmaker think he is an associate of Kurtz’s. He develops sympathy
for Kurtz because he is so appalled by the brickmaker. Relating this
development leads to an aside and a pause in the story, in which
Marlow reflects on the inadequacy of storytelling: “It seems to me I am
trying to tell you a dream,” he says, which is a “vain attempt,” because
no retelling can “convey the dream-sensation.” Nevertheless, he
resumes the story. He is compelled to relate it, perhaps because he
himself is still wrestling with what the story means.
Part 2 (The Manager and His Uncle)
Summary
One night, as Marlow rests by lying down on the deck of the steamer,
he overhears the station manager and his uncle talking. The manager
complains that he has been instructed to send Marlow to the Inner
Station, and he does not like it and wants him fired. Kurtz is sending
more prime ivory to the Company than any other agent, which makes
the station manager look bad. At the same time, he objects because
Kurtz seems to accept the idea of the civilizing mission. He quotes Kurtz
as saying, “Each station should be like a beacon on the road … for
humanizing, improving, instructing.” He finds Kurtz’s noble words
absurd and a nuisance.
Shortly after this exchange, the unprepared Eldorado Expedition leaves
the station with the manager’s uncle in charge. Some time later word
comes that the donkeys that carry their supplies are all dead. Marlow
never finds out what happens to the people he calls “the less valuable
animals”—the uncle and his gang.
Analysis
Kurtz is a double threat to the station manager, surpassing his output in
ivory and apparently expressing the Company’s high-minded ideals. The
manager calls Kurtz’s high-sounding words about a moral purpose in
Africa pestiferous (from pestilence), which means “harboring infection
and disease.” The word is also related to pest, “inconveniently
annoying.” To the manager, morality is an inconvenience. In him, greed
outweighs any higher moral purpose.
As the two men discuss Kurtz’s role in the Company, the uncle implies
that the jungle may take care of their problem. He suggests that Kurtz,
who has been in the jungle a long time and is now ill, may simply die.
Here, the reader gets one of the clearest references thus far to the
darkness that runs through the novella. As the uncle gestures toward
the jungle, he seems to appeal, Marlow thinks, “to the lurking death, to
the hidden evil, to the profound darkness of its heart.” The uncle’s
words provide foreshadowing of Kurtz’s end as well. In gesturing to the
jungle, he says, “Trust to this,” a phrase he repeats. In the end the
jungle does consume Kurtz; the jungle, the darkness, kills him. In this
passage the “darkness” represents the wild, mysterious force of the
jungle and the continent that Europeans seem incapable of
understanding.
Marlow’s reaction to the news of the Eldorado Expedition reflects his
own indifference to people he judges to be corrupt. While it is only
known that the donkeys all died, the humans probably did as well.
Marlow notes that he does not care; he is more excited at that point in
meeting Kurtz. The expedition’s name contains a reference to the
Spanish conquistadors’ search for “El Dorado,” a legendary city of gold,
in the Americas in the 16 th century. This name presents the African
expedition as one doomed to fail and tainted by false hope, just as the
conquistadors had been.
Part 2 (Traveling up the River)
Summary
The steamer is finally repaired, and Marlow takes it up the river. It
takes two months to reach the Inner Station. As he travels he remarks
on the riot of vegetation, the hippos and alligators, and the difficulty of
finding a safe channel and avoiding sunken stones and snags in the
shallow river. Three or four pilgrims and the manager are onboard, and
along the way Marlow picks up 20 native people (whom he calls
cannibals) to push the steamer when the river is too shallow. They pass
some small European outposts and often hear drums from villages on
the shore. Marlow begins to find it hard to focus on reality and feels he
is in a dreamlike place.
Helping Marlow to manage the steamer is a black man, “an improved
specimen” in Marlow’s words, who is put in charge of stoking the
boiler. About 50 miles (130 kilometers) short of the Inner Station, the
crew comes upon a reed hut and the tatters of what had been a flag,
marking a neat pile of wood. The crew needs the wood for the boiler
and so stops to investigate. There is a note telling them to “approach
cautiously.” This note is signed; though it is illegible, it appears not to
be Kurtz’s name as it is longer. There is also an old book titled An
Inquiry into Some Points of Seamanship by a British seaman. Marlow
believes the notes in the book are written in cipher or code.
Marlow’s curiosity about Kurtz increases as he and his crew travel
through the primeval wilderness.
Analysis
The imagery of the river basin is vivid and engulfing as the steamer
travels “back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation
rioted on the earth” and hippos and alligators sun themselves on silvery
sandbanks. The narrative is ripe with sound as “twenty cannibals
[splash] around and [push]” the steamboat in shallow waters to “the
ponderous beat of the stern-wheel,” and the drums often accompany
the ship as it moves along the river. He could also hear the “ring of
ivory,” probably from the pilgrims’ hopeful conversation. While Marlow
notes these sounds, the overwhelming sense is one of quiet. He uses
the words silence, stillness, and quiet to describe the ominous,
brooding mystery of the jungle.
The theme of racism emerges strongly in this section. Marlow considers
whether the black people he sees are human. He and those in the
Company view Africans as inhuman, no better than animals: “They
howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces,” says Marlow.
“What thrilled you,” he goes on in what seems to be a growing
realization of his faulty thinking, “was the thought of your remote
kinship with this wild and passionate uproar.” This idea of kinship
challenges the racist European notions of civilization that have been
evident to this point. The language here raises the question of whether
Conrad was expressing racism or whether he was accurately portraying
the blatant racism of the time and thus encouraging readers to reject it.
Part 2 (Attack on the Steamer)
Summary
About eight miles (20 kilometers) from Marlow’s destination at the
Inner Station, the manager wants to stop moving until morning. But by
morning a heavy fog sets in, and those on the steamer hear shrieks cut
through the silence. Contemplating the possibility of attack, Marlow
hauls in the chain so that the steamboat can move ahead quickly if
necessary. The headman of the crew is more interested in catching one
of the potential attackers so the crew can eat him. They are starving.
Marlow says he would have been horrified except that he knows how
hungry the crew is. The black crew members have only had some
rotting hippo meat that they brought along and a few pieces of brass
wire they were given to trade for food in villages that have largely been
abandoned along the way.
As the fog lifts, Marlow and his helmsman head upriver. A mile and a
half (4 kilometers) from the Inner Station and only 10 feet (3.5 meters)
from the bank, the steamer is attacked. The pilgrims and the helmsman
respond with rifle fire. Marlow speeds ahead but finds that his
helmsman has been struck by a spear and lies dying at his feet. As soon
as he can, Marlow tips the helmsman’s body overboard. He cannot bear
the idea of the helmsman, whom he feels a fondness for, being eaten
by the hungry crew.
Marlow recounts that his greatest concern during this attack was the
worry that he would be killed and miss the opportunity to meet Kurtz.
He has grown fascinated with the man and wants to know him. This
reflection prompts another flash forward, in which Marlow reflects on
what he later learns about Kurtz and speculates about what factors
have shaped Kurtz’s experiences in Africa.
Analysis
That the Company does not provide food to the steamer crew
reinforces the themes of hypocrisy and indifference. It shows how little
regard the Company has for native Africans. Marlow is amazed that,
considering the whites’ numbers relative to the crew, the crew
members have not mutinied and killed Marlow and the pilgrims. What
restrains them, he wonders. Superstition, fear, disgust, honor? He has
no answer, but the range of choices he considers reflects a change in
his thinking regarding the perceived inhumanity of the Africans.
Animals would kill and eat when hungry; the natives have shown
humanity—which the Company has not demonstrated toward them.
Marlow’s language describing the payment and treatment of the crew
reflects the corrupt thinking and behavior of the imperialists. For
example, he describes the salary given the crew members (three pieces
of nine-inch-long [32-centimeters-long] brass wire per week) as
“extravagant” and says it was “paid with a regularity worthy of a large
and honorable trading company.” His comments rely on verbal irony to
underscore the imperialistic Company’s immorality.
In his flash forward, Marlow begins to reveal what he later learns about
Kurtz. He hints at an evil that has overtaken Kurtz. While the reader has
been led to believe to this point that Kurtz originally sets out with noble
purposes, Marlow here describes him as depraved. He acknowledges
that Kurtz has talents. He calls him “gifted,” adding that his greatest gift
is “his ability to talk, his words.” Despite these gifts, he has transgressed
his original moral boundaries. Marlow says that to understand Kurtz
you have to know “how many powers of darkness claimed him for their
own.” Kurtz took part in “midnight dances ending with unspeakable
rites,” and those rites “were offered up to him.” To the native people,
Kurtz becomes like a god. He had “the power to charm or frighten
rudimentary souls into an aggravated witch-dance in his honor.” The
extremes of his gifts and his behavior in some ways make him worse
than the other members of the Company. As Marlow puts it, “He was
[the jungle’s] spoiled and pampered favorite.”
In a key passage, Marlow discusses Kurtz’s background. One parent was
English, he says, and one was French, adding, “All Europe contributed
to the making of Kurtz.” This statement hammers home the point that
Kurtz is not so much an aberration as an inevitable product of the
imperialist mentality. Marlow also discusses the report that Kurtz wrote
for the Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs. Marlow
concludes it was “eloquent” but “too high-strung.” The document
begins with soaring language that reflects the Company’s civilizing
mission and the importance of teaching Africans morality. Marlow also
recollects a postscript added later to the document, “in an unsteady
hand” (meaning it was written after Kurtz had gone mad), which
declares, “Exterminate the brutes!” This flat judgment of destruction of
humans—presumably of the natives Kurtz had convinced he was a god
—is a clear statement of the depravity to which he had descended. That
Kurtz should write such words in a document meant for a society with
the ostensible goal of suppressing “savage customs” creates a powerful
dramatic irony.
Part 2 (At the Inner Station)
Summary
The steamer arrives at the Inner Station in disrepair, and Marlow sees a
young man dressed as a harlequin urging them to land. Carrying
weapons, the manager and pilgrims go up to the station, and the
harlequin comes aboard. Marlow is nervous about the native people,
but the young man says not to worry: “They are simple people.”
The young man is Russian. Marlow gives him An Inquiry into Some
Points of Seamanship, the book he found at the abandoned hut. The
young man values the book. As he explains, the notes are not in code
but in Russian.
The Russian also reveals that the earlier attack on the steamer came
from these shores. He tells Marlow that he has a hard time keeping the
native people from doing more harm to the steamer because “they
don’t want [Kurtz] to go,” he says.
Analysis
When the young man encounters Marlow, he talks at breakneck speed
as if he has had no one to talk with for a long time: “Don’t you talk with
Mr. Kurtz?” Marlow asks. “You don’t talk with that man,” the young
man answers, “you listen to him.” This exchange reinforces Marlow’s
impression that Kurtz is eloquent but that his eloquence suggests a sort
of imperial arrogance. Kurtz is someone who proclaims, but he does not
listen. It is a mystery to Marlow, moreover, why the native people—
from whom he knows Kurtz has been stealing ivory—do not want him
to go.
The meeting with the Russian also clarifies the mystery of the book on
seamanship that Marlow had recovered from the hut. The book was
the Russian’s, and he is overjoyed to see it. The annotations are not in
code, as Marlow suspected when he found the book. Rather, they are
in the Russian alphabet, which differs from the Roman alphabet. Still,
the detail reinforces in another way the recurring theme of language
and storytelling. To Marlow, Russian might as well be a code, because
he cannot understand it. Language is elusive; stories cannot be fully
understood by listeners. Communication, like the river Marlow traveled
in the steamer, is fraught with snags and mishaps.
Part 3 (Harlequin in the Jungle)
Summary
Marlow is puzzled, confused, and disoriented as he looks at the
Russian. The young man’s clothes are covered with patches of bright
blue, red, and yellow fabric, garb not typical of the jungle. Marlow calls
the harlequin’s “very existence” improbable and inexplicable.
The Russian tells Marlow how he loves to sit and listen to Kurtz
expound on every imaginable topic. He has also nursed Kurtz through
two illnesses, and he reveals how Kurtz accumulates large quantities of
ivory by raiding the surrounding areas with the aid of his followers. He
is devoted to Kurtz even though the station agent threatened to shoot
him once when the Russian resisted giving Kurtz a single piece of ivory.
Through the Russian’s account, Marlow concludes that Kurtz has
become unhinged: “Evidently,” decides Marlow, “the appetite for more
ivory had gotten the better of the … less material aspirations.” Marlow
points his binoculars toward the station house onshore and notices that
the knobs he had seen on the fence posts from a distance are in fact
the black, dried, heads of decapitated humans. The Russian tells
Marlow that the heads are those of rebels.
Analysis
The Russian’s garb is the first indication that something is strange at the
Inner Station. Reality seems to be unraveling, even though Marlow is a
man well grounded in reality. There is a dreamlike quality to the Inner
Station, and Marlow wonders “why he [the harlequin] did not instantly
disappear.”
The Russian sheds light on Kurtz’s activities. His raids in the countryside
are clearly illegal—he is not trading for ivory but stealing it. Of course,
this theft is what the Company is doing to the region—stealing
resources out of greed. While the young man is devoted to Kurtz, he
says that Kurtz can be “terrible,” as the threat to shoot the Russian over
one piece of ivory confirms. But the Russian is so captivated by Kurtz
that he cannot criticize him. “What can you expect,” he asks. He came
to the native people “with thunder and lightning. … They had never
seen anything like it,” so they treat him like a god. Yet he asserts that
Kurtz should not be judged like ordinary men.
The other characters’ descriptions of Kurtz are painting a picture of a
man whose madness derives from his lust for power, his exploitation of
the natives, and his greed for ivory coupled with a superior intelligence.
Kurtz’s fence topped with the dried heads of native men is a clear
representation of his depravity. Marlow laughs when he learns that
these are the heads of rebels. By this point he understands how
language is manipulated by Company officials, not only Kurtz, to justify
their depravity.
Part 3 (Encountering Kurtz)
Summary
Kurtz arrives on a stretcher. He is ill, but his voice is strong. Warriors
appear from the jungle carrying weapons, and the Russian says that all
Kurtz has to do is give the order and all the whites will die. The native
people love Kurtz and will do whatever he asks. The pilgrims take Kurtz
into a cabin.
The Russian turns to the shore, where he and Marlow see dark human
shapes leaning on spears. Among them are two distinct bronze figures.
One is a woman, dressed beautifully in native clothes and jewelry.
Marlow describes her as “savage and superb … ominous and stately.”
The manager exits the cabin and declares Kurtz’s health to be poor. The
manager adds, insincerely, that they have done all they can for Kurtz.
The manager says Kurtz has done more harm than good for the
Company, showing a “complete want of judgment.” He implies that he
wants to get rid of the Russian too. The young man, sensing the danger
he is in, asks Marlow to protect Kurtz’s reputation and then leaves
quickly.
Marlow sees a fire that night. He looks into the cabin, but Kurtz is gone.
He sees a trail and realizes that Kurtz, unable to walk, is crawling into
the jungle, drawn by the “heavy, mute spell of the wilderness.” Marlow
finds him and helps him back to the station.
Analysis
The theme of hypocrisy is reinforced when the manager comes out of
the cabin and tells Marlow that Kurtz has shown a want of judgment.
The manager’s primary concerns are wealth and exploitation, but he
assumes the moral high ground here in condemning Kurtz’s judgment
and threatening to report it to authorities. The manager merely intends
to improve his own lot by discrediting Kurtz.
Kurtz has fallen from the high-minded ideals reflected in the opening
pages of his report and has acted barbarously. Marlow feels Kurtz is
honest about his faults, and, after witnessing the hypocrisy elsewhere
in the Company, Marlow sees the good and the bad in the other man.
At the same time, Marlow is horrified with himself for taking Kurtz’s
side: “I felt an intolerable weight oppressing my breast … the unseen
presence of victorious corruption.” There is a sense that corruption has
beat out something better that lies in Marlow’s own dark soul.
Marlow considers what causes Kurtz to return to the “forgotten and
brutal instincts” of the jungle, and he finally decides it is the wilderness
itself. He says the jungle draws Kurtz to the primitive roots of humanity:
“the gleam of fires, the throb of drums, the drone of weird
incantations.” Perhaps, Marlow suggests, these ancient sounds are
elements so much a part of human nature that one cannot resist them
—they beguile one’s soul. Marlow has an epiphany: “Being alone in the
wilderness, [Kurtz’s soul] had looked within itself and … gone mad.”
Recognizing that the soul’s final journey is to look within itself and
struggle, Marlow realizes that he, too, must look within and struggle
with himself. It is a difficult realization, and it causes him to break into a
sweat.
Part 3 (Return Downriver and Kurtz’s Death)
Summary
At noon the next day, Marlow pilots the steamer away from the station
while more than a thousand native people watch the crew go. Out of
the crowd comes the beautiful native woman, mournfully watching as
Kurtz is taken away. The crowd is hostile and threatening; the pilgrims
look ready to shoot at the Africans. Marlow sounds the whistle on the
boat several times. The crowd, bothered by the sound, the origin of
which is mysterious to them, scatters; the tense situation ends.
When the steamboat breaks down, Kurtz loses confidence that he will
see Europe again, and he entrusts his papers and a photograph to
Marlow to keep them away from the manager. It appears that Kurtz has
been writing for unnamed newspapers back in Europe and still wishes
to publish his ideas to spread them further. “It’s a duty,” he says.
One evening Marlow comes in from endlessly repairing the old steamer
and notices a change in Kurtz’s features. On his face is a mixture of
pride, power, terror, and despair. He cries out, “The horror! The
horror!” Marlow goes into the mess hall, where the manager sits with
his “peculiar smile” that seals the “unexpressed depths of his
meanness.” A moment later the manager’s “boy” comes in and says,
“Mistah Kurtz—he dead.” Marlow continues eating, feeling no need to
see him again. He calls Kurtz a “remarkable man who had pronounced a
judgment upon the adventures of his soul on this earth.” The next day
the pilgrims bury Kurtz’s body.
Analysis
Seriously ill as he is and as depraved as he has become, Kurtz still
entertains his high-minded ideals, yet a part of him recognizes the
depths of depravity to which he has fallen.
Marlow is fascinated by the shifting emotions expressed on Kurtz’s face
just before he dies. “It is as though a veil had been rent,” he says. This is
a reference to the moment of Jesus’s death in the Gospel of Matthew
27:51, which reads, “And behold, the veil of the temple was rent in
twain from the top to the bottom: and the earth did quake, and the
rocks rent.” Marlow compares Jesus, killed in a clash of opposing ideas,
to Kurtz, who is overcome by the oppositions in his own nature, the
power of the jungle, and the darkness that dwells within his soul.
Kurtz’s final words, “The horror! The horror!” are a cry of existential
despair. With these words he recognizes his own fall into evil, the
barbarity of imperialism, and the depravity of human nature. This
pronouncement seems to be what Marlow has in mind when he speaks
of the “judgment” that Kurtz delivered “upon the adventures of his
soul.” That judgment brings Kurtz back to the last, inevitable darkness:
death.
The passage in which Marlow describes Kurtz’s expression before he
utters his last words bring in the symbol of ivory. Marlow refers to
Kurtz’s “ivory face.” Ivory, the product the Company values, is once
again associated with evil and depravity, with Kurtz’s “horror.”
Part 3 (Return to Brussels)
Summary
Marlow muses on the meaning of life and how a person might
summarize his life when he is at death’s door. He returns to Brussels
and takes with him Kurtz’s report, Kurtz’s letters, and the photograph
Kurtz asks him to protect. He wryly reflects that it is his destiny to
“show my loyalty to Kurtz” and then scoffs at the “droll” idea of destiny.
Marlow says he has been near death and calls wrestling with death “the
most unexciting contest you can imagine.”
The Central Station manager asks for these papers, but Marlow refuses
to hand them over. Eventually a man from the Company entreats
Marlow to hand over Kurtz’s report, and after some discussion Marlow
gives it up. The man sniffs and hands it back; he has no interest in it as
it has nothing to do with commerce.
Kurtz’s cousin finds Marlow and asks questions about Kurtz’s death. He
says that Kurtz had been a great musician. The cousin says that Kurtz
had been a universal genius; Marlow agrees. Ultimately a journalist
appears. He apparently worked with Kurtz at a paper and held him in
high regard. He believes Kurtz should have gone into politics, saying,
“He would have been a splendid leader of an extreme party.” Marlow
gives the journalist Kurtz’s report for publication. All Marlow has left of
Kurtz now are a few letters and the photograph.
Analysis
Marlow returns to the sepulchral city of Brussels, Belgium, and, like a
soldier returning from a war, is unhappy with what he finds. It all
appears so petty: he reflects that the city’s people leading their busy
lives “could not possibly know the things I knew.” In his reflections on
destiny, Marlow calls life a “mysterious arrangement of merciless logic
for a futile purpose.” He concludes that humans may not reach any
understanding of their own lives until death.
Marlow remains loyal to Kurtz, not because of his pledge to do so but
because Kurtz was honest enough in the end to judge himself. He
expresses his “humiliation” that, when faced with death, he had
nothing to say, no final pronouncement on his life to give. Kurtz was a
“remarkable man” because he did have “something to say” at the point
of death. Kurtz’s last words “had the appalling face of a glimpsed
truth.”
Despite his awareness of how depraved Kurtz became, Marlow protects
him. The report that he reluctantly hands over to the Company official
has had the postscript saying “Exterminate the brutes!” torn off. In
removing it, Marlow obscures Kurtz’s brutal disregard for human life.
Of course, the Company shows just such disregard, but its members
prefer to hide the truth of their actions behind the cloak of the
moralizing mission. Still, it is this sanitized version of the report that
Marlow gives to the journalist. All that remains is Kurtz’s soaring
rhetoric about the ideals of bringing Western civilization to Africans.
Kurtz’s cousin and the journalist show an awed respect for the man.
While Marlow shares their view that he had impressive talents, his
respect, unlike theirs, is not based on those abilities but rather on his
belief that Kurtz saw so clearly the meaning of his life at the end of it.
Given readers’ positive feelings for Marlow, his defense of Kurtz might
be troublesome. It needs to be seen in light of Marlow’s gloomy view of
life as having a “futile purpose.”
The journalist’s view that Kurtz would have been a great success if he
had entered politics can be seen as a condemnation of European
politics. That a man who lost his moral bearings could be successful is
frightening. The dark significance of this judgment is reinforced by the
journalist’s comment that Kurtz “could get himself to believe anything.”
Part 3 (Meeting Kurtz’s Intended)
Summary
In the year following Kurtz’s death, Marlow decides to return his letters
and the photograph to Kurtz’s “Intended”—his fiancée. Soon
everything Marlow has and knows of Kurtz will have passed through his
hands and be gone: elements of both his material and spiritual being.
Marlow wants to give up his memories of Kurtz as well.
He visits the Intended and is led into a lofty drawing room, where she is
dressed in black for mourning. She is sweet and genuine and speaks
highly of Kurtz and of the great loss she and the world now suffer. She
asks Marlow to tell her Kurtz’s dying words, and Marlow lies. He tells
her that Kurtz’s last words were her name.
Analysis
As Marlow stands on the threshold of the young woman’s door, he
imagines the beating of a drum, “like the beating of a heart—the heart
of a conquering darkness.” Marlow wants to give up the memories of
Kurtz and his experiences in Africa, but they are stronger than ever. The
jungle triumphs not just over Kurtz but over Marlow. Indeed, the jungle
is Marlow’s antagonist, and there is “a moment of triumph for the
wilderness.”
Marlow’s conversation with the young woman is packed with verbal
ironies. She does not know how true her words are when she says, “He
died as he lived.” The words are true, but they mean the opposite of
what she thinks they mean. Her beloved lived in depravity toward the
end of his life, so he died as he lived. Marlow’s words complete the
irony, for he tells her, “His end was in every way worthy of his life.”
Marlow’s lie at the end of the story is important because it reveals how
much Marlow has changed. Despite his earlier proclamation that he
hates lies more than anything, when confronted with Kurtz’s fiancée,
he understands the value of a lie for protection of the heart. He cannot
repeat Kurtz’s self-judgment and his condemnation of his life and his
actions, so he lies out of kindness. All Kurtz asks for, Marlow muses, is
justice, and now Marlow betrays him by lying. The woman will not
know the lesson of Kurtz’s life. But, says Marlow, “I could not tell her. It
would have been too dark.”
Part 3 (Completing the Frame)
Summary
In the novella’s final movement, the small group of Marlow’s listeners
are still waiting on the Thames for the river’s current to change.
Marlow sits quietly. The others are silent too. The river, the original
narrator says in closing the novella, “seemed to lead into the heart of
an immense darkness.”
Analysis
The brief, final section, merely one paragraph long, concludes the
novella by completing the frame story. The mood is quiet. The Director
of Companies notes that they have “lost the first of the ebb,” the tide
that flows away from the shore, the best time for sailing. The comment
indicates how fascinated Marlow’s listeners were with his story—there
was no thought of the friends stopping him during his account and
beginning their cruise. The narrator’s closing words once again link the
Thames River and Britain—and thus all of Europe—to the darkness of
barbarity.

Character Analysis
 Marlow
Charlie Marlow is the protagonist of this novella. He has been
interested in maps since he was a boy. His boyhood fascination lies
mostly in the empty, “unexplored” places of the African continent. He
tells of the time he got a job piloting a steamer in what is presumably
the Congo river basin. Through this journey Marlow is exposed to the
brutality and hypocrisy of imperialism and meets the other main
character of the story, the depraved and dying Kurtz, who has been
unhinged by the darkness and solitude of the jungle.
 Kurtz
Kurtz is the chief agent at the Inner Station. The Company wishes to
relieve Kurtz from his duty, ostensibly because his unorthodox methods
for obtaining more ivory than other agents have been questioned. Kurtz
is a gifted and eloquent man. Some think he believes in the Company’s
stated goals of educating and enhancing the lives of the indigenous
people. However, Kurtz has become as barbarous as any Company
agent. Yet, he is still revered by the natives.
 Jungle
The jungle acts as the antagonist of the novella. It corrupts Kurtz and
comes close to corrupting Marlow. Marlow says in reference to the
jungle in Part 1 that it is as if nature itself is trying to ward off intruders.
 Manager
The manager of the Central Station is a cold, calculating man who has
enslaved a great many native people and is completely indifferent to
their suffering. He forces them to help him extract ivory, keeps them
chained up, fails to feed them, and works them to exhaustion and
death. He is jealous of Kurtz because Kurtz sends down more ivory than
he does, and he makes plans to get Kurtz relieved of his post. His only
motivations are greed and power.
 Russian
The Russian is a young man who, in the spirit of adventure and the
“need to exist,” journeys to Africa. Marlow calls him “gallantly,
thoughtlessly alive.” When he encounters Kurtz at the Inner Station, the
Russian becomes devoted to him, sitting at his feet and absorbing
Kurtz’s words and ideas. The Russian dresses in a patchwork of colorful
cloth, so that when Marlow first encounters him, he compares him to a
harlequin, a traditional comic character from the Italian stage. The
Russian serves as a foil to Marlow, perhaps representing his younger
self, as he, too, is compelled to see and explore Africa. He carries a
manual on seamanship, linking him to Marlow, the seaman. His hero
worship of Kurtz contrasts with Marlow’s more balanced view, as
Marlow sees Kurtz as a man with eloquence but one who has lost his
moral compass.
 Helmsman
The helmsman is a proud, athletic African belonging to a coastal tribe.
Marlow calls him an “unstable fool” yet misses him when he is killed.
They develop a partnership or at least an interdependency and Marlow
feels a certain respect for him, although his comments on the
helmsman are tinged with racism.

Symbols
Symbolism operates throughout Heart of Darkness to create an ethical
context for the work.
 Darkness
The symbol of darkness opens the novella, when Marlow is on the
yacht on the Thames: “And this also,” he says, speaking of England,
“has been one of the dark places on earth.” He means that the land and
its peoples were primitive before the Roman conquest, a parallel to
European colonial control of Africa. Light and peace is here now,
Marlow implies, but “darkness was here yesterday.”
Once Marlow’s story is well under way, he says, “We penetrated
deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness” (Part 2, Section 2). There
is literal darkness in the jungle and the waters of the river. But he also
says that the suffering of the indigenous people and the evil in the
hearts of the Company agents is a metaphoric darkness, a darkness of
the unknown, of difference, and of blindness.
The most important metaphoric darkness is that revealed in Kurtz’s
heart and symbolized by the decapitated heads of native men displayed
like decorative knobs on his fence posts. There, they are “black, dried,
sunken, with closed eyelids.” These heads and the grisly fence stand as
enduring symbols of Kurtz’s depravity. Kurtz, then, symbolizes the
darkness of the colonizers’ lost morality, but there is also a sense in
which Kurtz is the victim of the darkness of the jungle. Marlow
comments on “how many powers of darkness claimed him for their
own” in trying to explain his descent into depravity.
 Ivory
Ivory symbolizes the greed of the Europeans. It is a consuming passion
for them, the lure that draws them to Africa. It has become like a
religion to them: “The word ‘ivory’ rang in the air,” Marlow says when
he is at the Outer Station. It “was whispered, was sighed. You would
think they were praying to it.” Ivory, which is white, is the one thing of
value that the Europeans in Heart of Darkness find in dark Africa. But
ivory is also equated with darkness and corruption. Marlow muses that
Kurtz had been captivated by the wilderness, which had “taken him,
loved him, embraced him, consumed his flesh” until he had lost all his
hair, his bald head now looking like an “ivory ball.” When Kurtz is on the
verge of dying, just before he says his last words, Marlow notes his
“ivory face.” Ivory no longer has value; it is a thing of evil, which is what
Kurtz became.
 Dark Wool
The knitting of dark wool by two women at the Company office in
Brussels reinforces the symbol of darkness in the novella. The women
are the knitters of funeral shrouds, used in death, the ultimate
darkness. It is fitting that the work in a city that always reminds Marlow
of a “whited sepulchre,” or tomb. Marlow is disturbed by the women’s
indifference to him, which foreshadows the colonizers’ indifference to
death, both literal and figurative, throughout the novella. The older
woman gives Marlow an eerie feeling: “She seemed uncanny and
fateful,” he says. Marlow says that he often thought of those women
“guarding the door of Darkness, knitting black wool.”
Knitting and weaving, viewed as women’s work in Conrad’s time,
conventionally represent matters of life and death in literature, and
Conrad builds on this tradition. In A Tale of Two Cities by Charles
Dickens (1812–1870), Madame Defarge secretly uses her knitting to
weave into cloth the names of people to be killed. The convention
relates back to Greek mythology, in which the Fates use thread to
measure the length of a person’s life, cutting it when it is time to die.
However, in Greek mythology there are three Fates, who represent
birth, life, and death. In Conrad’s scene there are but two, representing,
presumably, life and death, as they work on cloths for the Company’s
workers, who are well past birth and likely to face death.
 Harlequin
When Marlow arrives at the Inner Station, he is greeted by a young
Russian man dressed in clothes that are covered with bright blue, red,
and yellow patches. The young man looks as if he is escaped from a
troupe of mimes. Marlow compares him to a harlequin, something that
does not fit in the African jungle. The harlequin’s presence ironizes the
tragedy of the situation and suggests another literary convention: the
wise fool, although the Russian seems more naïve than wise.
 Drums
As Marlow pilots the steamboat up the river, he hears drums, which he
finds unsettling but intriguing, calling it a sound “weird, appealing,
suggestive, wild.” He also senses that the drums have “as profound a
meaning as the sound of bells in a Christian country.” The meaning
escapes him, though. As the boat continues upriver and he hears drums
again, it is unclear to all the Europeans whether the drumbeat meant
“war, peace, or prayer.” At the Inner Station, when Kurtz wanders
ashore one night as his followers beat the drums, Marlow reflects that
he had been driven “towards the gleam of fires, the throb of drums.”
When Marlow stands outside the door of the Intended, he thinks back
to “the beat of the drum, regular and muffled like the beating of a heart
—the heart of a conquering darkness.” The drums, then, are the sound
equivalent of the jungle—an aspect of the environment that is
mysterious, uncivilized, and both attractive and destructive.

Themes
The themes in Heart of Darkness arise from Conrad’s preoccupations
with diction and language. His descriptions are thick with the
repetitions of words and their close synonyms—as in fog, haze, and
glow, for example. Many critics have also noted the role of Polish
syntax in Conrad’s execution of English.
 Racism
Literary critics are divided regarding whether Marlow and the other
white characters in the novella are racist or whether the central racism
of the story comes from Conrad himself. Whichever is correct, Heart of
Darkness echoes the racism of the time, and racism becomes a primary
theme of the novella.
Marlow shows more sympathy for the plight of the native people than
he does for the Company people who pilfer the land. Nonetheless, he
makes racist statements throughout the text. For example, as he pilots
the steamer and hears drums and cries coming from the banks of the
river, he says the boat is gliding past the noise, generated by Africans
hidden in the jungle, “as sane men would before an enthusiastic
outbreak in a madhouse.” He is frightened by what he cannot
understand. He often calls the native people “savages” and describes
the steamer’s fireman, who tends the boiler, as “an improved
specimen,” casting judgment on the man based on European ideals. At
one point Marlow reveals that he has not previously thought of the
native people as human beings, a revelation made when he suggests he
might have been wrong: “that was the worse of it,” he considers, “this
suspicion of their not being inhuman.”
Some critics argue that Conrad was not racist but that, through his
racist character, Marlow, he reveals the racist viewpoints of Company
agents and of imperialism more broadly. Others, including the Nigerian
writer Chinua Achebe (1930–2013), disagree. Achebe argues that,
because Conrad rarely provides native characters with speech or other
human traits, he—the writer—does not view Africans as human. A
major point in support of the position that Conrad was racist is the fact
that the book’s central focus is Kurtz and his fate in Africa. In this view,
by focusing on one white man’s fall from grace—indeed, by presenting
him as in some sense the victim of Africa—Conrad overlooks the
terrible tragedies colonization wreaked on millions of African people.
Another important issue is the question of who should speak for the
oppressed. Is Conrad, as a white man, capable of speaking for the
oppressed? Or must one be oppressed to tell the story of oppression?
Readers of Heart of Darkness must form their own answers to this
question and how Conrad’s work reflects on that issue.
 Greed and Imperialism
While the stated goal of the Company is to civilize native people, its
true goal is to exploit Africa’s resources and convert them into
European profits. While there is talk back in Belgium of the civilizing
mission, and while Kurtz prepares his report for the Society for the
Suppression of Savage Customs, the focus of the Europeans in Africa is
on securing ivory. The Company Accountant approves of Kurtz because
he sends back more ivory than other agents; he cares neither about
Kurtz’s methods nor any civilizing activity he may or may not undertake.
Greed is not just a corporate trait; it is also personal. The manager of
the Central Station worries that Kurtz’s success threatens his own
advancement and opportunity to make money. The manager’s uncle
leads the Eldorado Exploring Expedition into the jungle in hopes of
gaining his riches for himself.
Greed is not only for money. Kurtz has an insatiable greed for power,
and, when his followers feed his ego by worshipping him as they would
a god, he becomes corrupt. Marlow remembers Kurtz speaking of “my
Intended, my ivory, my station, my river” and adds “everything
belonged to him.” That, of course, is the essence of the imperialistic
attitude: the native peoples of a place have no right to the land where
they live or its resources. Everything belongs to the power that can take
it.
 Hypocrisy and Indifference
The Company is recalling Kurtz apparently because they find his
methods, though they are never discussed or detailed, to be excessively
brutal. Yet Company officials overlook their own ruthlessness and
brutality in pursuit of ivory. Some in Europe, like Marlow’s aunt, believe
that the Company represents Christian moral values. In joining the
Company, Marlow becomes, in her eyes, “something like an emissary of
light, something like a lower sort of apostle.” Even before he goes to
Africa, though, Marlow knows better and tries to correct his aunt: “I
ventured to hint that the Company was run for profit.” All of the
Company agents Marlow encounters in Africa demonstrate that is the
overwhelming motivation. They are indifferent to the suffering they
impose on the people around them.
 Civilization versus Barbarism
Believing that they come from a more civilized culture, the agents of
the Company consistently behave in a barbaric manner. They believe
they are more civilized than the Africans they encounter because they
live in cities, travel in steam-powered trains and ships, wear Western
clothes, and have proper manners. Yet these supposedly civilized
Europeans can easily fall into savagery in uncivilized Africa. Fresleven,
the Danish captain who Marlow is to replace, was “the gentlest,
quietest creature that ever walked on two legs” until he snapped and
repeatedly beat an African village chief because he felt he had been
cheated. Marlow is not surprised: “he had been a couple of years
already” in Africa. The Company doctor tells Marlow, during his
examination of the recently hired captain, that Europeans who go to
Africa experience changes that “take place inside” the mind. Kurtz,
Marlow concludes, was driven to madness by the darkness and solitude
of the place.
While Marlow presents European brutality, he does not show the
supposedly uncivilized Africans as particularly brutal. Fresleven is killed
by the chief’s son defending his father, hardly a horrific act. The
steamer’s crew, whom Marlow says are cannibals, want to eat the body
of the dead helmsman, but Marlow doesn’t really criticize them for
that. He recognizes that they are starving. While the boat is attacked
when it nears the Inner Station, the reason is simply that Kurtz’s
followers don’t want him taken away. Though the followers at the
station seem threatening, they don’t do anything to harm Marlow or
the other white people on the steamer. Who, then, is civilized, and who
is barbarous?