Heart of darkness

Joseph Conrad
(1899)
 The book.
• Heart of Darkness is a short novel by Joseph Conrad about
Charles Marlow's voyage up the Congo River, into the
Heart of Africa, in search of the mysterious ivory trader
Kurtz and Marlow's obsession for him.
• Charles Marlow, the narrator, tells his story to friends on a
boat anchored on the Thames. This setting provides the
frame for Marlow's story and Conrad offers parallels
between London and Africa as places of darkness.
• Central to Conrad's work is the idea that there is little
difference between "civilised people" and "savages." Heart
of Darkness implicitly criticises imperialism and racism.
 The author.
• Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad
Korzeniowski, 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was
a Polish-British writer regarded as one of the greatest
novelists to write in the English language.
• Though he did not speak English fluently until his
twenties, he was a master prose stylist who brought a
non-English sensibility into English literature.
• Due to his past in the merchant marine he wrote many
stories with a nautical setting often depicting
imperialism and colonialism.
 Chapter 1:

• On a boat moored on the Thames, Marlow, tells a group of travelers about his previous
trip to Congo.
• In fact, as a child he always dreamed of going to the African country.
• After a job interview the embarks on a French ship bound for the Congo and, if at first
he only feels a sense of unease and dishonesty, now, after seeing a battleship shooting
at the forest against a village of indigenous he feels a feeling of vague and oppressive
amazement growing in him.
• A little over a month passes and finally Marlow arrives at a Company station.
• Marlow, however, has to leave to go to his station and, arriving there, he discovers that
his boat has been destroyed. Thus, with great difficulty, he begins the rebuilding of the
steamboat he also hears of Kurtz, a remarkable man with an enigmatic and disturbing
personality.
 Curiosities
• The name of the african river is never
mentioned;
• Francis F. Coppola took inspiratione
from this book for the plot of
Apocalypse Now;
• On 13 March 1993, TNT aired a new
version of the story, starring Tim Roth
as Marlow and John Malkovich as
Kurtz.