Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is set in the 1890s at the height of European colonization of

the African continent. In the introduction, five friends are sitting on a yacht, waiting for the tide
to change on the River Thames so they can head out to sea. Marlow, the storyteller of the group,
begins a tale by saying that England also has been one of the dark places of the earth; his words
set the dark, brooding tone of the novella. He tells his friends he once signed on to pilot a boat
upriver in Africa. Marlow explains that he undertook the trip while working for a European ivory
extraction operation known simply as the company. In the rising action, the company hired
Marlow in Europe and gave him the task of picking up one of its agents in Africa, a man named
Kurtz, to relieve him of his duty. Apparently, Kurtz employed questionable methods for
consistently collecting more ivory than any of the other company stations with this goal in mind.
Marlow travels to Africa; he disembarks at the coastal outer station and then travels 200 miles to
the company's Central Station, where the river is navigable and his steamer is supposed to be
waiting for him. Once there, Marlow learns that his steamer is sunk at the bottom of the river. He
meets the central station manager, who tells him that the situation is very grave at the inner
station, where Kurtz is the agent and where Marlow is meant to pilot the steamer. Marlow is told
it will take three months to repair the boat, and he concludes that the delays are intentional. Kurtz
is ill, and the manager hopes he'll die before Marlow reaches him. Marlow overhears a
conversation between the station manager and his uncle; the two exchanged dark hints about
Kurtz's character and behavior. Eventually the boat is repaired, and along with the manager,
pilgrims, and twenty cannibals, Marlow heads upriver eight miles from the inner station. The
steamer is attacked by natives. Marlo's house Minh is killed, and Marlow pitches the body
overboard to avoid having it eaten by the native crewmembers. When they eventually meet,
Kurtz tells Marlow some of his ideas. Marlow has read Kurtz's report arguing that godlike whites
can bring civilization to Africa. Marlo thinks Kurtz has gone mad arriving at Central Station.
Marlo meets a Russian dressed in colorful patchwork clothes that make him look like a
Harlequin. The Russian tells Marlo that Kurtz often spends long periods in the jungle staying
with the native people and gathering ivory. He suggests Kurtz uses extreme methods to secure
the ivory, and he says the native people adore him. Marlow observes fence posts with severed
human heads on them. When Kurtz arrives, he's on a stretcher, very ill, with mixed feelings
about Kurtz. Marlow agrees to protect his papers and his reputation once Marlow returns to
Europe in the climax. Kurtz dies on the trip downriver; the last thing Marlo hears him say is the
horror. the horror in the falling action Marlow delivers Kurtz's report to a journalist for
publication and his papers to the fiance, Chris, left behind in Europe, and in the resolution we
come to the end of Marlow's tale, and the action returns to the five friends on the yacht. The
Thames is flowing under an overcast sky into the heart of an immense darkness.
Let's talk about some of the big themes in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness [Music]. Literary
critics were once 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. In any case,
Heart of Darkness reflects the racism of the time, and racism becomes the primary aspect 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, but he clearly doesn't feel that they're his equals. "They are
human," he says, "and that was the worst of it—this suspicion of their not being human." Marlow
calls the native people savages and cannibals. The jungle is alive with parts. flailing limbs,
rolling eyes, stomping feet, and inarticulate noises, and these kinds of recurring images deny
individuality and humanity to the Congolese. While the stated goal of the company is to civilize
native people, its true goal is to plunder Africa's resources for profit. Greed, however, isn't just
about money. Kurtz has an insatiable greed for power, and when his followers feed his ego by
worshipping him as they would have God, he becomes corrupt. Kurtz's arrogance is the essence
of imperialist logic. White gods have the right to take over people's lands and resources;
everything belongs to the power that can take it. hypocrisy and indifference The company is
recalling Kurt, apparently because they find his methods to be excessively brutal, yet company
officials overlooked their own brutality in pursuit of ivory. Some in Europe, like Marlo's aunt,
believe that the company represents Christian moral values. Marlo knows better than his aunts
that the company was run for profit; all of the company agents Marlo encounters in Africa
demonstrate that this is their motivation and they're indifferent to the suffering they impose on
the people around them.
Symbolism operates throughout Heart of Darkness to create an ethical context for the work.
Darkness as a symbol of human origins opens the novella. When Marlowe's on the yacht on the
Thames, he says that England also 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 are here now, Marlowe implies, but darkness was here
yesterday. 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. These
headstands are enduring symbols of Kurtz's depravity, and so Kurtz himself symbolizes the
darkness of the colonizers' lost morality. Ivory symbolizes the greed and color of the Europeans;
it's 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's at the outer station, it
was whispered aside; you would think they were praying to it. Ivory, which is white, is the one
thing of value that the Europeans of this novella find in Africa, but ivory is also equated with the
dark evil and corruption of white colonialists. Kurtz's head is described as bald like an ivory ball;
at his death, Marlow notes his ivory face. When Marlow arrives at the inner station, he's greeted
by a young Russian man dressed in colorful patchwork clothes; the young man looks as if he's
escaped from a troupe of mimes. Marlow compares him to a harlequin, something that doesn't fit
in the African jungle. The harlequin's presence emphasizes the absurdity of the situation and
suggests another literary convention, the wise fool, although the Russian seems more naive than
wise.
Let's talk about some of the characters in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Charlie Marlow is
the protagonist and narrator of this novella. He tells a small group of friends about the time he
captained a steamboat up the Congo River. This journey exposes Marlow to the brutality and
hypocrisy of imperialism, and he meets the other main character of the story, the depraved and
dying Kurtz, who has been unhinged by greed and the solitude of the jungle. Marlow both
admires and abhors Kurtz and remains loyal to him once he returns to Europe. Kurtz is the chief
agent of the company's interstation, though we're at first only introduced to him through rumors
of illness and madness. The company considers Kurtz a gifted and eloquent man committed to
the company's stated goals of educating and enhancing the lives of the Congolese people. Lower-
level officials want to relieve Kurtz of duty, annoyed by his successes in obtaining more ivory
than all the other agents combined. Kurtz is adored by the natives, but his methods are as
barbarous as the worst company agents. The jungle acts as the antagonist of the novel; it's a
living force that corrupts Kurtz and comes close to corrupting Marlow. Marlow says it's as if
nature itself is trying to ward off intruders. 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 work in mines and to extract ivory. He keeps them chained up,
fails to feed them or care for their illnesses, and he works them to exhaustion and death. He's
jealous of Kurtz because Kurtz sends down more ivory than he does, and he makes plans to get
Kurtz relieved of his post. His motivations are greed and power. The Russian is a young man
who journeys to Africa in the spirit of adventure and for the need to exist. Marlow calls him
gallantly, thoughtlessly alive. When he encounters Kurtz at the interstation, the Russian becomes
devoted to him, sitting at his feet, absorbing Kurtz's words and ideas. His hero-worship contrasts
with Marlowe's more balanced view, as Marlowe sees Kurtz as an eloquent man who has lost his
moral compass. The Houseman is a proud, athletic African belonging to a coastal tribe. Marlow
calls him an unstable fool yet misses him when he's killed. They develop a partnership, or at least
an interdependency, and Marlow feels a certain respect for him, although his comments about the
helmsman are patently racist.
Rapacious colonial violence goes hand in hand with racist thinking, and this one-two punch
presents a challenge to 21st-century readers of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Some critics
have wondered whether such a novel is worth reading today, but certainly there is social merit to
art that makes us think critically about history and loathsome systems. We shouldn't ignore the
blatant racism of this novella; likewise, we shouldn't let such language and ideas obscure the
indictment of Belgian colonial rule in the Congo. Free State Joseph Conrad was born in Ukraine
on December 3rd, 1857. His parents were Polish nobility who conspired against the Russian rule
of their homeland, which, after a long history of independence, had been divided among the
Russian, Austrian, and Prussian empires. They were arrested and exiled to northern Russia when
Konrad was four years old, and both of them died before he turned 13. Konrad thus experienced
political oppression early on, and it instilled in him a sense of the mixed nature of human beings,
with the capacity for both good and evil. Conner became a sailor and his service as a deckhand
on a British freighter brought him to England in 1878 where he would continue to live until his
death on August 3rd 1924 in 1890 he spent six months traveling up the Congo River he started
writing full-time in 1894 and in 1899 part of darkness was published to moderate critical praise
his writing however brought attention to Belgium's barbarous colonial control and exploitation of
central Africa in 1903 a British consul solicited Conrad's support in exposing these atrocities to
the public Belgian colonization of the Congo and the ivory trade in the late 1800s many
European countries began seizing parts of the African continent creating artificial boundaries and
colonies they claimed as part of their empires in the 1870s king leopold ii of belgium led a group
of investors to form a trading company to control trade along the Congo River Leopold used
trade agreements with indigenous groups as the pretext for claiming authority over much of
Central Africa he ran the colony as his personal property separate from the Belgian government
and this was codified in the Berlin West Africa Conference of 1884 and 1885 which recognized
existence of the Congo Free State under Leopold's personal control his rule of the Congo is
particularly harsh on the people and the environment even by colonial standards Belgians
enslaved the indigenous people of the Congo and forced them to strip resources using torture,
mutilation, and murder to enforce quotas. From 1888 to 1890 alone, a hundred and forty tons of
ivory were exported from the Congo. Free State. As a direct result of the Belgian barbarity, at
least 10 million Congolese people died between 1880 and 1920, reducing the population by half.
The Congo won independence in 1960. The present Democratic Republic of the Congo occupies
the same area that was once the Congo Free State. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is set in
the 1890s at the height of European colonization of the African continent. In the introduction, 5
friends are on a yacht waiting for the tide to change on the River Thames so they can head out to
sea. Marlow, the storyteller of the group, begins a tale by saying that England also has been one
of the dark places of the earth; his words set the dark, brooding tone of the novella. He tells his
friends he once signed on to pilot a boat upriver in Africa. Marlow explains that he undertook the
trip while working for a European ivory extraction operation known simply as the company. The
company hired Marlow in Europe and gave him the task of picking up one of its agents in Africa,
a man named Kurtz, to relieve him of his duty. Apparently, Kurtz employed questionable
methods for consistently collecting more ivory than any of the other company stations with this
goal in mind. Marlo travels to Africa; he disembarks at the coastal outer station and then travels
200 miles to the company's Central Station, where the river is navigable and his steamer is
supposed to be waiting for him. Once there, Marlo learns that his steamer is sunk at the bottom
of the river. He meets the central station manager, who tells him that the situation is very grave at
the inner station, where Kurtz is the agent and where Marlo is meant to pilot the steamer.
Marlow is told it will take three months to repair the boat, and he concludes that the delays are
intentional. Kurtz is ill, and the manager hopes he'll die before Marlow reaches him. Marlow
overhears a conversation between the station manager and his uncle; the two exchanged dark
hints about Kurtz's character and behavior. Eventually the boat is repaired, and along with the
manager and pilgrims and twenty cannibals, Marlow heads upriver eight miles from the inner
station; the steamer is attacked by natives. Marlo's helmsman is killed. Marlow pitches the body
overboard to avoid having it eaten by the native crewmembers. When they eventually meet,
Kurtz tells Marlow some of his ideas. Marlow has read Kurtz's report arguing that godlike whites
can bring civilization to Africa. Marlo thinks Kurtz has gone mad arriving at Central Station.
Marlow meets a Russian dressed in colorful patchwork clothes that make him look like a
harlequin. The Russian tells Marlow that Kurtz often spends long periods in the jungle staying
with the native people who are gathering ivory. He suggests Kurtz uses extreme methods to
secure the ivory, and he says the native people adore him. Marlow observes fence posts with
severed human heads on them. When Kurtz arrives, he's on a stretcher, very ill with mixed
feelings about Kurtz. Marlow agrees to protect his papers and his reputation once Marlow returns
to Europe. Kurtz dies on the trip downriver; the last thing Marlo hears and says is "the horror, the
horror." Marlow delivers Kurtz's report to a journalist for publication and his papers to the
fiance. Chris is left behind in Europe. We come to the end of Marlo's tale, and the action returns
to the five friends on the yacht. The Thames is flowing under an overcast sky into the heart of an
immense darkness. There are many symbols in Heart of Darkness; they include darkness, both
the literal darkness in the jungle and the waters of the river, as well as the metaphoric darkness in
the hearts of the company agents. Ivory symbolizes the greed and corruption of the Europeans
consuming their every passion and desire in luring them to Africa. Harlequin, the Russian
presence resembling a harlequin, emphasizes the absurdity of the situation and suggests another
literary convention. The wise fool—although the Russian seems more naive than wise—drums
for Marlo; the drums are the sound equivalent of the jungle; they represent the unnerving vitality
of native life. 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. The themes of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness include
racism. Heart of Darkness reflects the racism of the time, and racism becomes a primary aspect
of the novella. greed and imperialism The company says it wants to civilize the native people,
but the true goal is to gain power and money. This attitude is the essence of imperialism:
everything belongs to the power that can take it. hypocrisy and indifference the company is
recalling Kurtz apparently because they find his methods to be excessively brutal yet company
officials overlooked their own brutality in pursuit of ivory civilization and barbarism though
believing they come from a more civilized culture the agents of the company consistently behave
in a more barbaric manner than the so called savages of uncivilized Africa critical reception of
Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness has ranged from Chinua Achebe's label of Conrad as a
bloody racist to the lofty elevation as one of the greatest short novels of the 20th century in
between such polarized views we can find a nuanced appreciation for this novella There's room
to track Marlowe's virulent condemnation of colonial violence while also noting the novella's
foundation in Western racist thinking.