HEART OF DARKNESS

ANALYSIS OF THE BOOK

PART ONE

SUMMARY

The Narrator describes the scene from the deck of a ship named Nellie as it rests at anchor at the mouth of the River Thames, near London. The five men on board the ship—the Director of Companies, the Lawyer, the Accountant, the Narrator, and Marlow, old friends from their seafaring days—settle down to await the changing of the tide. They stare down the mouth of the river into the Atlantic Ocean, a view that stretches like "the beginning of an interminable waterway
In silence they watch the sunset, and the Narrator remembers the fabled ships and men of English history who set sail from the Thames on voyages of trade or conquest, carrying with them "The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empire."
Suddenly Marlow interrupts the silence. "And this also," Marlow says, "has been one of the dark places of the earth." He imagines England as it must have appeared to the first Romans sent to conquer it: a savage, mysterious place that both appalled and attracted them, that made them feel powerless and filled them with hate.
Marlow observes that none of the men on the boat would feel just like those Romans, because the men on the boat have a "devotion to efficiency," while the Romans wanted simply to conquer.
Yet Marlow adds that conquest is never pretty and usually involves the powerful taking land from those who look different and are less powerful. Conquest, Marlow says, is redeemed only by the ideas behind them, ideas that are so beautiful men bow down before them.
Marlow then reminds the other men that he once served as captain of a freshwater riverboat, and begins to tell his story. As a young boy, he had a passion for maps and unknown places. As he grew older many of those places become known, and many he visited himself. Yet Africa still fascinated him, especially its mighty river, the Congo. After years of ocean voyages in which he had "always went by [his] own road and on [his] own legs," Marlow asks his aunt to use her influence help him get a job as a steamship operator for the Company, a continental European trading concern in Africa.
The Company hires him immediately: it has an open position because one of its captains, a Dane named Fresleven, had recently been killed. After some time in the jungle, the normally mild-mannered Fresleven had started hitting the native chief of a village with a cane over a disagreement regarding two black hens, and was accidentally killed by the chief's son. The natives, in fear, immediately abandoned their village.
Marlow travels to the unnamed European city where the Company has its headquarters. He describes the city as a "whited sepulcher."
At the Company's office, Marlow is let into a reception area presided over by two women, one fat, one slim, both of whom constantly knit black wool. There, Marlow examines a map of Africa filled in by various colors representing the European countries that colonized those areas. He briefly meets the head of the Company (a "pale plumpness in a frock coat"), then is directed to a doctor. While measuring Marlow's head, the doctor comments that in Africa "the changes happen inside" and asks Marlow if his family has a history of insanity.
Marlow has a farewell chat with his aunt, who sees her nephew as an "emissary of light" off to educate the African natives out of their "horrid ways." Marlow points out to his aunt that the company is run for profit, not missionary work, and expresses amazement to his friends on the boat how out of touch women are with the truth.
Marlow boards the steamer that will take him to the mouth of the Congo with a sense of foreboding. To Marlow on the steamer, the forested coast of Africa looks like an impenetrable enigma, inviting and scorning him at the same time. He occasionally sees canoes paddled by native Africans, and once sees a French ship firing its guns into the dense forest at invisible "enemies."
At the mouth of the Congo, Marlow gets passage for thirty miles from a small steamer piloted by a Swede. The Swede mocks the "government chaps" at the shore as men who will do anything for money, and wonders what happens to such men when they get further into the continent.
At last they reach the Company's Outer Station, a chaotic and disorganized place. Machinery rusts everywhere, black laborers blast away at a cliff face for no reason. Marlow comments to the men on the Nellie that he had long known the "lusty devils" of violence and greed that drive men, but in Africa encountered "a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly."
Marlow then stumbles upon what he calls the Grove of Death, a grove among the trees that is filled with weak and dying native laborers, who are living out their last moments in the shade of the ancient trees.
At the station, the Chief Accountant impresses Marlow with his good grooming. One day the Chief Accountant mentions that further up the river Marlow will probably meet Mr. Kurtz, a station head who sends in as much ivory as all the others put together and who "will be somebody in the [Company] Administration before long." He asks Marlow to tell Kurtz that all is satisfactory, saying he doesn't want to send a letter for fear that rivals at the Central Station will intercept it.
Just then a dying native who has been put on a bed in the accountant's office for lack of other space makes a noise. The Chief Accountant comments, "When one has got to make correct entries, one comes to hate these savages—hate them to death."
A few days later Marlow joins a caravan headed the two hundred miles upriver to Central Station. After a fifteen-day trek through the jungle during which the only other white man fell ill and many of the native porters deserted rather than carry the sick man, Marlow reaches the Station.
At the station, Marlow is greeted by the first man he sees with news that the ship he was supposed to pilot has sunk. Apparently, the General Manager had suddenly decided to try to reach Kurtz at the Inner Station with an inexperienced pilot at the helm of the steamship. The steamship promptly sank.
Marlow, on the Nellie, says that though he can't be sure, he suspects that it's possible the General Manager wanted the steamship to sink.
Marlow is immediately taken to see this General Manager, who is thoroughly unremarkable in intelligence, leadership, and unskilled at even maintaining order. Marlow believes the General Manager holds his position through two traits: he inspires vague uneasiness in others, and unlike any other Europeans he's resistant to all the tropical diseases.
The General Manager explains why he took the steamship onto the river before Marlow, its pilot, arrived: Kurtz, the Company's best agent, is sick. The General Manager takes special interest when Marlow mentions he heard Kurtz's name mentioned on the coast. The General Manager estimates that it will take three months to repair the ship, and turns out to be almost exactly right.
Marlow sets to work fixing the ship and watches the absurd happenings of Central Station, where the various company agents (employees) do no work, stroll about aimlessly, and dream of ivory and wealth. Marlow describes the place as "unreal."
One night a shed bursts into flame. AS Marlow approaches he sees a laborer being beaten for setting the blaze and overhears the General Manager talking with another man about Kurtz, saying they should try to "take advantage of this unfortunate accident." The General Manager departs, and Marlow ends up in a conversation with the other man, a young "agent" whose responsibility it is to make bricks (which he never does) and whom the other agents think is the General Manager's spy.
Marlow follows the brick maker back to his quarters, which are much nicer than any but the General Manager's. As they talk, Marlow realizes the brick maker is trying to get information from him because Marlow’s Aunt’s contacts in the Company are the same people who sent Kurtz to Africa. The brick maker bitterly says that Marlow and Kurtz are both "of the new gang—the gang of virtue" meant to bring proper morals and European enlightenment to the colonial activities in Africa.
The brick maker, whom Marlow now calls a "papier-mâché Mephistopheles," continues to speak about Kurtz, and asks Marlow not to give Kurtz a wrong impression of him. Marlow realizes that both the General Manager and the brick maker see Kurtz as a threat to their dreams of advancement.
Though he hates lies because they have a "taint of death" and telling them is like "biting something rotten," Marlow pretends to have as much influence in Europe as the brick maker thinks he has in order to get the brick maker to speed up the arrival of the rivets needed to fix the steamship. Marlow has an idea that the faster the steamship is fixed the better it will be for Kurtz.
Suddenly, Marlow breaks off telling his story in order to try to explain to the men sitting on the ship in the Thames how hard it is to get across his experiences, though he is comforted by the fact that his fellows on the ship, men who see and know him, can at least "see more than I could then." The Narrator observes that it was now so dark they couldn't see Marlow at all.
Marlow resumes his story. When the Brick maker leaves, Marlow boards his broken steamship, which he has come to love after putting in so much hard work to rebuild it. Marlow says of work: "I don't like work... but I like what is in the work—the chance to find yourself. Your own reality." Marlow tells his foreman they'll soon have rivets. The two of them do a little dance of joy.
But weeks pass and the rivets don't come. Instead, a group of "pilgrims" calling itself the Eldorado Exploring Expedition arrives, led by the General Manager's uncle. They are all greedy, cowardly, and without any sort of foresight or understanding of work.
Without rivets, Marlow can't do any work either. He has lots of time to think, and begins to wonder about Kurtz's morals, and about how Kurtz would act if he did become general manager.
PART TWO SUMMARY
Sometime later, as Marlow rests on his steamship, he overhears the General Manager talking with his Uncle about Kurtz. They are annoyed that Kurtz has so much influence in the Company and sends back so much ivory. The General Manager also mentions a trader who lives near Kurtz and is apparently stealing Company profits. The uncle advises the General Manager to take advantage of the fact that there's no authority around and just hang the trader.
They next discuss the rumors that Kurtz is sick. Kurtz was supposed to return to the Central Station along with his latest batch of ivory, but apparently came halfway down the river and then turned back. The General Manager angrily mentions Kurtz's conviction that the stations should be focused as much on humanizing and civilizing the savages as on trade. The General Manager's uncle replies that the General Manager should trust the jungle, implying that tropical disease will eventually kill Kurtz.
A few days later the General Manager's uncle and his Eldorado Expedition head into the jungle. Marlow later heard that all their donkeys died, but never heard what happened to the "less valuable animals"—the men.
After three months of work, Marlow finishes repairing the ship. He immediately sets off upriver with the General Manager, a few pilgrims, and thirty cannibals as crew. Marlow prefers the cannibals, who don't actually eat each other and of whom he says, "They were men I could work with."
The trip is long and difficult. Marlow describes the jungle as a "thing monstrous and free" and the natives as beings "who howled and leapt and made horrid faces." Yet Marlow feels some connection to the "terrible frankness" of the natives, knowing that he has some of that primitiveness in his own heart. He is thankful that his work keeping the ship afloat occupies his attention most of the time, and hides the "inner truth."
Still, Marlow tells the other men on the Nellie, he often has a sense of the "mysterious stillness" watching him at his "monkey tricks, just as it watches you fellows performing on your respective tight-ropes for—what is it? half a crown a tumble?" One of the men on the Nellie warns Marlow to "try to be civil." Marlow responds, "I beg your pardon. I forgot the heartache that makes up the rest of the price." Then he continues with his story.
Fifty miles from Kurtz's headquarters at Inner Station, the ship comes upon a hut with a stack of firewood outside. They stop to collect the firewood, and discover a note that says "Wood for you. Hurry up. Approach cautiously." It is signed illegibly, but with a name too long to be "Kurtz." The General Manager concludes the hut must belong to the trader he wants to hang. Inside the hut, Marlow discovers a technical book on sailing that seems to have code written on it. He is astonished, and calls the book "unmistakably real."
Eight miles from the Inner Station, the General Manager orders Marlow to anchor the ship in the middle of the river for the night. Marlow wants to continue on to meet Kurtz, but knows that stopping is the safer thing to do.
The morning reveals a thick white blinding fog enveloping the ship. A roar of screaming natives breaks the silence, then cuts off. Frightened pilgrims hold their rifles at the ready, but can't see anything. The cannibals want to catch and eat the men on the riverbank. Marlow realizes the cannibals must be incredibly hungry, and marvels at their restraint in not turning on the white men on the ship. The General Manager authorizes Marlow to take all risks in going upstream, knowing full well that Marlow will refuse to take any. After two hours, the fog lifts and the steamship continue upstream.
A little over a mile from Inner Station, a tiny island in the middle of the river forces Marlow to choose the western or eastern fork of the river. He chooses the western, which turns out to be quite narrow. Just as Marlow spots snags ahead that could rip the bottom out of the boat, arrows shoot toward the steamship from the jungle. Marlow orders his helmsman, a tribesman from the coast, to steer straight.
The pilgrims open fire into the bush, putting out smoke that blocks Marlow's vision.
A shotgun blasts just behind Marlow: the helmsman has dropped the wheel and started shooting out the window. Marlow jumps to take the wheel and avoid the snag ahead. The helmsman falls back from the window, a spear in his side. Blood fills the pilothouse, soaking Marlow's shoes. Marlow pulls the ship's steam whistle, which terrifies the attacking natives and drives them off. A pilgrim wearing "pink pyjamas" comes with a message from the General Manager and is aghast to see the dead helmsman.
Marlow realizes Kurtz is probably dead and feels an intense disappointment at the thought. Marlow then tells the pilgrim to steer and flings his bloody shoes overboard.
Suddenly, Marlow once again cuts short his story in order to address the men who are on the Nellie in the Thames. He tells them they couldn't hope to understand his despair at thinking he would never get to meet Kurtz, since they live in civilization with "a butcher round one corner, a policeman round another."
After a long silence, Marlow says that Kurtz wasn't dead, and launches into a series of thoughts about him. Marlow says Kurtz saw everything, including his Intended (his fiancé) as a personal possession. Marlow explains that Kurtz, in the solitude of the jungle, transformed from a man of European enlightenment to a man who presided over "unspeakable rites" and accepted sacrifices made in his honor. Marlow recalls a magnificent, if impractical; treatise that Kurtz wrote called On the Suppression of Savage Customs in which Kurtz argues that white men, as veritable gods next to the natives, have the responsibility to help them. Later, though, across this treatise calling for idealism and altruism, Kurtz scrawled "Exterminate all the brutes."
Marlow returns to the dead helmsman, saying that Kurtz was a remarkable man, but wasn't worth the lives they lost in trying to find him. Marlow mourns his helmsman deeply. The man had "done something, he had steered."
Everyone on board assumes the Inner Station has been overrun and Kurtz killed. The pilgrims are happy, though, that they probably killed so many savages with their rifles. Marlow, however, is certain all the pilgrims shot too high, and killed no one.
When they arrive at Inner Station, Marlow and the other men on the ship are amazed to discover it in perfect shape. They are met onshore by a white man wearing clothes covered in colorful patches. Marlow thinks the man looks like a harlequin (a clown or jester). The man knows that the steamship has been attacked, but says, "it's all right" now. As the General Manager and pilgrims go to get Kurtz, the harlequin comes on board and speaks with Marlow. The man explains that he's a twenty-five year old Russian sailor who deserted and through a series of adventures working for various colonial powers ended up wandering through the Congo alone for two years.
When the Russian says that the hut with the stacked wood was his old house, Marlow returns the book about sailing to him. The Russian in his joy tells Marlow that the natives attacked the ship because they don't want Kurtz to leave. It's soon clear to Marlow that the Russian also has fallen under the spell of Kurtz's amazing eloquence. The Russian says about Kurtz: "This man has enlarged my mind."
PART THREE SUMMARY
Marlow stares at the Russian in astonishment, and thinks that the Russian "surely wants nothing from the wilderness but space to breathe in" and that "if the absolutely pure, uncalculating, unpractical spirit of adventure had ever ruled a human being, it ruled this ... youth."
Meanwhile, the Russian begs Marlow to take Kurtz away quickly. He tells of his first meeting with Kurtz, in which Kurtz "talked of everything" and the Russian only listened. Since then, he says he's nursed Kurtz through two illnesses, even though Kurtz had once threatened to shoot him over some ivory.
Kurtz, the Russian says, is a god to the local tribesman, who adores him. They help him as he raids the jungle and other tribes for ivory. This comes as troubling news to Marlow, who had expected that Kurtz, with his morals, would trade for ivory, not take it by force.
The Russian says that Kurtz can't be judged as other men are. He adds that Kurtz "suffered too much. He hated all this and somehow couldn't get away." Marlow, meanwhile, lifts binoculars to his eyes and looks at the building where he thinks Kurtz is lying ill. He's startled to see that what he thought were fence posts are actually spiked human heads. Marlow tells the men on the Nellie that for all Kurtz's magnificent talent, eloquence, and learning, he was hollow at the core, and the jungle filled that hollowness.
The Russian mentions that when the native chiefs came to see Kurtz they crawled up to him. This information disgusts Marlow, who comments that in contrast "uncomplicated savagery was a positive relief, being something that had the right to exist—obviously—in the sunshine."
The Russian can't understand Marlow's scorn at Kurtz's savage actions. He says that the Company abandoned Kurtz, who had such wonderful ideas.
The pilgrims come out of the house bearing Kurtz on a stretcher. Marlow describes Kurtz as looking like "an animated image of death carved out of ivory." The natives swarm forward. The Russian whispers to Marlow that if Kurtz says the word, they'll all be killed. Kurtz speaks (Marlow can't hear him from so far away), and the natives melt back into the jungle.
Along the shore of the river near the ship the natives gather. Among them, next to the ship a "savage and superb" African woman paces back and forth. The Russian's comments about her imply that she was Kurtz’s mistress.
Inside the cabin, an argument erupts between Kurtz and the General Manager. Kurtz accuses the General Manager of caring less about Kurtz himself than about the ivory Kurtz has, and also says the General Manager with his "piddling notions" is interfering with Kurtz's grand plans.
The General Manager exits from the cabin. He tells Marlow that Kurtz is very ill and that Kurtz's "unsound methods" ruined the district for the company. Marlow comments that Kurtz's methods couldn't be "unsound" because he seemed to have had "no method at all." Yet Marlow is more disgusted by the General Manager's fake show of sadness at Kurtz's demise than with Kurtz's atrocities, and says that Kurtz is still a remarkable man. This loses Marlow whatever favor he'd held in the General Manager's eyes.
When Marlow is alone, the Russian approaches. He has decided to slip away, correctly sensing that he's in danger from the General Manager and his men, and seeing nothing more that he can do for Kurtz. But before departing he tells Marlow that it was Kurtz who ordered the native attack on the steamship in order to scare the General Manager away and thereby be allowed to remain at his station. The Russian gets Marlow to give him some supplies and disappears into the night.
Marlow goes to sleep, but wakes suddenly just after midnight. As he looks around he notices Kurtz has disappeared. On the bank of the river, Marlow finds a trail through the grass and realizes Kurtz must be crawling. He catches up to Kurtz just before he reaches the native camp. Marlow realizes that though he's stronger than Kurtz, all Kurtz has to do is call out and the natives will attack. Kurtz, realizing the same thing, tells him to hide. Marlow says, "You will be lost, utterly lost." Kurtz pauses, struggling with himself. Marlow watches him, and realizes that Kurtz is perfectly sane in his mind, but his soul is mad. Kurtz's soul, Marlow says, "knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear." Yet in the end Kurtz allows Marlow to support him back to the ship.
The next day the ship departs. Kurtz, in the pilothouse with Marlow, watches the natives and his mistress come to the shore. Marlow spots the pilgrims getting their rifles and pulls the steam whistle. All the natives but the women disperse. The pilgrims open fire, blocking Marlow's vision with the smoke.
As they travel swiftly downstream, the General Manager is pleased. After all, soon Kurtz will be dead and the General Manager will be secure in his position without having to do a thing. Marlow is often left alone with Kurtz, who speaks in his magnificent voice and with his magnificent eloquence about his moral ideas, his hopes for fame in Europe, and his desire to "wring the heart" of the jungle.
The steamship soon breaks down, which doesn't surprise Marlow. But Kurtz becomes concerned he won't live to see Europe. He gives Marlow his papers, fearful that the General Manager might try to pry into them, and one day tells Marlow that he is "waiting for death." Marlow is pierced by the expression on Kurtz's face "of somber pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror—of an intense and hopeless despair." Suddenly Kurtz cries out in a voice not much more than a breath: "The horror! The horror!" A short while later, the General Manager's servant appears and informs everyone: "Mistah Kurtz—he dead."
Soon after, Marlow himself falls ill. He calls his struggle with death "the most unexciting contest you can imagine," and is embarrassed to discover that on his deathbed he could think of nothing to say. That's why he admires Kurtz. The man had something to say: "The horror!" Marlow's describes Kurtz's statement as a moral victory paid for by "abominable terrors" and "abominable satisfactions."
Marlow returns to the "sepulchral city" in Europe, where his aunt nurses him back to health but can't soothe his mind. The people of the city seem to him petty and silly.
A representative of the Company comes to get Kurtz's papers from Marlow, who offers him only On the Suppression of Savage Customs (with the scrawled "exterminate all the brutes torn off" torn off). The representative wanting more, wanting something more profitable, storms off.
Kurtz's cousin soon shows up. The cousin, a musician, tells Marlow that Kurtz was himself a great musician, then leaves with some family letters Marlow gives him.
Soon after, a journalist stops by. He says Kurtz wasn't a great writer, but was a great speaker. He could have been a great radical political leader—he could electrify a crowd. Marlow asks what party Kurtz would have belonged to. The journalist says any party: Kurtz could convince himself of anything. He takes On the Suppression of Savage Customs for publication.
At last, Marlow works up the nerve to go to see Kurtz's Intended and give her the last of his letters. When she lets Marlow into her house he notices that though it's a year after Kurtz’s death, she is still dressed in mourning black. She praises Kurtz as the best of all men.
Marlow, full of pity, does not dispute her claims. Finally, the Intended asks to hear Kurtz’s last words. This is the question Marlow's been dreading. He pauses, then tells her that Kurtz's last words were her name. She cries out that she knew it and begins to weep. Marlow feels only despair, knowing he failed to give Kurtz the justice he deserved. But he just couldn't get himself to tell the Intended the truth—it would have been too dark.
Marlow, on the Nellie still at anchor in the Thames, goes quiet. The Narrator looks off into the distance, and says that the Thames seems to lead to the "uttermost ends of the earth," seems to lead "into the heart of an immense darkness.”

  Plot 

Heart of Darkness tells the story of Marlow, a sailor, who describes to his shipmates the unusual experience he had traveling upriver in the Congo and the effect it had upon him. Hired by a Continental trading company as a steamboat captain between the outer stations and the interior, Marlow's primary mission was to visit and, if necessary, retrieve the mysterious Kurtz, an extraordinarily successful agent who had lost contact and reportedly fallen ill. Marlow tells the men that the entire journey was a sort of dream--lacking any real-world logic, deeply affecting, and difficult to describe in its details. The trip took several months, occurring in stages--a trip along the coast, an overland trek to the Central Station, and finally the riverboat journey to Kurtz's outpost.

During the entire expedition Marlow was struck by the mistreatment of natives by the Company and its agents, the preponderance of disease, the intimidating presence of the jungle, and the absurdness of the colonial operation carrying on for a relatively small amount of ivory. He began hearing of Kurtz as soon as he arrived, and everything he heard--of Kurtz's eloquence, of his high moral principles, of his effectiveness, of his influence in the Company--aroused Marlow's interest. The idea of Kurtz began to obsess Marlow. When they arrived at his station, they found he had set himself up as a sort of god to the natives he had once wanted to civilize; he had become more savage than even the natives, taking part in bizarre rites and using violence against the locals to inspire fear and obtain more ivory.

Against his wishes, Kurtz was taken back by Marlow and the other whites; his illness overcame him on the return trip, and he died. His last words--"The horror! The horror!"--were his realization of the depths to which he had sunk from his noble goals. He entrusted Marlow before his death with his papers, including an article he had written on bringing enlightenment and progress to the natives of the Congo. As evidence of Kurtz's decay, however, was the postscript he'd scribbled at the end of this article: "Exterminate all the brutes!". Marlow was shaken by his encounter with Kurtz, who had, because of his isolation, been exposed to the darkness within himself and had gone mad as a result. When back in Europe, Marlow contacted Kurtz's fiancé but could not reveal to her the terrifying last words.

Ultimately, Marlow tells the story of how when the thin shell of civilization has fallen away, the corruption and evil within can surface. Seeing the darkness lingering immediately under the surface of a man who thought himself moral forever affected Marlow as a deep nightmare would. As Marlow finishes his story, trailing off as he reaches the lie about Kurtz's last words, the sky has grown dark.

Major Characters

Marlow: The story of Kurtz is told by Marlow, who speaks for the majority of the novel. He is a longtime seaman, a rootless wanderer and frequent storyteller. The stories he tells, though, tend to be more idea than episode. He was the captain of a small steamer that traveled up the Congo River to retrieve the mysterious Kurtz from the interior. His encounter with Kurtz shakes him for the rest of his life.

The Narrator: The unnamed narrator frames Marlow's story, but does not comment on it; he describes the boat and its environment.

Kurtz: A trade agent sent to Africa by the Company, he started out with the noble goal of bringing civilization and progress to the natives. Eloquent and charismatic, he had great favor in the Company and his virtue was praised, to the dismay of his jealous colleagues. No sooner had he arrived than the isolation torn away his civilized exterior and made his inner savageness emerge. He began to act as a god to the area natives. He decayed mentally and physically and ultimately died aware of the horror of his life.

The pilgrims: A group of sixteen to twenty men who Marlow brought on his trip into the interior. He barely talked with any of them; they fired rifles into crowds of natives onshore and were very suspicious of Kurtz. When Kurtz died, they buried him in the mud by the riverside.

The cannibals: The natives who acted as the crew on Marlow's ship to the interior. He became much closer to them than he did to the other white men. They received a meager pay of brass wire, which they were supposed to (but unable to) trade for food; as a result they were always hungry. They were generally distrusted or disregarded by the pilgrims.

The fiancé: Kurtz's fiancé back in Europe, who Marlow visited after his return from Africa. He told her the story of Kurtz's death but lied to her about Kurtz's last words. She was utterly devoted to Kurtz and believed strongly in his noble motives.

The young man: A Russian wanderer who ended up at Kurtz's station. Worshipful and fearful of Kurtz, he was most concerned with attempting to win Marlow over to Kurtz's side. He ran off before Kurtz was taken from the station, leaving Marlow with Kurtz's papers and an admonition to protect his memory.

Minor Characters

The Director of Companies, the Lawyer, and the Accountant: The three men who listen, along with the narrator, to Marlow's story. They are solid professional men who occasionally show skepticism about the story.

Marlow's aunt: She was able to get Marlow a job with the Company. She had the idea that the Company would ennoble and enlighten the savage African people.

Fresleven: The past captain along the Congo River, who Marlow was hired to replace. Normally a placid man, he killed a native chief over a chicken, and was killed, in retaliation, by the tribe.

The Secretary of the Company: Marlow interviewed with this distinguished old man at the Company offices.

Knitting Women: These women sat outside the offices of the Secretary for no apparent reason, knitting black wool. They made Marlow uneasy as they looked at him.

The Doctor: He gave Marlow a cursory examination, then measured his cranium out of curiosity. He was interested in the mental effects of the wilderness on Europeans.

The Swede: The Swede told Marlow the story of another Swede who traveled to the interior. Once stationed there, this man hung himself for no discernible reason. The story made Marlow uneasy.

Native laborers: At the outermost station, dozens of native laborers, captive prisoners supposedly enslaved for crimes, were building a railroad trestle. Many of them were sick or dying.

Chief Accountant: A well-dressed man who first told Marlow about Kurtz. He had come to hate the natives for how their noise distracted him.

Fat man: This greedy white man went with Marlow to the Central Station in order to make money. He was always complaining about the country and came down with a fever.

General Manager: A higher official with the Company, he went with Marlow into the interior in order to retrieve Kurtz. He was jealous of Kurtz's popularity with the Company in Europe and feared being usurped. He was incompetent and not very bright, but ambitious enough to stay in Africa.

Brickmaker: An ally of the Manager, this man befriended Marlow in order to gain information about Company politics. Like the manager, he worried about Kurtz's influence. He never made any bricks.

Treasure hunters: A caravan of greedy men who stopped at the Central Station on their way to the interior. Their goal was to raid natives for gold, ivory or other treasure. Marlow found them distasteful and cruel. They disappear, presumably dead, into the jungle.

Caravan leader: Uncle of the Manager, this man was the most unpleasant of the treasure-hunters. He worried about Kurtz's civilizing motives as a possible stumbling block to commercial considerations.

Boiler operator: A cannibal decked out with tribal decorations. Marlow noted that it was unfortunate that such an impressive native was forced to operate the boiler of a white man's ship.

Helmsman: A cannibal killed when Kurtz's tribes attacked the ship.

Native woman: A tall and beautiful woman who appeared strangely and menacingly when the white men took Kurtz aboard the ship. She also stared after them as they departed with Kurtz, unafraid of the noise of the ship's horn.

Objects/Places

The Company: The vast European trading company which sent Marlow to Africa.

Maps: As a child, Marlow was interested in the blank unexplored spots on maps, which inspired his interest in Africa. He saw such maps, with the blank spots filled, in the Company offices.

White city: This city, most likely Brussels, Belgium, struck Marlow as being sepulchral--like a coffin, cold and dead. He felt uneasy upon first arriving; when he returned he barely saw the people of the city as human. It is always a lonely, disturbing place for him.

French ship: This ship was firing for no apparent reason into a stretch of jungle; its crew claimed that there were 'enemies' they were firing at. The men on the ship, stricken with disease, were dying at a startling rate.

Company Station: The first stop for the ship taking Marlow to Africa. Here the journey to the interior would begin; here dozens of enslaved natives were beginning to build a railroad.

Ivory: The commercial good around which the entire Company revolved; the entire massive operation was carried out for only a small amount of ivory. Kurtz was bafflingly good at sending back huge quantities of ivory.

Central Station: The midpoint of Marlow's trip; here his ship, the pilgrims, and the Manager awaited his arrival. The atmosphere here was one of complicated Company politics.

Interior Station: The innermost point of the Company's penetration into Africa. From here Kurtz had established a dominion of power over the local tribes.

Ship: The steamer that Marlow was supposed to pilot had sunk in the river before he even arrived, and he had to spend months repairing it. It took Marlow and the pilgrims upriver to get Kurtz; it returned in rapidly declining repair.

Hut: A curious outpost of civilization halfway up the river, this hut was at one time occupied by the young Russian, who had left there a book and firewood for the next person to come along.

Article: A report on 'The Suppression of Savage Customs,' which Kurtz undertook to write with a mind towards progress and civilization. After writing the seventeen-page pamphlet, Kurtz angrily wrote 'Exterminate all the brutes!' at the end. Marlow eventually gave this pamphlet to a friend of Kurtz's, with the violent words removed.

Heads on stakes: The evidence that Kurtz, instead of being the noble missionary he intended, had become brutal. The heads were evidence of 'unsound methods'--violence--by which he was able to control the natives and reap rich rewards of ivory.

 

THEMES

Colonialism

Marlow's story in Heart of Darkness takes place in the Belgian Congo, the most notorious European colony in Africa for its greed and brutalization of the native people. In its depiction of the monstrous wastefulness and casual cruelty of the colonial agents toward the African natives, Heart of Darkness reveals the utter hypocrisy of the entire colonial effort. In Europe, colonization of Africa was justified on the grounds that not only would it bring wealth to Europe, it would also civilize and educate the "savage" African natives. Heart of Darkness shows that in practice the European colonizers used the high ideals of colonization as a cover to allow them to viciously rip whatever wealth they could from Africa.

Unlike most novels that focus on the evils of colonialism, Heart of Darkness pays more attention to the damage that colonization does to the souls of white colonizers than it does to the physical death and devastation unleashed on the black natives. Though this focus on the white colonizers makes the novella somewhat unbalanced, it does allow Heart of Darkness to extend its criticism of colonialism all the way back to its corrupt source, the "civilization" of Europe.

The Hollowness of Civilization

Heart of Darkness portrays a European civilization that is hopelessly and blindly corrupt. The novella depicts European society as hollow at the core:Marlow describes the white men he meets in Africa, from the General Manager to Kurtz, as empty, and refers to the unnamed European city as the "sepulchral city" (a sepulcher is a hollow tomb). Throughout the novella, Marlow argues that what Europeans call "civilization" is superficial, a mask created by fear of the law and public shame that hides a dark heart, just as a beautiful white sepulcher hides the decaying dead inside.

Marlow, and Heart of Darkness, argue that in the African jungle—"utter solitude without a policeman"—the civilized man is plunged into a world without superficial restrictions, and the mad desire for power comes to dominate him. Inner strength could allow a man to push off the temptation to dominate, but civilization actually saps this inner strength by making men think it's unnecessary. The civilized man believes he's civilized through and through. So when a man like Kurtz suddenly finds himself in the solitude of the jungle and hears the whisperings of his dark impulses, he is unable to combat them and becomes a monster.

The Lack of Truth

Heart of Darkness plays with the genre of quest literature. In a quest, a hero passes through a series of difficult tests to find an object or person of importance and in the process comes to a realization about the true nature of the world or human soul. Marlow seems to be on just such a quest, making his way past absurd and horrendous "stations" on his way up the Congo to find Kurtz, the shining beacon of European civilization and morality in the midst of the dark jungle and the "flabby rapacious folly" of the other Belgian Company agents.

But Marlow's quest is a failure: Kurtz turns out to be the biggest monster of all. And with that failure Marlow learns that at the heart of everything there lies only darkness. In other words, you can't know other people, and you can't even really know yourself. There is no fundamental truth.

Work

In a world where truth is unknowable and men's hearts are filled with either greed or a primitive darkness that threatens to overwhelm them, Marlow seems to find comfort only in work. Marlow notes that he escaped the jungle's influence not because he had principles or high ideals, but because he had a job to do that kept him busy.

Work is perhaps the only thing in Heart of Darkness that Marlow views in an entirely positive light. In fact, more than once Marlow will refer to work or items that are associated with work (like rivets) as "real," while the rest of the jungle and the men in it are "unreal." Work is like a religion to him, a source of support to which he can cling in order to keep his humanity. This explains why he is so horrified when he sees laziness, poor work, or machines left out to rust. When other men cease to do honest work, Marlow knows they have sunk either into the heart of darkness or the hollow greed of civilization.

Racism

Students and critics alike often argue about whether Heart of Darkness is a racist book. Some argue that the book depicts Europeans as superior to Africans, while others believe the novel attacks colonialism and therefore is not racist. There is the evidence in the book that supports both sides of the argument, which is another way of saying that the book's actual stance on the relationship between blacks and whites is not itself black and white.

Heart of Darkness attacks colonialism as a deeply flawed enterprise run by corrupt and hollow white men who perpetrate mass destruction on the native population of Africa, and the novel seems to equate darkness with truth and whiteness with hollow trickery and lies. So Heart of Darkness argues that the Africans are less corrupt and in that sense superior to white people, but it's argument for the superiority of Africans is based on a foundation of racism. Marlow, and Heart of Darkness, take the rather patronizing view that the black natives are primitive and therefore innocent while the white colonizers are sophisticated and therefore corrupt. This take on colonization is certainly not "politically correct," and can be legitimately called racist because it treats the natives like objects rather than as thinking people.