Heart of Darkness
Marlow
The protagonist of Heart of Darkness. Marlow is philosophical, independent-minded, and generally skeptical of those around him. He is also a master storyteller, eloquent and able to draw his listeners into his tale. Although Marlow shares many of his fellow Europeans’ prejudices, he has seen enough of the world and has encountered enough debased white men to make him skeptical of imperialism.
Kurtz
The chief of the Inner Station and the object of Marlow’s quest. Among Kurtz’s many talents are his charisma and his ability to lead men. Kurtz is a man who understands the power of words, and his writings are marked by an eloquence that obscures their horrifying message. Although he remains an enigma even to Marlow, Kurtz clearly exerts a powerful influence on the people in his life. His downfall seems to be a result of his willingness to ignore the hypocritical rules that govern European colonial conduct: Kurtz has “kicked himself loose of the earth” by fraternizing excessively with the natives and not keeping up appearances. Kurtz has become wildly successful but he has also indulged his own evil desires and alienated himself from his fellow white men.
General manager
The chief agent of the Company’s African territory and manager of the Central Station. The General manager owes his success to a hardy constitution that allows him to outlive all his competitors. He is average in appearance and unremarkable in abilities, but he possesses a strange capacity to produce uneasiness in those around him, which allows him to exert his control.
Pilgrims
The bumbling, greedy agents of the Central Station. They carry long wooden staves, reminding Marlow of traditional religious travelers. They all want to be appointed to a station so that they can trade for ivory and earn a commission, but none of them actually takes any effective steps toward achieving this goal. They are obsessed with keeping up a veneer of civilization and proper conduct, and are motivated entirely by self-interest. They hate the natives and treat them like animals.
Cannibals
Natives hired as the crew of the steamer. They are a surprisingly reasonable and well-tempered bunch. Marlow respects their restraint and calm acceptance of adversity. The leader of the group, in particular, seems to be intelligent and capable of ironic reflection upon his situation.
Russian trader
A Russian sailor who has gone into the African interior as the trading representative of a Dutch company. He is boyish in appearance and temperament, and seems to exist wholly on the glamour of youth and the audacity of adventurousness. He is a devoted disciple of Kurtz’s.
Kurtz’s African mistress
A fiercely beautiful woman loaded with jewelry who appears on the shore when Marlow’s steamer arrives at and leaves the Inner Station. She seems to exert an undue influence over both Kurtz and the natives around the station, and the Russian trader points her out as someone to fear. Like Kurtz, she is an enigma: she never speaks to Marlow, and he never learns anything more about her.
Kurtz’s Intended
Kurtz’s naïve and long-suffering fiancée, whom Marlow goes to visit after Kurtz’s death. Her unshakable certainty about Kurtz’s love for her reinforces Marlow’s belief that women live in a dream world, well insulated from reality.
Heart of Darkness is a novella written by Joseph Conrad. Before its 1902 publication, it appeared as a three-part series (1899) in Blackwood's Magazine. It was classified by the Modern Library website editors as one of the "100 best novels" and part of the Western canon.
The story centres on Charles Marlow, who narrates most of the book. He is an Englishman who takes a foreign assignment from a Belgian trading company as a river-boat captain in Africa. Heart of Darkness exposes the dark side of European colonization while exploring the three levels of darkness that the protagonist, Marlow, encounters: the darkness of the Congo wilderness, the darkness of the Europeans' cruel treatment of the African natives, and the unfathomable darkness within every human being for committing heinous acts of evil. Although Conrad does not give the name of the river, at the time of writing the Congo Free State, the location of the large and important Congo River, was a private colony of Belgium's King Leopold II. In the story, Marlow is employed to transport ivory downriver. However, his more pressing assignment is to return Kurtz, another ivory trader, to civilization, in a cover-up. Kurtz has a reputation throughout the region.
This symbolic story is a story within a story or frame narrative. It follows Marlow as he recounts his Congolese adventure to a group of men aboard a ship anchored in the Thames Estuary from dusk through to late night. The passage of time and the darkening sky during Marlow's narrative parallels the atmosphere of the events he narrates.
The story opens with an unnamed narrator on board the Nellie, a cruising yawl anchored in the Thames Estuary downstream from London and near Gravesend. He is with four friends, and dusk is falling as they wait for the turning of the tide. The narrator briefly describes the others, all of whom seem to be middle-aged men. One is called Charlie Marlow – the only one who "still followed the sea." Marlow makes a comment about London having been "one of the dark places on earth", and then begins a story of how he once took a job as captain of a river steamboat in Africa.
The Roi des Belges, the Belgian riverboat Conrad commanded on the upper Congo, 1889
Marlow describes his securing of the job and that when he arrives in Africa, he immediately dislikes the other white men he encounters, who work for the company, as they strike him as shallow and untrustworthy; one is like "papier-mâché". The company's main business seems to be buying ivory from the natives with beads, cloth and bits of brass. They speak often of the company's most remarkable agent, a man known only as Kurtz, stationed up-river, who has quite a reputation in many ways and who seems commonly regarded with a sense of mystery. Kurtz is apparently a completely ungovernable ivory collector, revealed much later to be also "essentially a great musician", journalist, skilled painter and "universal genius".
Marlow arrives up-river at the Central Trading Station run by a manager who is an unwholesome, conspiratorial character. Marlow discovers one day at the Station that his steamship has been sunk and secretly suspects the manager of causing the "accident." He spends three months repairing it, including a frustrating wait for spare parts. His first assignment is a voyage up-river to Kurtz's station to collect ivory and Kurtz himself, who seems to have gone rogue. There is a rumour regarding Kurtz's being ill; this makes the delays in repairing the ship all the more inconvenient. During the delay, Marlow overhears the manager expressing his fearful distrust of Kurtz, who appears to be a threat to the manager's powerful position, and how he wishes to execute a particular one of Kurtz's minions. Eventually Marlow, the manager, and three other white agents set out, with a crew of blacks from a cannibal tribe, on a long and difficult voyage up the river.
As they near Kurtz's station they unexpectedly find a hut by the river with stacked firewood and a note saying that the wood is for them and that they should proceed up the river cautiously. Shortly after the steamer has taken on the firewood it is surrounded by a dense fog. When the fog clears, the ship is abruptly attacked by an unseen band of natives, who shoot arrows from the safety of the forest. They kill an African member of the crew who Marlow describes sentimentally and whose death he recounts with great sadness. Although Marlow suspects that Kurtz and his associates have already been massacred, the steamship surprisingly reaches Kurtz's unharmed station, which is eerily surrounded by a collection of natives' severed heads on poles. Marlow and his crew are first met by a guileless Russian traveler, who is reminiscent of a harlequin because of his motley-like clothing. The Russian assures them that everything is fine and informs them that he is the one who lived in the downstream hut and left the firewood. The Russian, a lone and aimless trader in the wilderness, came across Kurtz's station unexpectedly and has become something of a disciple of Kurtz, a man who seems to have the power to dominate anyone he meets. Marlow and his companions find that Kurtz has persuaded the natives to treat him as a god, and has led brutal raids in the surrounding territory in search of ivory. Marlow also recounts the brief appearance at the station of an awe-inspiring and enigmatic African woman, who may be Kurtz's mistress. The Russian, learning through Marlow of the manager's prior talk of executing him, quietly flees the station, though not before admitting that it was Kurtz, refusing to be taken away from his god-like throne in the wilderness, who ordered Marlow's boat to be attacked.
Due to Kurtz's ailing condition, however, Marlow and his crew take him aboard their ship themselves and depart. Kurtz is lodged in Marlow's pilot-house and Marlow begins to see that Kurtz, although skeletal due to his failing health, is every bit as grandiose as previously described, especially with regards to the enthralling tone of his speech. However, Marlow finds himself disappointed with Kurtz's childish schemes for fame and fortune. During this time, Kurtz gives Marlow a collection of papers and a photograph for safekeeping, as both witnessed the manager going through Kurtz's belongings. The photograph is of a beautiful young woman whom Marlow correctly assumes is Kurtz's fiancée, or as Marlow calls her, "his Intended."
One night Marlow happens upon Kurtz, obviously near death. As Marlow comes closer with a candle, Kurtz seems to experience a "supreme moment of complete knowledge" and speaks his last words: "The Horror! The Horror!" Marlow believes this to be Kurtz's reflection on the weight of the terrible actions he took in his life. Marlow does not tell the others immediately of Kurtz's death; the news is instead presented to the whole crew scornfully by the manager's child-servant who has peered inquisitively into the room with Kurtz's body.
Marlow later returns to Europe and is confronted by many people seeking objects and thoughts of Kurtz. Marlow visits Kurtz's fiancée about a year later; she is still in mourning and strongly maintains naïve notions of his virtue. When she asks him about Kurtz's death and his final words, Marlow is unable to tell her the truth, instead telling her that he died with her name upon his lips.
The story concludes back on the boat on the Thames, with a description of how the river seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.
