A novella by Polish-English Novelist Joseph Conrad about a narrated voyage up the Congo River into the Congo Free State in the heart of Africa.
Basics
- Genre: Fiction, Edwardian imperialism, tragedy, travel
- Protagonist: Marlow
- Antagonist: Kurtz
- Setting: London, The Congo
- Theme: Imperialism, human exploitation/slavery, racism, civilization vs barbarism (Is London not the true titular heart and not Africa?)
- Recommend?: Yes, a personal favorite! Adventurous and represents an Edwardian-era moral critique on colonialism.
Heart of Darkness is a story within a story. Marlow is aboard a boat with a crew on the River Thames and tells the story of Kurtz as a comparison of "the greatest town on earth" London and Africa as places of darkness.
Conrad uses his stand-in of Charles Marlow to gradually introduce the first-class agent, very remarkable person, and mad Kurtz through grandiose and conflicting rumors as he makes his way up the Congo River into the Congo Free State. His company are ivory traders who seek to dig up the ivory tusks buried by savages. He travels with a crew of African cannibals, encounters the Africans working with other groups from the Company, and struggles against other tribes in the wilds. The main themes of imperialism and racism are explored. The world is mad and degrees of madness (carrying a bucket of water with a hole in it to put out a building that is already burned beyond saving compared to Kurtz approaching the savages as a god-like figure and returning to his cabin which is fenced-in with heads upon pikes) are viewed as about the same.
The Africans are referred to as "savages" and are dehumanized with frequent descriptions of their bizarre diet (humans and a hunk of rotting hippopotamus), their superstitions (describing the boiler as a thirsty evil spirit), and frequent inhuman descriptions of them throughout the book as "black shadows of disease and starvation" or "black shapes," or "black bones" worked to death and hidden away to die.
Kurtz is in charge of a trading post and left loyal fanatical disciples down the Congo, but the Company turns on him over his openness with his approach of suppression (an unsound method). When Marlow finally reaches him, he is at death's door. When his face changed to a deathly expression of somber, pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror--of an intense and hopeless despair, he seemed to relived his life in a moment then summarize and judge in a few final words: "The horror! The horror!" When his close friends came, one after the other, to meet Marlow, they each gave a wildly unfamiliar account to Marlow from the Kurtz he knew. He finally came to find Kurtz's fiance who was still mourning deeply a year after Kurtz's death. When desperate for his final words, Marlow lied and said her name was upon his dying lips. She was so certain that had been the case and cried.