Heart of Darkness Published 1902 I ABOUT THE AUTHOR Joseph Conrad was born Teodor Józef Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski near Berdyczew, Poland, on December 3, 1857. His father was an idealist—a poet, translator of Shakespeare, and Polish patriot whose political activities prompted the family's exile to northern Russia in 1862. His mother, who came from an influential family of landowners, died of the Siberian cold when Joseph was eight years old. His father died four years later and Conrad's well-to-do uncle Tadeusz Bobrowski took charge of the twelve-year-old boy, returning him to Poland. Conrad attended St. Anne school in Kraków for five years, and as a graduation present his uncle gave him a European tour. In Venice he saw the sea for the first time and vowed to become part of it. His formal education completed, Conrad nonetheless remained an avid reader, culling his impressive knowledge of literature from works written in Russian, French, and English. Conrad left Poland for Marseilles, France, where he planned to become a seaman. With his uncle's money, the seventeen-year-old purchased part interest in a boat that smuggled Spanish arms into France—an intrigue that provided material for his novel The Arrow of Gold (1919). Although the facts remain sketchy, his adventures in Marseilles ended badly, and in 1878 Conrad signed on the British ship Mavis. Thus began a remarkable career in which Conrad, a foreigner, who initially spoke no English, rose to the rank of captain in the world's most powerful navy. Even more remarkable than his naval career, however, was the literary career, inspired, in large part, by Conrad's years in the British merchant marine fleet. Raised speaking Polish, Conrad wrote exclusively in English, becoming an undisputed master of its nuances and the creator of the language's most popular sea stories. He died in Bishopsbourne, England, on August 3, 1924; he is buried in nearby Canterbury. Conrad's works enjoyed a resurgence in popularity during the 1940s. The subject of extensive biographical and critical attention since the 1950s, Conrad holds a particular attraction for present-day readers, many of whom find in his work elements of fatalism and nihilism well suited to postmodern literature and modern life. The works that won him popularity during his lifetime, Chance (1913) and Victory (1915), are not those that have since come to prominence. His most popular works today are Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Youth, 'The Lagoon,' 'The Secret Sharer,' The Nigger of the Narcissus, and 'Typhoon.' Conrad's political novels—Nostromo, The Secret Agent, and Under Western Eyes—have also received increasing critical and popular attention as a result of both their literary merits and the continuing public attention fixed upon worldwide terrorism, the nuclear arms race, and political and economic unrest in Central and South America. II OVERVIEW In 1890 Conrad sailed to the Belgian Congo. More than a decade later, he reworked his memories of this trip into his novella Heart of Darkness, a highly symbolic work that explores social and psychological disorder through the central metaphor of a journey to the heart of the African continent. At the end of the journey and center of the mystery lies Mr. Kurtz, who has allegedly 'civilized' the natives and brought them education. But Marlow—who is charged with finding Kurtz and learning the secret of his success in exporting ivory—recognizes the decay and corruption of colonial imperialists. When Marlow finally reaches the central station, he finds that the district manager has escaped from the Congo. The boat that Marlow intends to sail in search of Kurtz has sunk in the Congo River. Marlow repairs the steamer and continues his journey, only to find Kurtz ill and nearly consumed by evil. His ideals irrevocably corrupted, Kurtz's soul—not Africa—is the true heart of darkness. III SETTING The story opens as a nameless narrator aboard the cruising yawl Nellie, anchored in the Thames River in England, begins to relate secondhand the story of Charlie Marlow's river voyage in the Belgian Congo. Set in the late nineteenth century, most of the story takes place at outposts along the river, each of which brings Marlow closer to his quarry: the Belgian trader, Mr. Kurtz. At the end of the story, Marlow returns to Brussels to visit Kurtz's fiancée. The setting of Heart of Darkness is practically indistinguishable from the novella's symbolic framework. The rich cultural details and natural symbols afforded by the African landscape surround Marlow, consume Kurtz, and shed light upon Conrad's exploration of man's inner darkness. IV THEMES AND CHARACTERS Heart of Darkness is a tale of many voyages. Charlie Marlow's voyage into the depths of the 'Dark Continent' parallels his voyage into the heart of an immense darkness, into the collective unconsciousness of the human race. At the end of his quest Marlow hopes to find Mr. Kurtz and through him learn the meaning of intelligent life in an alien and brutal universe; instead the voyage becomes a descent into an underworld in which Kurtz is both captive and creator, and from which Marlow barely escapes. Many years later, as Marlow tells his story to listeners on the yawl Nellie, one of his listeners, whose narrative frames Marlow's, takes on the burden of attempting to make sense of Marlow's discoveries. Conrad has referred to all his novels and short stories as 'autobiography as fiction.' Heart of Darkness is based upon the author's journey of 1890, first aboard the Ville de Maceio from France to the Belgian Congo and then on the SS Roi des Belges up the Congo River. Conrad narrates the story through both the 'frame' narrator and Marlow, a veteran sailor who, like his listeners—the Director of Companies, the lawyer, the accountant and the unnamed narrator—has spent his life at sea. Conrad, whose own father died when he was young, employed Marlow—an older and widely experienced father figure—as the principal narrator of several of his works of fiction in addition to Heart of Darkness, among them Youth and Lord Jim. A sometimes talkative and opinionated man, who is also a wise and ironic sage, Marlow charts the regions of Conrad's experiences, sensations, and ideas. The much-heralded Kurtz is the object of Marlow's speculations, aspirations, and anticipations as he journeys up the Congo. Enshrined by the Belgians back home as a being of supreme intellectual power and the principal representative of the forces of civilization in the Congo, Kurtz in fact demands worship from the natives and both instigates and partakes in unspeakably savage rites. The actual Kurtz and the idealized Kurtz are aptly reflected by the two women with whom he is romantically linked. Kurtz's African woman, sensual and wild, is an appropriate companion for the real Kurtz; his 'Intended' in Belgium is one of the living dead in the heart of another darkness, civilization. Many of the themes present in Heart of Darkness are trademarks of Conrad's work. Chief among them are the search for meaning in an ambiguous universe, the isolation of the self in an alienating society, and the conflict between civilization and savagery, appearance and reality, innocence and experience. Conrad blends these concerns into his narrative, molding them into the overarching theme of tale-telling: the communication of experience, the narrator's struggle to convey a sense of reality to listeners, and the power and imperfections of language as an instrument of thought.
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