Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness, novella by Joseph Conrad, first published in 1902 with the story “Youth” and thereafter published separately. The story, written at the height of the British empire, reflects the physical and psychological shock Conrad himself experienced in 1890 when he worked briefly in the Belgian Congo. The experience left him disillusioned, questioning what it meant to be civilized in the age of colonialism. The book was an inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now (1979).

SUMMARY: Conrad described his tale this way: “A wild story of a journalist who becomes manager of a station in the (African) interior and makes himself worshipped by a tribe of savages. Thus described, the subject seems comic, but it isn’t.”

The story pivots on Charles Marlow, who while onboard a moored ship on the Thames River in London recounts to the narrator (and to the reader) his extraordinary journey up the Congo, thereby establishing straightaway, via the two rivers, contrasting symbols of the “civilized” West and “dark,” uncivilized Africa, respectively. As Marlow explains, he was assigned by an ivory trading company to take command of a cargo boat stranded in the interior. Making his way through treacherous jungle, he treks from the Outer Station to the Central Station and then up the river to the Inner Station, witnessing the brutalization of the natives by white traders along the way and hearing tantalizing stories of a Mr. Kurtz, the manager of the trading station and one of the company’s most successful collectors of ivory. He hears that Mr. Kurtz is unwell, and so he sets off to find him. The long and slow passage through the African heartland fills Marlow with a growing sense of dread. He and his company are attacked by African natives, and some of the crew are killed. Incrementally, Marlow learns more about the mysterious Kurtz—about his civilized traits (his painting, musical abilities, and great eloquence), his charismatic, god-like power over the natives, and the severed heads that surround his hut. Upon finding him, Marlow concludes that, in this alien context, unbound by the strictures of his own culture, Kurtz had gone mad, become a bloody tyrant, and exchanged his soul and any humanitarian ideals he may have initially had upon his arrival in Africa for abject greed and power. A mortal illness, however, is bringing his reign of terror to a close. As Kurtz dies, he whispers to Marlow, “The horror! The horror!”—seemingly acknowledging his encounter with human depravity, the heart of darkness. Marlow returns to Belgium, delivers to the trading company Kurtz’s papers, including a report he had written for “The Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs” (but with Kurtz’s handwritten postscript—“Exterminate all the brutes!”—ripped off), and then visits Kurtz’s fiancée, to whom he lies about Kurtz’s final words, saying he died proclaiming her name. Marlow is disgusted with himself, his lie, and the whole experience.

This novella is astonishingly powerful and equally enigmatic. Its condemnation of Western imperialism—of the greed, violence, and exploitation that so often accompanies ventures to bring “light” and civilization to the “dark” and needy areas of the world—and its poignant look at the destructive influence of colonization on the colonized and colonizer alike, have been widely praised. However, some postcolonial African writers, most notably Chinua Achebe, deemed the book racist for its portrayal of native African cultures. The varied interpretations only underscore the novel’s status as one of the most discussed and debated works of modern literature.