Criticism: New Light on the `Heart of Darkness' - by Angus Mitchell

New Light on the `Heart of Darkness'

Angus Mitchell

IN THE SPRING OF 1899, when Heart of Darkness was serialized in Blackwood's Magazine, its author; Joseph Conrad, could scarcely have predicted that he had penned one of the most provocative and controversial literary works of the next century. For a hundred years now this short novel has been a window through which Europeans have glimpsed the scramble for Africa by their empire-forging ancestors. Behind Marlow's river-journey in search of Kurtz lie the great conflicts that seethed beneath the jingoism of Empire. The struggles between civilisation and savagery, nature and progress, cannibalism against culture, Christianity versus magic: all these opposites and others battle in the dense undergrowth of the narrative. Heart of Darkness was the first novel to attack concepts of Western progress and question dubious social Darwinist attitudes that were used to justify many brutal facets of Empire-building.The debate over Heart of Darkness has grumbled on unabated ever since -to a point where it is now something of a cliché to mention it at all. The theme has attracted and sometimes obsessed the creative mind. Orson Welles adapted the story for radio. Film director Francis Ford Coppola made Apocalypse Now (1974), reinterpreting the weird nightmare to fit the psychedelic madness of American folly in Vietnam. Radical critics of Empire like Edward Said and the African writer Chinua Achebe have praised and lambasted the book respectively. A metaphysical dimension to Heart of Darkness makes it a hard book to pin down. The literary debate and the 'Conrad controversy' will doubtless continue for another century. Africa still lives in the shadow of horror and the significance of Heart of Darkness has matured with the vintage of the years.But what worth has Conrad's imagining of Heart of Darkness for the historian? Was there an historical Heart of Darkness? Can it now be identified in history? Certainly in recent years there has been an effort to try and configure the fiction with fact. A number of African adventurers have been singled out as possible prototypes for 'the universal genius' Kurtz, whose great skill in collecting ivory at an up-river station eventually sends him over the edge: he turns from being the 'civilizer' into the savage.The story begins on the banks of the Thames - the Imperial artery of commerce and civilization - but the main arena for the tale is another river altogether - the Congo. The historical framework of the narrative is set within and specifically alludes to the horror that lay beneath the surface of the Belgian King Leopold II's Congo Free State. Leopold is never mentioned by name in the novel, but he lurks in the shadows nonetheless.Heart of Darkness appeared at a moment when horror began to take on a new graphic dimension in the European imagination and ideas on slavery demanded redefinition. During the 1890s rumours started to circulate widely that aspects of imperial policy were going terribly wrong. Conrad's ostensibly imaginative work gave these reports intellectual force. Following its publication new attitudes towards Africa emerged among radical humanitarian thinkers. Some started to wonder just where the flag of Imperial progress was leading.The opening up of the tropical heart of Africa had been a rapid process. In 1800 Africa's interior south of the Sahara was unmapped terra incognita. At the Berlin conference in 1884-5 the colonial powers carved up Africa amongst themselves. Much of the territory by then had been traversed. The names of the epic adventurers responsible for opening up the interior: Sir James Bruce, John Hanning Speke. Sir Richard Burton, David Livingstone and Sir Henry Morton Stanley echo through classrooms even today. Their trawl writings helped appropriate African territories in the Victorian imagination. Adventure stories sold newspapers. Adventurers, whether soldier-explorers, naval officers, missionaries or entrepreneurs, were the empire's own superstars…… (this article is so long, please read whole article on the web below)

http://www.yingyudaxue.com/book/criticism-new-light-on-the-heart-of-darkness-by-angus-mitchell

Criticism: Conrad’s Heart of Darkness - by Terry W. Thompson

Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

Terry W. Thompson
Most modern theologians view the story of Saint Christopher as little more than a medieval legend, a charming but apocryphal tale that was perhaps originally based on a real historical personage--not unlike King Arthur or Robin Hood--but was heavily embellished by the imagination and superstition prevalent at the time. According to John Coulson's The Saints: A Concise Biographical Dictionary, Christopher was born somewhere in Asia Minor during the first half of the third century and eventually "died a martyr, probably in Lycia, during the persecution of the Emperor Decius in 250" (110). His enduring story "appears to have been formulated first in the east in the sixth century and to have reached the west some three centuries later" (Coulson 110). As a young man, Christopher "wished to serve the mightiest of masters"; to find such a great master and teacher, the future saint made his home next to a popular ford in a swift river (Attwater 85). There, so that he could meet and converse with as many wayfarers as possible, he became a ferryman, hoisting travelers onto his shoulders and carrying them one by one across the river for a small fee. In this manner, he hoped some day to encounter the great man who would prove worthy of his faith and who would become his spiritual guide.As the years passed, thousands rode across the river on his broad shoulders, but none measured up to the requirements that Christopher had set for the man to whom he would dedicate his life. Then one night, when he had begun to despair of ever meeting his long-sought master, "he was carrying a child across the river when the child became so heavy that Christopher could hardly get across. 'No wonder!' said the child. 'You have been carrying the whole world. I am Jesus Christ, the king you seek'" (Attwater 85). The saint-to-be then gave up everything to follow the new faith and serve the risen Lord: "After such an experience it is not surprising that, in spite of all dangers, Christopher should preach Christ to all who came his way, with such conviction and zeal that the earthly agonies of martyrdom were as nothing to him" (Coulson 111). From that day onward, Christopher--whose name translates from the Greek Christophoros as "The one who carries the Christ"--became the patron saint of all travelers.Late in the final chapter of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness--"now the most celebrated short novel in the English language"--there is a fleeting but very illuminating allusion to this enduring Christian legend (Billy 65). After the "law-abiding, morally sensitive" Marlow has completed his arduous journey up the Congo River to Kurtz's isolated station and has found the object of his search in horrible condition, both physically and mentally, he takes Kurtz aboard the small river boat to ferry him back downstream to a European settlement (Karl 126). Once there, Kurtz can be treated and cured, then assimilated back into "civilized" society. However, Kurtz is irresistibly drawn back toward the jungle because, as Marlow soon discovers, "'it had taken him, loved him, embraced him, got into his veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his soul to its own by the inconceivable ceremonies of some devilish initiation'" (Conrad 84). That night, under cover of darkness and despite his illness, Kurtz escapes from the ship. Crawling on all fours like a small child, he makes his way back through the tall grass, creeping desperately toward the dancing fires and throbbing drums of the native village.Fearing that Kurtz will incite the tribesmen to massacre the handful of whites aboard the boat, Marlow makes a frantic effort to find the escaped invalid. In utter desperation, Marlow declares, "'I tried to break the spell--the heavy, mute spell of the wilderness--that seemed to draw him to its pitiless breast by the awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts, by the memory of gratified and monstrous passions'" (116). Marlow sees movement in the tall grass and, by circling around, intercepts Kurtz before he can rejoin his Congolese myrmidons. He then takes the dying man back to the relative safety of the small vessel: "'I kept my head pretty well; but when I had him at last stretched on the couch, I wiped my forehead, while my legs shook under me as though I had carried half a ton on my back down that hill. And yet I had only supported him, his bony arm clasped round my neck--and he was not much heavier than a child'" (118; my emphasis).In his 1991 biography of Conrad, Carl D. Bennett writes that even though Marlow peers into the dark soul of Kurtz and learns of the many atrocities that the out-of-control colonial agent has joyfully committed, "Marlow's instinct to personal loyalty never wavers, in spite of the soul-shaking moral illuminations. He is driven early to a commitment to Kurtz, moving steadily through progressive experiences of horror," up to and including his terrifying nighttime rescue of Kurtz from his own irresistible demons (75). Marlow--who at the outset of his journey upriver describes himself as "'something like an emissary of light, something like a lower sort of apostle'"--finds a type of negative savior in Kurtz (Conrad 19). Much like Robert Walton, the framing narrator in Frankenstein, Marlow witnesses firsthand how unchecked ambition can utterly destroy a man who is, at bottom, very much like himself: intelligent, civilized, progressive, European. Thus, Marlow is saved from destruction by the "dark enlightenment" of Kurtz (Bennett 83) and given the rare privilege of plumbing "the innermost recesses of his own psyche" without losing his soul--or mind--in the process (Billy 72).In this dark, surreal allusion to the Saint Christopher legend, Marlow helps a mass murderer and colonial despot stagger down to the river's edge, feeling the skeletal man grow heavier and heavier with every step. Because his mother was half-English and his father was half-French, "'all Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz,'" explains Marlow (86). Just as the Christ child carried the weight of the world's sins upon his shoulders and then transferred that awful burden to Saint Christopher's, the symbolic weight of all the sins of European colonialism in the late nineteenth century--a time of rapine seldom matched in recorded history, whether in the Belgian Congo or elsewhere--come to rest on the shoulders of Marlow. If Kurtz is a type of Christ figure offering up his life for Europe's sins, as many readers have described him, then Marlow, the contemplative loner who seeks a great man to follow, provides a world-weary Saint Christopher figure, a "Kurtzophoros," as it were, "The one who carries the Kurtz.""Marlow is regenerated through his bond with Kurtz, and his saving illusion is to be transformed into an image of Kurtz, to become a voice whose task is to tell the story," to become, in essence, a traveling evangelist, a not-so-secret sharer of Kurtz's deeper meaning (Ressler 21). Even many years after the horrifying events that transpired in the upper reaches of the Congo, as he crouches still and Buddha-like on the darkened deck of the Nellie, Marlow cannot stop himself from recalling, remembering, resurrecting Kurtz, the "'wandering and tormented thing'" he encountered in the primeval African darkness (Conrad 116). The man who gave his life for European colonialism, who died to spread "the Victorian religion of progress," remains at the very center of Marlow's existence, and always will (Murfin 109).

WORKS CITED

Attwater, Donald. The Avenel Dictionary of Saints. New York: Avenel, 1981.

Bennett, Carl D. Joseph Conrad. New York: Continuum, 1991.

Billy, Ted. "Heart of Darkness: A Critical Overview." A Joseph Conrad Companion. Ed. Leonard Orr and Ted Billy. Westport: Greenwood, 1999. 65-78.

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1994. 1-137.

Coulson, John, ed. The Saints: A Concise Biographical Dictionary. New York: Hawthorn, 1958.

Karl, Frederick R. "Introduction to the Danse Macabre: Conrad's Heart of Darkness." Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness: A Case Study in Contemporary Criticism. Ed. Ross C. Murfin. New York: St. Martin's, 1989. 123-38.

Murfin, Ross C. Introduction. Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness: A Case Study in Contemporary Criticism. New York: St. Martin's, 1989. 3-16.

Ressler, Steve. Joseph Conrad: Consciousness and Integrity. New York: New York UP, 1988.

http://www.yingyudaxue.com/book/criticism-conrad-s-heart-of-darkness-by-terry-w-thompson?page=0%2C0

Plot Overview

Heart of Darkness centers around Marlow, an introspective sailor, and his journey up the Congo River to meet Kurtz, reputed to be an idealistic man of great abilities. Marlow takes a job as a riverboat captain with the Company, a Belgian concern organized to trade in the Congo. As he travels to Africa and then up the Congo, Marlow encounters widespread inefficiency and brutality in the Company’s stations. The native inhabitants of the region have been forced into the Company’s service, and they suffer terribly from overwork and ill treatment at the hands of the Company’s agents. The cruelty and squalor of imperial enterprise contrasts sharply with the impassive and majestic jungle that surrounds the white man’s settlements, making them appear to be tiny islands amidst a vast darkness.
Marlow arrives at the Central Station, run by the general manager, an unwholesome, conspiratorial character. He finds that his steamship has been sunk and spends several months waiting for parts to repair it. His interest in Kurtz grows during this period. The manager and his favorite, the brickmaker, seem to fear Kurtz as a threat to their position. Kurtz is rumored to be ill, making the delays in repairing the ship all the more costly. Marlow eventually gets the parts he needs to repair his ship, and he and the manager set out with a few agents (whom Marlow calls pilgrims because of their strange habit of carrying long, wooden staves wherever they go) and a crew of cannibals on a long, difficult voyage up the river. The dense jungle and the oppressive silence make everyone aboard a little jumpy, and the occasional glimpse of a native village or the sound of drums work the pilgrims into a frenzy.
Marlow and his crew come across a hut with stacked firewood, together with a note saying that the wood is for them but that they should approach cautiously. Shortly after the steamer has taken on the firewood, it is surrounded by a dense fog. When the fog clears, the ship is attacked by an unseen band of natives, who fire arrows from the safety of the forest. The African helmsman is killed before Marlow frightens the natives away with the ship’s steam whistle. Not long after, Marlow and his companions arrive at Kurtz’s Inner Station, expecting to find him dead, but a half-crazed Russian trader, who meets them as they come ashore, assures them that everything is fine and informs them that he is the one who left the wood. The Russian claims that Kurtz has enlarged his mind and cannot be subjected to the same moral judgments as normal people. Apparently, Kurtz has established himself as a god with the natives and has gone on brutal raids in the surrounding territory in search of ivory. The collection of severed heads adorning the fence posts around the station attests to his “methods.” The pilgrims bring Kurtz out of the station-house on a stretcher, and a large group of native warriors pours out of the forest and surrounds them. Kurtz speaks to them, and the natives disappear into the woods.
The manager brings Kurtz, who is quite ill, aboard the steamer. A beautiful native woman, apparently Kurtz’s mistress, appears on the shore and stares out at the ship. The Russian implies that she is somehow involved with Kurtz and has caused trouble before through her influence over him. The Russian reveals to Marlow, after swearing him to secrecy, that Kurtz had ordered the attack on the steamer to make them believe he was dead in order that they might turn back and leave him to his plans. The Russian then leaves by canoe, fearing the displeasure of the manager. Kurtz disappears in the night, and Marlow goes out in search of him, finding him crawling on all fours toward the native camp. Marlow stops him and convinces him to return to the ship. They set off down the river the next morning, but Kurtz’s health is failing fast.
Marlow listens to Kurtz talk while he pilots the ship, and Kurtz entrusts Marlow with a packet of personal documents, including an eloquent pamphlet on civilizing the savages which ends with a scrawled message that says, “Exterminate all the brutes!” The steamer breaks down, and they have to stop for repairs. Kurtz dies, uttering his last words—“The horror! The horror!”—in the presence of the confused Marlow. Marlow falls ill soon after and barely survives. Eventually he returns to Europe and goes to see Kurtz’s Intended (his fiancée). She is still in mourning, even though it has been over a year since Kurtz’s death, and she praises him as a paragon of virtue and achievement. She asks what his last words were, but Marlow cannot bring himself to shatter her illusions with the truth. Instead, he tells her that Kurtz’s last word was her name.

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/heart/summary.html

Character List

Marlow: The protagonist and main narrator of the story, he stumbles into Africa looking to sail a steamboat and finds much more. He possesses a strong interest in the past. He also has a good work ethic; he views working hard as a means of achieving sanity. In many respects, the worldview of Marlow is that of a typical European. Still, he is intended to be a versatile character, one of the few who does not belong to a distinct class, and he thus can relate to different kinds of people with more ease than his peers.

Kurtz: He is in charge of the most productive ivory station in the Congo. Hailed universally for his genius and eloquence, Kurtz becomes the focus of Marlow's journey into Africa. He is the unique victim of colonization; the wilderness captures him and he turns his back on the people and customs that were once a part of him.

Manager: Marlow's direct supervisor, he is a hard, greedy man who values power and money above all else. Yet he masks this crudeness behind a civilized demeanor. He seems to have an ability to outlive those around him. The Manager would like nothing more than to surpass Kurtz in the ivory trade and see him dead, so that he would no longer interfere with the competitive trade. He makes people uneasy, and the only explanation Marlow offers is that he is "hollow."
Brickmaker: He is the so-called first agent, who is the Manager's pet and spy. He never actually makes bricks; supposedly he is waiting for the delivery of an essential ingredient. The Brickmaker is unlikable, cunning, and contemptible. His behavior flauts Marlow's work ethic.
Russian: Kurtz's devoted companion, he is an idealistic explorer who has wandered to the Congo on a Dutch ship and has been caught in the web of Kurtz's obsessive ivory hunt. He is so young that it is uncertain whether or not he fully understands what he is doing in Africa. He is more or less attracted to the glamor of adventure. His unwavering support of Kurtz makes him humble and admirable.

Natives: They are a collective presence throughout the story. They are never described as individuals.

Chief Accountant: A top official in the main station, he befriends Marlow when he first arrives in Africa. He is a cruel man but ironically also the picture of the "civilized European." Marlow admires his work habits, but this admiration is directed toward his flawless appearance rather than his personality.

Marlow's aunt: She is the connection to the Company in which Marlow receives a position. She appears to be the only female contact Marlow has in his life, and she fully supports the vision of colonialism laid out in Rudyard Kipling's "White Man's Burden."

Kurtz's fiancee: An unnamed woman who only appears in the last few pages of the novel, she is the symbol of a life that Kurtz leaves behind when he arrives in the Congo. She is pure and lives in a dream world built around who she believes Kurtz is. Her impressions of him are so disparate from what the reader observes that we marvel at the change that evidently has come about in Kurtz.

Helmsman: He is responsible for steering Marlow's ship. He is not very experienced and seems unable to make informed decisions under pressure.

Pilgrims: The collective white presence in the story, they accompany Marlow and the Manager on the voyage to Kurtz's station. They exist in opposition to the natives and the cannibals, and their fear makes it apparent that they are unwilling to relinquish preconceived notions about the natives.

Cannibals: They are a specific section of the native presence. They are the grunt crew of Marlow's ship, and they are the only group of natives who ever voice any kind of statement or opinion to the whites. Marlow is surprised at their tranquil manner, and he seems to respect them.

Director: The captain in charge aboard the Thames River ship, from which Marlow tells the tale. He is loved by all. He is a good sailor, but he now works on land.

Lawyer: A passenger aboard the Thames ship. He is called a good, virtuous fellow.

Accountant: Also a passenger aboard the Thames ship, he does nothing but play dominoes. Along with the lawyer, he constitutes a crew of gentility, which contrasts with the crew from Marlow's Congo ship.

Narrator: An unnamed passenger aboard the Thames ship, he provides a structure for Marlow's story and is a stand-in for audience perspective and participation. He was once a sailor, and he seems affected by Kurtz's tale due to his somewhat romantic nature.

http://www.gradesaver.com/classicnotes/titles/heartofdarkness/charlist.html

Key Facts

FULL TITLE· Heart of Darkness

AUTHOR · Joseph Conrad

TYPE OF WORK · Novella (between a novel and a short story in length and scope)

GENRE · Symbolism, colonial literature, adventure tale, frame story, almost a romance in its insistence on heroism and the supernatural and its preference for the symbolic over the realistic

LANGUAGE · English

TIME AND PLACE WRITTEN · England, 1898–1899; inspired by Conrad’s journey to the Congo in 1890

DATE OF FIRST PUBLICATION · Serialized in Blackwood’s Magazine in 1899; published in 1902 in the volume Youth: A Narrative; and Two Other Stories

PUBLISHER · J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd.

NARRATOR · There are two narrators: an anonymous passenger on a pleasure ship, who listens to Marlow’s story, and Marlow himself, a middle-aged ship’s captain

POINT OF VIEW · The first narrator speaks in the first-person plural, on behalf of four other passengers who listen to Marlow’s tale. Marlow narrates his story in the first person, describing only what he witnessed and experienced, and providing his own commentary on the story.

TONE · Ambivalent: Marlow is disgusted at the brutality of the Company and horrified by Kurtz’s degeneration, but he claims that any thinking man would be tempted into similar behavior.

TENSE · Past

SETTING (time) · Latter part of the nineteenth century, probably sometime between 1876 and 1892

SETTING (place) · Opens on the Thames River outside London, where Marlow is telling the story that makes up Heart of Darkness. Events of the story take place in Brussels, at the Company’s offices, and in the Congo, then a Belgian territory.

PROTAGONIST · Marlow

MAJOR CONFLICT · Both Marlow and Kurtz confront a conflict between their images of themselves as “civilized” Europeans and the temptation to abandon morality completely once they leave the context of European society.

RISING ACTION · The brutality Marlow witnesses in the Company’s employees, the rumors he hears that Kurtz is a remarkable and humane man, and the numerous examples of Europeans breaking down mentally or physically in the environment of Africa.

CLIMAX · Marlow’s discovery, upon reaching the Inner Station, that Kurtz has completely abandoned European morals and norms of behavior

FALLING ACTION · Marlow’s acceptance of responsibility for Kurtz’s legacy, Marlow’s encounters with Company officials and Kurtz’s family and friends, Marlow’s visit to Kurtz’s Intended

THEMES · The hypocrisy of imperialism, madness as a result of imperialism, the absurdity of evil

MOTIFS · Darkness (very seldom opposed by light), interiors vs. surfaces (kernel/shell, coast/inland, station/forest, etc.), ironic understatement, hyperbolic language, inability to find words to describe situation adequately, images of ridiculous waste, upriver vs. downriver/toward and away from Kurtz/away from and back toward civilization (quest or journey structure)

SYMBOLS · Rivers, fog, women (Kurtz’s Intended, his African mistress), French warship shelling forested coast, grove of death, severed heads on fence posts, Kurtz’s “Report,” dead helmsman, maps, “whited sepulchre” of Brussels, knitting women in Company offices, man trying to fill bucket with hole in it

FORESHADOWING · Permeates every moment of the narrative—mostly operates on the level of imagery, which is consistently dark, gloomy, and threatening

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/heart/facts.html

Important Quotations Explained

1. “The word ‘ivory’ rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from some corpse. By Jove! I’ve never seen anything so unreal in my life. And outside, the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion.”
Explanation for Quotation #1

This quote, from the fourth section of Part I, offers Marlow’s initial impression of the Central Station. The word “ivory” has taken on a life of its own for the men who work for the Company. To them, it is far more than the tusk of an elephant; it represents economic freedom, social advancement, an escape from a life of being an employee. The word has lost all connection to any physical reality and has itself become an object of worship. Marlow’s reference to a decaying corpse is both literal and figurative: elephants and native Africans both die as a result of the white man’s pursuit of ivory, and the entire enterprise is rotten at the core. The cruelties and the greed are both part of a greater, timeless evil, yet they are petty in the scheme of the greater order of the natural world.

2. “In a few days the Eldorado Expedition went into the patient wilderness, that closed upon it as the sea closes over a diver. Long afterwards the news came that all the donkeys were dead. I know nothing as to the fate of the less valuable animals. They, no doubt, like the rest of us, found what they deserved. I did not inquire.”
Explanation for Quotation #2

During the first section of Part II, Marlow watches the Eldorado Exploring Expedition, a band of freelance bandits, reequip and then depart from the Central Station. This enigmatic report is the only news he receives concerning their fate. The dry irony of this quote is characteristic of Marlow, who by this point has truly come to see white men as the “less valuable animals.” Although he chalks up the Expedition’s fate to some idea of destiny or just reward, Marlow has already come to distrust such moral formulations: this is why he does not seek further information about the Expedition. Again he mentions a “patient wilderness”: the Expedition’s fate is insignificant in the face of larger catastrophes and even less meaningful when considered in the scope of nature’s time frame.

3. “It was unearthly, and the men were—No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it—the suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity—like yours—the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you—you so remote from the night of first ages—could comprehend. And why not?”
Explanation for Quotation #3

As Marlow journeys up the river toward the Inner Station in the first section of Part II, he catches occasional glimpses of native villages along the riverbanks. More often, though, he simply hears things: drums, chants, howls. These engage his imagination, and the fact that they do so troubles him, because it suggests, as he says, a “kinship” with these men, whom he has so far been able to classify as “inhuman.” This moment is one of several in the text in which Marlow seems to admit the limits of his own perception. These moments allow for a reading of Heart of Darkness that is much more critical of colonialism and much more ironic about the stereotypes it engenders. Nevertheless, it is important to notice that Marlow still casts Africans as a primitive version of himself rather than as potential equals.

4. “The brown current ran swiftly out of the heart of darkness, bearing us down towards the sea with twice the speed of our upward progress; and Kurtz’s life was running swiftly, too, ebbing, ebbing out of his heart into the sea of inexorable time. . . . I saw the time approaching when I would be left alone of the party of ‘unsound method.’”
Explanation for Quotation #4

This quote, which comes as the steamer begins its voyage back from the Inner Station in the third section of Part III, with Kurtz and his ivory aboard, brings together the images of the river and the “heart of darkness” which it penetrates. The river is something that separates Marlow from the African interior: while on the river he is exterior to, even if completely surrounded by, the jungle. Furthermore, despite its “brown current,” the river inexorably brings him back to white civilization. The first sentence of this quote suggests that Marlow and Kurtz have been able to leave the “heart of darkness” behind, but Kurtz’s life seems to be receding along with the “darkness,” and Marlow, too, has been permanently scarred by it, since he is now ineradicably marked as being of Kurtz’s party. Thus, it seems that the “darkness” is in fact internalized, that it is part of some fundamental if ironic “unsoundness.”

5. “I was within a hair’s-breadth of the last opportunity for pronouncement, and I found with humiliation that probably I would have nothing to say. This is the reason why I affirm that Kurtz was a remarkable man. He had something to say. He said it. . . . He had summed up—he had judged. ‘The horror!’ He was a remarkable man.”
Explanation for Quotation #5

At the beginning of the final section of Part III, Marlow has just recovered from his near-fatal illness. His “nothing to say” is not reflective of a lack of substance but rather of his realization that anything he might have to say would be so ambiguous and so profound as to be impossible to put into words. Kurtz, on the other hand, is “remarkable” for his ability to cut through ambiguity, to create a definite “something.” Paradoxically, though, the final formulation of that “something” is so vague as to approach “nothing”: “ ‘The horror!’ ” could be almost anything. However, perhaps Kurtz is most fascinating to Marlow because he has had the courage to judge, to deny ambiguity. Marlow is aware of Kurtz’s intelligence and the man’s appreciation of paradox, so he also knows that Kurtz’s rabid systematization of the world around him has been an act and a lie. Yet Kurtz, on the strength of his hubris and his charisma, has created out of himself a way of organizing the world that contradicts generally accepted social models. Most important, he has created an impressive legacy: Marlow will ponder Kurtz’s words (“ ‘The horror!’ ”) and Kurtz’s memory for the rest of his life. By turning himself into an enigma, Kurtz has done the ultimate: he has ensured his own immortality.

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/heart/quotes.html

Themes, Motifs & Symbols

Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
The Hypocrisy of Imperialism
Heart of Darkness explores the issues surrounding imperialism in complicated ways. As Marlow travels from the Outer Station to the Central Station and finally up the river to the Inner Station, he encounters scenes of torture, cruelty, and near-slavery. At the very least, the incidental scenery of the book offers a harsh picture of colonial enterprise. The impetus behind Marlow’s adventures, too, has to do with the hypocrisy inherent in the rhetoric used to justify imperialism. The men who work for the Company describe what they do as “trade,” and their treatment of native Africans is part of a benevolent project of “civilization.” Kurtz, on the other hand, is open about the fact that he does not trade but rather takes ivory by force, and he describes his own treatment of the natives with the words “suppression” and “extermination”: he does not hide the fact that he rules through violence and intimidation. His perverse honesty leads to his downfall, as his success threatens to expose the evil practices behind European activity in Africa.
However, for Marlow as much as for Kurtz or for the Company, Africans in this book are mostly objects: Marlow refers to his helmsman as a piece of machinery, and Kurtz’s African mistress is at best a piece of statuary. It can be argued that Heart of Darkness participates in an oppression of nonwhites that is much more sinister and much harder to remedy than the open abuses of Kurtz or the Company’s men. Africans become for Marlow a mere backdrop, a human screen against which he can play out his philosophical and existential struggles. Their existence and their exoticism enable his self-contemplation. This kind of dehumanization is harder to identify than colonial violence or open racism. While Heart of Darkness offers a powerful condemnation of the hypocritical operations of imperialism, it also presents a set of issues surrounding race that is ultimately more troubling.
Madness as a Result of Imperialism
Madness is closely linked to imperialism in this book. Africa is responsible for mental disintegration as well as for physical illness. Madness has two primary functions. First, it serves as an ironic device to engage the reader’s sympathies. Kurtz, Marlow is told from the beginning, is mad. However, as Marlow, and the reader, begin to form a more complete picture of Kurtz, it becomes apparent that his madness is only relative, that in the context of the Company insanity is difficult to define. Thus, both Marlow and the reader begin to sympathize with Kurtz and view the Company with suspicion. Madness also functions to establish the necessity of social fictions. Although social mores and explanatory justifications are shown throughout Heart of Darkness to be utterly false and even leading to evil, they are nevertheless necessary for both group harmony and individual security. Madness, in Heart of Darkness, is the result of being removed from one’s social context and allowed to be the sole arbiter of one’s own actions. Madness is thus linked not only to absolute power and a kind of moral genius but to man’s fundamental fallibility: Kurtz has no authority to whom he answers but himself, and this is more than any one man can bear.
The Absurdity of Evil
This novella is, above all, an exploration of hypocrisy, ambiguity, and moral confusion. It explodes the idea of the proverbial choice between the lesser of two evils. As the idealistic Marlow is forced to align himself with either the hypocritical and malicious colonial bureaucracy or the openly malevolent, rule-defying Kurtz, it becomes increasingly clear that to try to judge either alternative is an act of folly: how can moral standards or social values be relevant in judging evil? Is there such thing as insanity in a world that has already gone insane? The number of ridiculous situations Marlow witnesses act as reflections of the larger issue: at one station, for instance, he sees a man trying to carry water in a bucket with a large hole in it. At the Outer Station, he watches native laborers blast away at a hillside with no particular goal in mind. The absurd involves both insignificant silliness and life-or-death issues, often simultaneously. That the serious and the mundane are treated similarly suggests a profound moral confusion and a tremendous hypocrisy: it is terrifying that Kurtz’s homicidal megalomania and a leaky bucket provoke essentially the same reaction from Marlow.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Observation and Eavesdropping
Marlow gains a great deal of information by watching the world around him and by overhearing others’ conversations, as when he listens from the deck of the wrecked steamer to the manager of the Central Station and his uncle discussing Kurtz and the Russian trader. This phenomenon speaks to the impossibility of direct communication between individuals: information must come as the result of chance observation and astute interpretation. Words themselves fail to capture meaning adequately, and thus they must be taken in the context of their utterance. Another good example of this is Marlow’s conversation with the brickmaker, during which Marlow is able to figure out a good deal more than simply what the man has to say.
Interiors and Exteriors
Comparisons between interiors and exteriors pervade Heart of Darkness. As the narrator states at the beginning of the text, Marlow is more interested in surfaces, in the surrounding aura of a thing rather than in any hidden nugget of meaning deep within the thing itself. This inverts the usual hierarchy of meaning: normally one seeks the deep message or hidden truth. The priority placed on observation demonstrates that penetrating to the interior of an idea or a person is impossible in this world. Thus, Marlow is confronted with a series of exteriors and surfaces—the river’s banks, the forest walls around the station, Kurtz’s broad forehead—that he must interpret. These exteriors are all the material he is given, and they provide him with perhaps a more profound source of knowledge than any falsely constructed interior “kernel.”
Darkness
Darkness is important enough conceptually to be part of the book’s title. However, it is difficult to discern exactly what it might mean, given that absolutely everything in the book is cloaked in darkness. Africa, England, and Brussels are all described as gloomy and somehow dark, even if the sun is shining brightly. Darkness thus seems to operate metaphorically and existentially rather than specifically. Darkness is the inability to see: this may sound simple, but as a description of the human condition it has profound implications. Failing to see another human being means failing to understand that individual and failing to establish any sort of sympathetic communion with him or her.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Fog
Fog is a sort of corollary to darkness. Fog not only obscures but distorts: it gives one just enough information to begin making decisions but no way to judge the accuracy of that information, which often ends up being wrong. Marlow’s steamer is caught in the fog, meaning that he has no idea where he’s going and no idea whether peril or open water lies ahead.
The “Whited Sepulchre”
The “whited sepulchre” is probably Brussels, where the Company’s headquarters are located. A sepulchre implies death and confinement, and indeed Europe is the origin of the colonial enterprises that bring death to white men and to their colonial subjects; it is also governed by a set of reified social principles that both enable cruelty, dehumanization, and evil and prohibit change. The phrase “whited sepulchre” comes from the biblical Book of Matthew. In the passage, Matthew describes “whited sepulchres” as something beautiful on the outside but containing horrors within (the bodies of the dead); thus, the image is appropriate for Brussels, given the hypocritical Belgian rhetoric about imperialism’s civilizing mission. (Belgian colonies, particularly the Congo, were notorious for the violence perpetuated against the natives.)
Women
Both Kurtz’s Intended and his African mistress function as blank slates upon which the values and the wealth of their respective societies can be displayed. Marlow frequently claims that women are the keepers of naive illusions; although this sounds condemnatory, such a role is in fact crucial, as these naive illusions are at the root of the social fictions that justify economic enterprise and colonial expansion. In return, the women are the beneficiaries of much of the resulting wealth, and they become objects upon which men can display their own success and status.
The River
The Congo River is the key to Africa for Europeans. It allows them access to the center of the continent without having to physically cross it; in other words, it allows the white man to remain always separate or outside. Africa is thus reduced to a series of two-dimensional scenes that flash by Marlow’s steamer as he travels upriver. The river also seems to want to expel Europeans from Africa altogether: its current makes travel upriver slow and difficult, but the flow of water makes travel downriver, back toward “civilization,” rapid and seemingly inevitable. Marlow’s struggles with the river as he travels upstream toward Kurtz reflect his struggles to understand the situation in which he has found himself. The ease with which he journeys back downstream, on the other hand, mirrors his acquiescence to Kurtz and his “choice of nightmares.”
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/heart/themes.html

Scramble for Africa

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramble_for_Africa

Historical Context

The novel is largely autobiographical, based upon Joseph Conrad's six-month journey up the Congo River where he took command of a steamboat in 1890 after the death of its captain. At the time, the river was called the Congo, and the country was the Congo Free State. The area Conrad refers to as the Company Station was an actual location called Matadi, a location two-hundred miles up river from the mouth of the Congo. The Central Station was a location called Kinshasa, and both these locations marked a stretch of river impassable by steamboat, upon which Marlow takes a "two-hundred mile tramp."
The Company was in reality a company formed by King Leopold II of Belgium charged with running the country of the Congo Free State in 1885. The Congo Free State was voted into existence by the Congress of Berlin, which Conrad refers to sarcastically in his novella as "the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs."Leopold II declared the Congo Free State his personal property in 1892, legally permitting the Belgians to take what ivory they wished from the area without having to trade with the African natives.This caused a rise in atrocities perpetrated by the Belgian traders.
The Congo Free State was taken out of the personal property of the king and made a regular colony of Belgium, called Belgian Congo, in 1908, after the extent of atrocities committed there became generally known in the West, partially through Conrad's novel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_Darkness#Background

About the author

Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski; 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Polish novelist. Many critics regard him as one of the greatest novelists in the English language—a fact that is remarkable as he did not learn to speak English fluently until he was in his twenties (albeit always with a Polish accent).
Conrad is recognized as a master prose stylist. Some of his works have a strain of romanticism, but more importantly he is recognized as an important forerunner of modernist literature. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influenced many writers, including Ernest Hemingway, D. H. Lawrence, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Graham Greene, William S. Burroughs, Joseph Heller, V.S. Naipaul and John Maxwell Coetzee.
Conrad's novels and stories have also inspired such films as Sabotage (1936, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, adapted from Conrad's The Secret Agent); Apocalypse Now (1979, adapted from Conrad's Heart of Darkness); The Duellists (a 1977 Ridley Scott adaptation of Conrad's The Duel, from A Set of Six); and a 1996 film inspired by The Secret Agent, starring Bob Hoskins, Patricia Arquette and Gérard Depardieu.
Writing during the apex of the British Empire, Conrad drew upon his experiences serving in the French and later the British Merchant Navy to create novels and short stories that reflected aspects of a world-wide empire while also plumbing the depths of the human soul.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Conrad