The Narrator describes a night spent on a ship in the mouth of the Thames River in England. Marlow, one of the men on board, tells of his time spent as a riverboat pilot in the Belgian Congo.

1. Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness, a novella by Joseph Conrad published 1899

2. Character List
Marlow Kurtz Narrator
The Russian
Trader
General
Manager
The
Brickmaker

3. 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.

4. Kurtz
Kurtz - The chief of the Inner Station and the object of Marlow’s quest. Kurtz is
a man of many talents—we learn, among other things, that he is a gifted
musician and a fine painter—the chief of which 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; in so doing, he
has become wildly successful but has also incurred the wrath of his fellow white
men.

5. General Manager
• General Manager - The chief agent of the Company in its African territory,
who runs the Central Station. He 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, keeping everyone sufficiently unsettled for
him to exert his control over them.

6. Russian Trader
• 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. His brightly patched clothes remind Marlow of a
harlequin. He is a devoted disciple of Kurtz’s.

7. Brickmaker
• Brickmaker - The brickmaker, whom Marlow also meets at the Central Station,
is a favorite of the manager and seems to be a kind of corporate spy. He never
actually produces any bricks, as he is supposedly waiting for some essential
element that is never delivered. He is petty and conniving and assumes that
other people are too.

8. Minor Characters
The General Manager's Uncle
The uncle of the General Manager, and
the head of the Eldorado Exploring
Expedition. Like his nephew, the uncle
has come to Africa to make his fortune.
He is generally untalented, and his
expedition disappears in the jungle.
Kurtz's Intended
• The woman in Europe to
whom Kurtz is betrothed to be
married. She is incredibly idealistic
about both Kurtz and the
colonization of Africa.
• She continues to mourn Kurtz as a
great man even a year after he dies.

9. Minor Characters
Marlow's Aunt
A well-connected and
idealistic woman, she helps Marlow get
the job as a steamer pilot for the
Company.
She is extremely idealistic about the
European colonization of Africa, seeing
it as a beautiful effort to civilize the
savages.
Director of Companies
• The woman in Europe to
whom Kurtz is betrothed to be
married. She is incredibly idealistic
about both Kurtz and the
colonization of Africa.
• She continues to mourn Kurtz as a
great man even a year after he dies.

10. Minor Characters
Lawyer
One of the five men on
the ship in the Thames
who listen
to Marlow's story.
Accountant
One of the five men on
the ship in the Thames
who listen
to Marlow's story. He
is not the same as
the Chief Accountant.
Fresleven
A steamship pilot who
got into a silly argument
that cost him his life. His
death opened the
position into
which Marlow was hired.

11. Doctor
A medical man in the sepulchral city who is interested in how the Congo drives men crazy.
Swede
A steamship captain who has nothing but disdain for the "government chaps" who care
only about money.
Chief Accountant
A Company employee at the Outer Station who wins Marlow's admiration simply by
keeping himself impeccably groomed. (Do not confuse him with the Accountant on the
ship in the Thames.)
The Foreman
A man who helps Marlow repair the steamship.
The Pilgrims
Company agents that Marlow gives the derisive nickname Pilgrims because they carry long
wooden staves wherever they go.
The Helmsman
A coastal native of Africa trained to man the helm of a steamship. He works
for Marlow until he's killed.
African Woman
A savage and stately African tribeswoman who seems likely to have been Kurtz's lover.
The General Manager's servant
A native boy who has grown insolent because he works for the General Manager.

12. Summary-1
Heart of Darkness, a novella by Joseph Conrad published 1899, to this day, has evoked
discussion on the use and abuse of the people of the Congo by the British Empire. Famed author
Chinua Achebe criticized Conrad and, in particular, this novella for its condemnation of the “Other,”
in this case, the people of the Congo. The book is a “frame narrative,” containing a story within a
story, which lends itself to the idea of the sailor telling a yarn to his fellow shipmates. The narrator
Marlow is unreliable, as evidenced by the fact that he says he doesn’t remember everything about
the interior story clearly. He was so disturbed by it that his narration cannot be entirely relied upon.
Heart of Darkness opens with Marlow heading out of the Thames and telling his tale of a previous
voyage he had been on to retrieve a man named Kurtz. Kurtz had been sent as a British agent into
the Congo to retrieve ivory, but he had gone incommunicado. When the British received word that
Kurtz was ill, they sent men to go and collect him. Kurtz’s outpost was located up the Congo River.

13. Summary-2
As Marlow journeyed up the Congo, he was revolted by the way the British treated the native
people. He laments the pervasive disease in the area, and how there is little effort on the part of
the British Company to help the natives deal with it. Marlow also comments on how there was a
massive colonial spread all for what actually amounted to little ivory. Conrad, through Marlow, talks
about the jungle and the darkness, referring not only to the thickness of the vegetation, but to the
darkness within man. Amid this darkness, the stories about Kurtz’s character acted like a beacon of
light for Marlow. Kurtz was supposed to be an elegant and moral man. However, when they reached
Kurtz’s outpost, Marlow and his fellows found that Kurtz had gone quite mad, and had convinced the
natives there that he was a deity, using violence to frighten them and garner more ivory.

14. Summary-3
Marlow and his fellow sailors took Kurtz onto their ship, and on the way back to England, he died.
According to Marlow, Kurtz’s last words were, “The horror! The horror!” Marlow says this
exclamation was Kurtz’s reaction to realizing what he’d done in the Congo, his reaction to the
depths to which he sank to get what he wanted from the native people. Kurtz apparently gave
Marlow his papers, which included an essay he’d written. The essay had originally outlined ways to
bring British civilization to the Congo, but at the end, a maddened Kurtz had scrawled, “Exterminate
all the brutes!” By the time he read this, Marlow did not think of the native people of the Congo as
brutes, though his feeling that the Congo was itself a place of savagery and darkness placed Conrad
as an author who perpetuated the fear of the Other in twentieth-century literature and society.

15. Summary-4
Conrad’s novella suggests that not only does man have a heart of darkness, that darkness is the
heart of savagery. The dichotomy of savage versus civilized is one that has long been under debate,
particularly as it fueled the expansion of the British Empire. During that expansion, the British
thought they could rule other groups while improving their lives by civilizing them. While an
exchange of information often benefits the cultures and societies on both sides of the exchange, the
notion of civilized vs. savage inherently created a position of privilege for those with white skin, and
a position of oppression for those with dark skin. This was caused by, and simultaneously contributed
to, decades of unrest perpetuated through fear of the Other to this day, which is why Heart of
Darkness remains on many reading lists.

16. Summary-5
Marlow was progressive enough to recognize that Kurtz had gone too far, and that overall, the British
Company had mistreated those people native to the Congo and surrounding areas. However, for
many writers and scholars, Marlow does not go far enough because he continues to assert that the
wilderness drove Kurtz into the darkness of his own heart. This displaces responsibility for Kurtz’s
actions—and in the larger picture, of the colonizing group, in this case the British. This is why many
modern scholars and authors speak out against Heart of Darkness.
From a stylistic standpoint, the novella is an important example of frame narrative because of the
unreliable narrator, described earlier as Marlow. Unreliable narrators have the capability to spark
the reader’s own process of judgment. The reader must decide whether or not Marlow’s story is
true, and whether or not they agree about where Kurtz’s darkness originated..

17. Thank You
-by Rakib Hussain
Department of English
Dhaka College