Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness follows Charlie Marlow's journey into the Congo Free State in Africa in the late 19th century. Marlow tells of his experience working for an ivory trading company and his encounter with the mysterious Kurtz. The novella explores themes of colonialism, racism, and the thin line between civilization and savagery. It depicts the horrific realities of Leopold II's brutal regime in the Congo through the physical and moral corruption witnessed by Marlow. The river Congo represents the journey into the darkness at the heart of man and society that Marlow discovers.

1. HEART OF
DARKNESS
BY JOSEPH CONRAD
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2. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born: in Berdichev (formerly Poland), Ukraine on December 03,
1857
Died: August 03, 1924
Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad
Korzeniowski ) was a Polish-born English novelist
Regarded as one of the best novelists, Joseph Conrad
wrote short stories and novels like Lord Jim, Heart of
Darkness and The Secret Agent, which combined his
experiences in remote places with an interest in moral
conflict and the dark side of human nature.

3. KEY FACTS ABOUT HEART OF DARKNESS
PUBLISHED: 1899
LITERARY PERIOD: VICTORIANISM/MODERNISM
GENRE: COLONIAL LITERATURE; QUEST
LITERATURE
SETTING: THE NARRATOR TELLS THE STORY
FROM A SHIP AT THE MOUTH OF THE THAMES
RIVER NEAR LONDON, ENGLAND AROUND
1899. HIS STORY TAKES READERS TO CONGO
OF LATE 19TH CENTURY.
POINT OF VIEW: FIRST PERSON (BOTH MARLOW AND
THE UNNAMED NARRATOR USE FIRST PERSON)
NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE: FRAME TALE

4. HISTORICAL
CONTEXT
• Imperialism
• History of Belgian Congo
• Racial prejudice
• exploitation

5. HEART OF DARKNESS PRIMARILY TAKES
PLACE IN THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY
IN THE BELGIAN-CONTROLLED CONGO FREE
STATE.
• Between 1885 and 1908, Leopold II of the
Belgians was the de facto owner of Congo Free
State.
• Leopold’s greed had wrought: exploitation, mass-
mutilations, state-sponsored slavery and murder,
genocide.
• Ivory trade became the cause of pain and
suffering under his regime.
• He gave up absolute rule over Congo in 1908.

6. CONGO IN HEART OF
DARKNESS
• Marlow's journey takes places along the snake
shaped Congo river in Africa. The racial
prejudices, torment and suffering under the
Leopold regime become the underlying plot of
the novel.
• The Congo river symbolizes movement and
helps the characters and the plot keep going
forward.

7. TITLE: HEART OF
DARKNESS
• The title Heart of Darkness is significant because
it alludes to both the physical darkness and moral
darkness.
• The darkness refers to the dark civilization of
Africa and Heart symbolizes the very core of the
African nation.
• Symbolically the title deals with the unexplored
story and history of civil and uncivil spirit in nature
and human heart

8. MAJOR CHARACTERS
• Marlow: The protaganist and one of the five men on the ship in the Thames. Heart of
Darkness is mostly made up of his story about his journey into the Belgian Congo. He is
philosophical, passionate, and insightful but also extremely skeptical of both mankind and
civilization.
• Kurtz: an ivory trader for the Company. Kurtz works out of the Inner Station and is
remarkably effective at acquiring ivory. A well-educated European, he is described as a
"universal genius" and begins his work in the Congo as part of a virtuous mission.
• Narrator: One of the five men on the ship in the Thames, he is the one who relays to the
reader Marlow's story about Kurtz and the Congo.

9. • The General Manager : The head of the Company's Central Station on the river. the General Manager
has reached his position of power in the Company because of his ability to cause vague uneasiness in
others coupled with an ability to withstand the terrible jungle diseases year after year. The General
Manager has no lofty moral ambitions, and cares only about his own power and position and making
money.
• The Accountant: Also working out of the Central Station, the Accountant who wears spotless clothes
that stand in contrast to the death and decay around him. He is a microcosm of imperialistic hypocrisy.
• The Brickmaker Although his name suggests the nature of his position, the Brickmaker does not make
any bricks because of a shortage of materials. When Marlow meets the Brickmaker at the Central
Station, Marlow suspects that he is "pumping" him for information about the Company's plans.

10. • 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.
• 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.

11. PART ONE : THE
BEGINNING
As Heart of Darkness opens,The Narrator describes the
scene from the deck of a ship named Nellie, waiting on
Thames River. The five people onboard are the Director of
Companies, the Lawyer, the Accountant, Charlie Marlow
and an unnamed narrator of the story, whose words begin
and end the novella and thus frame Marlow's tale.

12. • Marlow tells the story of how he applied for a position
made vacant when a captain named Fresleven is killed by
the native people and how he later encounters the corpse
of the man in the jungle, unburied but surrounded by grass
high enough to hide his bones.
• Marlow arrives at the Company offices and finds two
women knitting with black wool and looking at him with
downcast eyes. He is examined by a doctor who tells him
that it would be interesting for science to watch the mental
changes that take place in people "out there."

13. JOURNEY TO THE OUTER
STATION
• Marlow leaves for Africa on a French steamer that
stops at ports along the African coast.
• He sees a forced-labor camp where black men,
who are chained together, build a railway. Marlow
observes that they seem to be dying of disease
and starvation.
• As Marlow nears the Outer Station's buildings, he
encounters a white man—the Company's chief
accountant—who is full of life and elegance. The
accountant is the first person to tell Marlow
about Kurtz, describing him as a "first-class agent"

14. CENTRAL STATION
• Three events of singnificance take place in this episode.
1. Marlow learns that the paddle-wheeled steamboat he is
meant to pilot to the Inner Station is lying at the bottom of
the river.
2. Marlow meets with the general manager of the Central
Station—a man who inspires uneasiness.
3. Marlow has a long conversation with the brickmaker.When
Marlow asks the brickmaker about Kurtz, the brickmaker
gives a glowing report: "He is a prodigy," the brickmaker
explains, "an emissary of pity and science and progress,
and devil know what else."
By the end of this episode, the Eldorado Exploring Expedition
arrives, headed by station manager's uncle and Marlow
overhears them complaining about Kurtz. after a while, they
leave to explore, Marlow never hears from them again.

15. PART 2: JOURNEY TO THE INNER
STATION
• Marlow begins his journey towards the inner
station and on his way,
• Picks up natives/cannibals to assist with pushing
the steamer
• About 50 miles short of the Inner Station, the
crew comes upon a reed hut and there they find
a pile of wood and a book called "An Inquiry into
Some Points of Seamanship"
• About 8 miles from the inner station, a heavy fog
sets in and only 10 feet from the bank, the
steamer is attacked.
• Marlow's helmsman is killed in this attack but his
main concern remains Kurtz's whereabouts.

16. PART 3: AT THE INNER
STATION
At the inner station,
• Marlow meet a Russian man dressed as harlequin
• Marlow calls the harlequin's "very existence"
improbable and inexplicable.
• The Russian tells Marlow how he loves to sit and listen
to Kurtz expound on every imaginable topic.
• Through the Russian's account, Marlow concludes that
Kurtz has become unhinged: "Evidently," decides
Marlow, "the appetite for more ivory had gotten the
better of the ... less material aspirations."

17. ENCOUNTERING KURTZ
• Kurtz arrives on a stretcher. He was ill, but his
voice was strong.
• Warriors appeared from the jungle carrying
weapons, and the Russian said that all Kurtz has
to do is give the order and all the whites will die.
• On the shore, Marlow sees a woman, dressed
beautifully in native clothes and jewelry. Marlow
describes her as "savage and superb ... ominous
and stately."
• Marlow looks into the Kurtz's cabin that night but
he was gone. He sees a trail and realizes that
Kurtz, unable to walk, is crawling into the jungle,
drawn by the "heavy, mute spell of the
wilderness." Marlow finds him and helps him back
to the station.

18. RETURN DOWNRIVER AND KURTZ'S
DEATH
• At noon the next day, Marlow pilots the steamer away
from the station while more than a thousand native
people watch the crew go, including the native woman.
• One evening Marlow notices a change in Kurtz's
features. On his face is a mixture of pride, power, terror,
and despair. He cries out, "The horror! The horror!" As he
nears his death. Marlow leaves him there. A moment
later the manager's "boy" comes in and says, "Mistah
Kurtz—he dead." Marlow continues eating, feeling no
need to see him again. He calls Kurtz a "remarkable man
who had pronounced a judgment upon the adventures of
his soul on this earth." The next day the pilgrims bury
Kurtz's body.

19. RETURN TO BRUSSELS AND MEETING KURTZ'S
INTENDED
• He returns to Brussels and takes with him Kurtz's
report, Kurtz's letters, and the photograph Kurtz asks
him to protect.
• He hands over his reports to his jouranlist friend.
• In the year following Kurtz's death, Marlow decides to
return his letters and the photograph to Kurtz's
"Intended"—his fiancée.
• He visits the Intended who is dressed in black for
mourning. She speaks highly of Kurtz and of the great
loss she and the world now suffer. She asks Marlow to
tell her Kurtz's dying words, and Marlow lies. He tells
her that Kurtz's last words were her name.

20. THE END
In the novella's final movement, the small
group of Marlow's listeners are still waiting on
the Thames for the river's current to change.
Marlow sits quietly. The others are silent too.
The river, the original narrator says in closing
the novella, "seemed to lead into the heart of
an immense darkness."

21. THEMES AND SYMBOLS IN HEART OF DARKNESS
Racism
Heart of Darkness echoes the racism of the time, and racism becomes a primary
theme of the novella.Other than the blatant racial violence in the work, there are more
underlying notes.
Some critics argue that Conrad was not racist but that, through his racist character,
Marlow, he reveals the racist viewpoints of Company agents and of imperialism more
broadly. Others, including the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe disagree. Achebe
argues that, because Conrad rarely provides native characters with speech or other
human traits, he—the writer—does not view Africans as human.

22. Colonialism
In Europe, colonization of Africa was justified on the grounds that not only would it
bring wealth to Europe, it would also civilize and educate the "savage" African
natives. Heart of Darkness shows that in practice the European colonizers used the
high ideals of colonization as a cover to allow them to viciously rip whatever wealth
they could from Africa.
Unlike most novels that focus on the evils of colonialism, Heart of Darkness's focus on
the white colonizers makes the novella somewhat unbalanced but it does allow Heart
of Darkness to extend its criticism of colonialism all the way back to its corrupt source,
the "civilization" of Europe.

23. Civilization versus Barbarism
Believing that they come from a more civilized culture, the agents of the Company
consistently behave in a barbaric manner. They believe they are more civilized than the
Africans Yet easily fall into savagery in uncivilized Africa.While Marlow presents
European brutality, he does not show the supposedly uncivilized Africans as particularly
brutal.The steamer's crew, whom Marlow says are cannibals, want to eat the body of the
dead helmsman, but Marlow doesn't really criticize them for that. He recognizes that they
are starving. Though the followers at the station seem threatening, they don't do anything
to harm Marlow or the other white people on the steamer. Who, then, is civilized, and who
is barbarous?

24. SYMBOLS
Dark Wool
The knitting of dark wool by two women at the Company
office in Brussels reinforces the symbol of darkness in the
novella. The women are the knitters of funeral shrouds, used
in death, the ultimate darkness. .
In A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens Madame
Defarge secretly uses her knitting to weave into cloth the
names of people to be killed. The convention relates back to
Greek mythology, in which the Fates use thread to measure
the length of a person's life, cutting it when it is time to die.
However, in Greek mythology there are three Fates, who
represent birth, life, and death. In Conrad's scene there are
but two, representing, presumably, life and death

25. 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
Naïve Illusions; Although This Sounds Condemnatory,
Such A Role Is In Fact Crucial, As These Naïve 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.

26. 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.”

27. OTHER SYMBOLS
• Ivory: Ivory symbolizes the greed of the Europeans. It is a consuming passion for them, the
lure that draws them to Africa. ivory is also equated with darkness and corruption
• Drums: The drums are the sound equivalent of the jungle—an aspect of the environment
that is mysterious, uncivilized, and both attractive and destructive.
• Dark and white: Conventional idea of white as good and dark as evil don't really apply
to Heart of Darkness, Rather, whiteness, especially in the form of the white fog that
surrounds the steamship, symbolizes blindness. The dark is symbolized by the huge and
inscrutable African jungle, and is associated with the unknowable and primitive heart of all
men.
• Harlequin: The harlequin's presence ironizes the tragedy of the situation and suggests
another literary convention: the wise fool, although the Russian seems more naive than
wise.

28. CONCLUSION
Heart of darkness in its core is the story of man's inner most inclinations once
he's separated from civilization and freed from the shackles of morality. It
displays man at his worst once he has lost the fight against his "inner
strength"