Introduction :-
Heart of Darkness (1899) is a novella by Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad in which the sailor Charles Marlow tells his listeners the story of his assignment as steamer captain for a Belgian company in the African interior. The novel is widely regarded as a critique of European colonial rule in Africa, whilst also examining the themes of power dynamics and morality. Although Conrad does not name the river on which most of the narrative takes place, at the time of writing the Congo Free State, the location of the large and economically important Congo River, was a private colony of Belgium's King Leopold II. Marlow is given a text by Kurtz, an ivory trader working on a trading station far up the river, who has "gone native" and is the object of Marlow's expedition.
Central to Conrad's work is the idea that there is little difference between "civilised people" and "savages." Heart of Darkness implicitly comments on imperialism and racism. The novella's setting provides the frame for Marlow's story of his fascination for the prolific ivory trader Kurtz. Conrad draws parallels between London ("the greatest town on earth") and Africa as places of darkness.
Originally issued as a three-part serial story in Blackwood's Magazine to celebrate the 1000th edition of the magazine, Heart of Darkness has been widely republished and translated in many languages. It provided the inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 film Apocalypse Now. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Heart of Darkness 67th on their list of the 100 best novels in English of the 20th century.
About the Novelist :-
Joseph Conrad ( 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Polish-British novelist and short story writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language; though he did not speak English fluently until his twenties, he came to be regarded a master prose stylist who brought a non-English sensibility into English literature. He wrote novels and stories, many in nautical settings, that depict crises of human individuality in the midst of what he saw as an indifferent, inscrutable and amoral world.
Conrad is considered a literary impressionist by some and an early modernist by others, though his works also contain elements of 19th-century realism. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters, as in Lord Jim, for example, have influenced numerous authors. Many dramatic films have been adapted from and inspired by his works. Numerous writers and critics have commented that his fictional works, written largely in the first two decades of the 20th century, seem to have anticipated later world events.
Notable works :-
The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' (1897)
Heart of Darkness (1899)
Lord Jim (1900)
Typhoon (1902)
Nostromo (1904)
The Secret Agent (1907)
Under Western Eyes (1911)
Summary of the Novel :-
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.
With the help of his well-connected aunt, Marlow gets a job as pilot on a steamship on the Congo River in Africa for a European business outfit called the Company. First he travels to the European city he describes as a "whited sepulcher" to visit the Company headquarters, and then to Africa and up the Congo to assume command of his ship. The Company headquarters is strangely ominous, and on his voyage to Africa he witnesses waste, incompetence, negligence, and brutality so extreme that it would be absurd if it weren't so awful. In particular, he sees a French warship firing into a forest for no discernible reason and comes upon a grove where exploited black laborers wander off to die. While at the Company's Outer Station, Marlow meets the Company's Chief Accountant. He mentions a remarkable man named Kurtz, who runs the Company's Inner Station deep in the jungle.
Marlow hikes from the Outer Station to the Central Station, where he discovers that the steamship he's supposed to pilot recently sank in an accident. In the three months it takes Marlow to repair the ship, he learns that Kurtz is a man of impressive abilities and enlightened morals, and is marked for rapid advancement in the Company. He learns also that the General Manager who runs Central Station and his crony the Brickmaker fear Kurtz as a threat to their positions. Marlow finds himself almost obsessed with meeting Kurtz, who is also rumored to be sick.
Marlow finally gets the ship fixed and sets off upriver with the General Manager and a number of company agents Marlow calls Pilgrims because the staffs they carry resemble the staffs of religious pilgrims. The trip is long and difficult: native drums beat through the night and snags in the river and blinding fogs delay them. Just before they reach Inner Station the steamship is attacked by natives. Marlow's helmsman, a native trained to steer the ship, is killed by a spear.
At Inner Station, a Russian trader meets them on the shore. He tells them that Kurtz is alive but ill. As the General Manager goes to get Kurtz, Marlow talks to the Russian trader and realizes that Kurtz has made himself into a brutal and vicious god to the natives. When the General Manager and his men bring Kurtz out from the station house on a stretcher, the natives, including a woman who seems to be Kurtz's mistress, appear ready to riot. But Kurtz calms them and they melt back into the forest.
The Russian sees that the General Manager has it in for him, and slips off into the jungle, but not before telling Marlow that Kurtz ordered the attack on the steamship. That night, Marlow discovers Kurtz crawling toward the native camp. Marlow persuades Kurtz to return to the ship by telling him he will be “utterly lost" if he causes the natives to attack. The steamer sets off the next day. But Kurtz is too ill to survive the journey, and gives his papers to Marlow for safekeeping. His dying words are: "The horror! The horror!" Marlow believes Kurtz is judging himself and the world.
Marlow also falls ill, but survives. He returns to the sepulchral city in Europe and gives Kurtz's papers to the relevant people. The last person he visits is Kurtz's Intended (his fiancé). She believes Kurtz is a great man, both talented and moral, and asks Marlow to tell her Kurtz's last words. Marlow can't find it in himself to destroy her beautiful delusions: he says Kurtz's last words were her name.
On the ship in the Thames, Marlow falls silent, and as the Narrator stares out from the ship it seems to him that the Thames leads “into the heart of an immense darkness."
Themes of the Novel :-
IMPERIALISM AND COLONIALISM
Imperialism and colonialism are recurrent themes throughout the entire text. Marlow and Kurtz are both parts of an imperial machine, helping to extract the wealth of a distant African country in the name of profit. The novel’s approach to these themes can be complicated. From their positions within the imperial context, both men struggle to find the points at which their involvement begins and ends. Marlow seems to veer between offering acute criticisms of the imperial structure and being entirely complicit in its actions. His journey along the river presents him with scenes of violence, torture, and slavery. This is entirely unilateral; Europeans beat, imprison, and force Africans into labor.
On one hand, by presenting these scenes in their full horror, the novel provides necessary examples ready for critique and rarely flinches from the violence endured by the enslaved. On the other hand, Marlow seems to agree with the majority of the Company’s ideologies; he simply disagrees with the praxis and the extremity. He works for the Company, he takes their money, and he achieved his position not through skill and hard work but through nepotism.
Conclusion :-
At the conclusion of Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Marlow lies about the dying words of the grieving fiancée's villainous lover, Kurtz. He relates what her tearful questioning shows him she longs to hear, acting from fear of destroying her faith in Kurtz's love for her.
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