Heart+of+Darkness

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Most of Heart of Darkness is based on Conrad's own impacting experiences on the Congo River. He did not serve long as captain, in 1991 he became first mate on the clipper ship //Torrens//, making two voyages from England to Australia until retiring in 1894. He married an Englishwoman, Jessie George, and began a literary career during which he wrote //Victory, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, An Outcast of the Islands, The Rover, The Shadow Line, The Duel, Heart of Darkness, Nostromo,// //Almayer's Folly,// and other novels and short stories. He was apart of high society life, noted as being aristocratic in nature and very intelligent with a surprising passion and emotion. He had two sons with Jessie and after experiencing financial success he died of a heart attack in 1924 at the age of 66. Inscribed on his gravestone are lines from Book I, Canto IX, stanza 40, of Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene: > Sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas, > Ease after warre, death after life does greatly please. >
 * //Author Bio://** Joseph Conrad was born on December 3, 1857 in [|Berdichev, Ukraine]. A polish man born to noble parents, he would settle in England later in his life, but spent his twenties as a seaman. It is though his sailing on English ships that he learned to speak English, and through his voyages gained an interest in writing nautical works. In 1886 he became a British citizen and in 1889 he became the captain of a Congo steamship.=====

//Theme Statements://

 * The evils and hypocrisy inherent in Imperialism.
 * The darkness of man and man's primal nature.
 * Good vs. Evil
 * What makes a man good or evil?
 * People become savages when there lacks a social structure to hold them accountable.

> Marlowe:
> He is the protagonist of the Heart of Darkness, a man sent to captain a steamboat carrying ivory down the Congo River. He is intelligent and thoughtful, the sight of the obvious slavery and destitution of the Congo natives, and the evil of the Belgian occupation troubles him greatly. He is sent to bring back Kurtz.

> Kurtz:
> He is the man Marlowe is sent to retrieve, rumored to have gone mad in the Congo. He is highly successful at his job and it becomes clear that he is a very intelligent man, but highly troubled and physically ill. As a character he represents the darkness of a man's heart.

"Kurtz is the man who jumps off the edge of sanity and plunges into the darkness of insanity. Marlow is the man who goes to the edge of sanity, looks over the edge, and has enough strength not to go over to the other side. Of course, he is changed because of it." ([])

//>// Accountant:
> The accountant Marlowe meets at the Outer Station. He dresses immaculately and is the first to tell Marlowe of Kurtz.

> General Manager:
> The chief agent of the Company, it is he who runs the Central Station. He is described as "being empty", not able to create anything, only destroy things.

> Kurtz's Fiance:
> She idolizes Kurtz and Marlowe is unable to tell her the truth of Kurtz's last words, instead lying to her. She is seen as a weak, naive woman.

> Russian Trader:
> He is described as a harlequin looking man who is energetic and looks up to Kurtz. It is his sailing book that Marlowe finds in a hut.

//**Notable Structural, Literary and Stylistic Techniques**:// Heart of Darkness is a "frame story" meaning that it is a story told within a story. It is told by an unnamed narrator, while Marlowe recounts his story while they travel on a boat down the Thames. First person narrative. "Conrad tends to abstract often, focusing not on the concrete details of Marlow's journey up the Congo River, but instead on his wandering thoughts and his deep, almost philosophical digressions. This makes for rather slow reading; one has the sensation of wading through the text, but it establishes a strangely charming rhythm that haunts and echoes in the reader’s mind." ([])

**//Symbols://**

 * Light & Dark: Light and dark symbolize a few different things and are present throughout the whole novel. Light is not seen as purely good (Europeans), and dark as not purely evil.
 * =====Congo River: Represents Marlowe's journey, upstream and downstream.=====
 * Fog: Reappears several times. It obscures and distorts.
 * Kurtz's Severed Heads: Represents Kurtz's 'taming' of the natives and subsequent madness.

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Person Vs. Self: Marlowe must deal with his obsession about Kurtz. As he travels he becomes more and more interest and obsessed with finding Kurtz and metting the man. It is resolved when Marlowe finally meets Kurtz and finds that he is ill and mentally unstable, ending in his death.=====

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Person Vs. Person: Marlowe's conflict with The Company and the natives. The natives pose a physical threat to Marlowe, resolved when he finally makes it out of the Congo. Also Marlowe's conflict with Kurtz, such as Kurtz's finaly attempt at escape when he crawls from the hut, through the grass. Marlowe is faced with the decision of either leaving Kurtz or bringing him out of the Interior, and the conflict is resolved when Marlowe decides to bring him back.=====

**//Key Scenes://**
Pg 47, the death of the helmsman and the reactions to it are a point in the novel that heightens the suspense. The attacks natives give the journey through the interior an even more foreboding feeling.

Pg 59, Marlowe finally meets Kurtz for himself after only ever hearing second-hand accounts of the man. He finds Kurtz to be very ill and insane. "I saw him open his mouth wide - it gave him a weirdly voracious aspect as though he had wanted to swallow all the air, all the earth, all the men before him." This scene marks the final part before the climax.

Pg 65 & 66, Marlowe wakes to find that Kurtz has left, and when he goes looking he sees that the natives have lit fires and are having a ceremony. Kurtz is crawling on his hands and knees towards them before Marlowe intercepts him. This suspenseful scene is the climax in which Marlowe decides to follow the orders of the Company and bring back Kurtz. He also comes to the conclusion that "his [Kurtz's] soul was mad."

Pg 68, Kurtz's death is the beginning of the resolution, occurring during the relatively easier trip back to the exterior.
Pg 72 & 73, Marlowe's meeting with Kurtz's intended is the resolution to Kurtz's story and during his conversation with the woman Marlowe finds himself incapable of telling her Kurtz's true final words, instead he lies and says that he spoke her name.

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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?” -Marlowe, p

g 37-38.
As Marlowe is traveling down the Congo on the steamboat they come across chanting natives. This makes him uneasy, not because of the danger or ugliness, but because it stirs the primal nature within every man. "...it had taken him, loved him, embraced him, got into his veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his soul to its own..." -Marlowe, pg 49. Marlowe is recounting Kurtz's appearance. His is a sickly, thin, empty looking man. He is speaking of the corruption and darkness that has taken away Kurtz's vitality.

"I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself." -Marlowe, pg 66. When Marlowe retrieves Kurtz after he crawls away from the hut, Marlowe realizes just how far gone Kurtz is.

"He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision - he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath: 'The horror! The horror!'" - Marlowe, pg 68. Kurtz dies, and his final words are the most memorable of the entire novel. The horror he sees can be interpreted a few different ways, and it's this that Marlowe ponders for the rest of his life.

More quotes explained: []

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Heart of Darkness is a very impacting novel and it is surprising how much it makes you think in less than a hundred pages. It approaches the issue of human nature thoughtfully, while also showing the horror of what was happening in the Congo during the time period Conrad was writing about. It was a surprise to me how blunt and cynical Marlowe was at times towards things like death and seeing the natives as less than human. The similarities between Kurtz and Marlowe were striking, and it was obvious that Marlowe could have just as easily ended up as crazy as Kurtz. It ends bitterly, with Marlowe entering just another place of darkness, making me believe that he is unable to escape from the darkness.=====

**//Notable literary devices present in work and how they contribute to meaning://**

 * Foreshadowing: Very big throughout the beginning and middle of the work. The foreshadowing builds the suspense of the novel.
 * Motif: The ideas of darkness and light are repeated in the novel, building and expanding the themes of good vs. evil and morality.
 * Imagery: Conrad uses imagery a lot in //Heart of Darkness//, specifically to illustrate the natives, the Company men, Kurtz, and the landscape of the Congo.
 * Characterization: This is used most heavily with the introduction of Kurtz, first in the beginning when Marlowe learns of his mission into the Interior and then through other people that he talks to.

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 * //"Apocolypse Now"//**
 * //Kurtz's Monologue.//**


 * //"Steamboat, Congo"//**