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Joseph Conrad's long short story, "Heart of Dark-ness" (1899), is considered to be his greatest liter-ary achievement, as well as his most controversial.It was first published in Blackwood's Magazine in1899, in three monthly installments. In 1902, it wasrepublished in a book entitled Youth: A Narrative,and Two Other Stories.

The story is partly based on Conrad's personalexperiences as the captain of a riverboat on theCongo River, and was immediately interpreted asan indictment of the colonial rule of the Belgiangovernment in the Congo. The story is character-ized by a narrative embedded in a narrative; the"frame" narrator relates a story told him by thesailor Charlie Marlow, Conrad's famous characterwho appears as a storyteller in much of his fiction.Marlow relates his experiences as the captain of asteamboat, sent down the Congo River in the em-ploy of an unnamed ivory company, to retrieveKurtz, a company manager whose "methods" hadbecome "unsound."

The central symbolism of the ' 'heart of dark-ness' ' has been interpreted in several ways. On onelevel, it represents the ' 'darkness'' at the ' 'heart'' ofmen's souls—the descent into an evil that lurks inthe hearts of all men. In this sense, it is a psychologi-cal journey into the unconscious. On a somewhatmore literal level, the journey represents a descentinto the "darkness" or evil of imperialism—the

Heart of DarknessJoseph Conrad

1899

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H e a r t of D a r k n e s s

greed for ivory and other resources that character-ized the exploitation of African people by Europeancolonialism. African writer Chinua Achebe hasinterpreted the story's central symbolism in terms ofa racist perception of Africa and African people asrepresentative of more "primitive" or "savage,"less evolved society, representing the represseddesires of European society. Achebe interprets Con-rad's story in these terms as thoroughly racist. Othercritics have countered Achebe's interpretation interms that defend Conrad as a critic of racistimperialism.

England, becoming a full-time writer. His firstnovel, Almayer's Folly, was published in 1895under the newly assumed name, Joseph Conrad.Also in 1895, at the age of thirty-eight, he marriedtwenty-two-year old Jessie George, with whom hehad two sons. His second novel, An Outcast of theIslands, was published in 1896.

Conrad became known as a novelist of seaadventures, but his literary style and thematic con-cerns as expressed through these stories were ofa more serious nature. Among his works whichtake place at sea are The Nigger of the ' 'Narcis-sus" (1897), Lord Jim (1900), Youth (1902), andTyphoon (1902). He died of a heart attack onAugust 3, 1924.

Author Biography

Novelist and short story writer Joseph Conrad wasborn Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski on Decem-ber 3, 1857, in Berdiczew, Podolia, then part of theRussian Empire (now Poland). His father, ApolloNalecz Korzeniowski, was a resistance organizeragainst Russian rule in Poland; in 1861, he wasarrested for these activities, and sentenced to exilein Vologda in northern Russia, accompanied by hiswife and son. Conrad's mother, whose tuberculosiswas worsened by the harsh weather, died in 1865,when Conrad was eight years old.

At this time, Conrad was introduced to litera-ture and to the English language by his father, a poetand translator. In 1869, his father died, also oftuberculosis. Conrad was left in the care of relatives,eventually under the guardianship of his uncle,Tadeusz Bobrowski, a lawyer, who supported andencouraged Conrad financially, professionally, andemotionally, throughout his life.

Yearning from an early age to be a sailor,Conrad went to Marseilles in 1874, and eventuallyserved for sixteen years in the British merchantnavy. In 1886, he became a British citizen, andearned a master mariner's certificate. In 1889, hehad the opportunity to command a Congo river boat,realizing a childhood dream of going to Africa. Hismost famous and most critically acclaimed story,"Heart of Darkness," was based on his experiencesin Africa.

In 1894, his beloved uncle died. By this time,Conrad had retired from sea travel and settled in

Plot Summary

"Heart of Darkness" begins with the "frame"narrator's description of a group of men relaxing ona private yacht one evening. One of the men, CharlieMarlow, a sailor, commences to tell his friends atale of one of his adventures as the captain of asteamboat going down the Congo River. The rest ofthe narrative consists of Marlow's tale, with onlyoccasional interruptions by the ' 'frame'' narrator todescribe Marlow and his storytelling style.

Marlow's tale is about his assignment to workfor "the Company," an ivory trading company inwhat was then the Free State of the Congo, a colonyof the Belgian government. Marlow is assigned toretrieve a certain Kurtz, a company manager operat-ing deep in the Congo to retrieve ivory whose"methods" were reported to be "unsound." Marlowinitially stops at one of the Company sites, where heis appalled by the brutal, inhumane, slavery-likeconditions of the African people made to work forthe Company. He comes upon a grove where thosewho have been worked nearly to starvation anddeath lie in wait for death. Marlow is equallyappalled, although ironically impressed, with thecallousness of the company management and bu-reaucracy toward the suffering Africans. Makingseveral stops at company sites, Marlow hears intri-guing reference to the enigmatic Kurtz, to the pointthat he himself becomes eager to meet and conversewith the man.

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As Marlow's boat moves closer to Kurtz'scompound, the small steamboat crew are barragedwith deadly arrows, even as they are blinded by athick fog. Marlow watches in sympathy as one ofthe Africans on his boat dies from an arrow wound.He is struck by his sense of identification with theblack man. Arriving at Kurtz's compound, Marlowmeets with a man he refers to as the RussianHarlequin soldier, who maniacally and obsessivelyworships Kurtz. Marlow observes decapitated hu-man heads stuck on poles throughout the com-pound. He then finds Kurtz himself, a shriveled upman dying of malarial fever. As he takes the dyingKurtz aboard his boat, Marlow observes a womanwho seems to have been Kurtz's companion, mourn-ing his departure. As they make their way back upthe river, Kurtz soon dies, with the enigmatic andhaunting words "The horror! The horror!" on hislips. Marlow is then taken up with fever and illness,which renders him delirious. Upon recovering,Marlow returns to England, where he goes to visitKurtz's "Intended," the woman Kurtz was en-gaged to marry. Marlow has come to give her thepacket of letters and writings Kurtz had entrustedwith him. Although he abhors liars and lying, Marlowwithholds from her Kurtz's haunting final words,telling her instead that he had died with her ownname on his lips.

Joseph Conrad

tants, and that his ruthless "methods" of obtainingvast quantities of ivory have become brutal andinhumane. Kurtz represents the greed and cruelty ofthe imperialist exploitation of the Congo by theBelgian government that had colonized it.

Characters

The Harlequin Russian SoldierThe Harlequin Russian soldier greets Marlow

upon his arrival at Kurtz's compound. A Westerner,he seems half-crazed and maniacally obsessed withthe worship of Kurtz as an exceptional being.

KurtzKurtz is a Company employee of "unsound

methods," whom Marlow has been charged withretrieving from the depths of the Congo. Marlowbecomes increasingly intrigued by the enigmaticKurtz, eventually craving above all else to conversewith him. What Marlow rinds at the end of hisjourney is a man dying of malaria. However, itbecomes clear that Kurtz has become an object ofsome dread and worship among the local inhabi-

Kurtz's IntendedUpon his death, Kurtz refers to his ' 'Intended,''

his fiancee, a white woman living in London. At theend of the story, Marlow goes to visit her in herlavish home. The story ends with Marlow's lie, thatKurtz had died with her name upon his lips. There issome sense that she knows Marlow is lying.

Charlie MarlowMarlow is the narrator of the central' 'framed''

narrative of the story. The character of Marlowappears in a number of Conrad's stories, often in therole of observer and narrator of the central events ofthe story. Marlow is a sailor whose narrative relateshis experiences under hire by an unnamed ivorycompany to take a riverboat down the Congo Riverin order to retrieve Kurtz, a maverick companymanager. Marlow is appalled at the treatment of theAfrican people by the Company; but he is also

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MediaAdaptations

The 1978 movie Apocalypse Now, directed byFrancis Ford Coppola, is adapted from Conrad's"Heart of Darkness." The film is set during theVietnam War. Martin Sheen plays CaptainWillard, a stand-in for Conrad's narrator CharlieMarlow; Kurtz is played by Marlon Brando.There was a 1994 adaptation directed by NicolasRoeg and starring John Malkovich as Kurtz andTim Roth as Marlowe.

disturbed by the behavior of the Africans, whichseem to him "mysterious." Marlow eventuallyfinds Kurtz, who is dying of malaria, and brings himaboard the steamboat. Kurtz dies shortly thereafter,and then Marlow himself is stricken with fever andillness. When he returns to England, he visits Kurtz's"Intended," his fiancee, to give her some of Kurtz'spersonal writings. Although Kurtz's enigmatic dy-ing words were "The horror! The horror!" Marlow,who abhors liars, himself lies to the Intended, tellingher that Kurtz's final words had been her name.Marlow's perspective on what he witnesses in theCongo is somewhat ambivalent, and is the source ofmuch critical debate among literary scholars, par-ticularly in terms of his perspective on the Africanpeople; the matter of whether or not Marlow's, orConrad's, perspective is racist has been arguedpersuasively on both sides, and is a subject ofongoing debate.

The NarratorThe narrator of the story is a character only

insofar as he relates to the reader a story told him byMarlow. He is therefore referred to as the "framenarrator," because his narrative merely frames thecentral narrative, which is related by Marlow. Forthis reason, most of the seventy-five page story iswritten as a direct quotation from Marlow. Theframe narrator only occasionally pauses to describeMarlow's character and the small group of menlistening to his story.

Themes

Civilization and the PrimitiveThe central theme around which this story

revolves is civilization versus wilderness. The sym-bolism that represents this theme is the oppositionof light versus darkness. As in much of European artand literature, the imagery of ' 'light'' is associatedwith Western culture, civilization, knowledge, andthe conscious mind. The imagery of' 'darkness," onthe other hand, is associated with Third Worldcultures (such as Africa), the "primitive" or "sav-age," the unknown or mysterious, and the psycho-logical unconscious. Many of the themes in Con-rad's story are based on this set of oppositions.Thus, European culture is contrasted with Africanculture, where African culture is seen to representthe primitive, unconscious mind of the white Euro-pean man. Marlow's narrative of his journey downthe Congo River, and his encounter with Kurtz,expresses the anxiety of the white man who istempted by his foray into the "wilderness" to "gonative," lose the trappings of civilization, and re-vert to a more "primitive" state of mind. As writerChinua Achebe has pointed out, this conceptualconstruct on the part of Western cultures in theirperceptions and representations of African cultureis thoroughly racist. Other critics have argued,however, that Conrad's story is a critique of theracist colonial mentality of the Europeans in Africa.

Capitalist ExploitationConrad's story is critical of the "methods" of

the white European ' 'Company" that, motivated bypure greed, exploits African resources and labor.Conrad's commentary is in part based on his ownexperiences with the ivory business in the Congo,and is supported by historical records that make itclear that the ivory trade in Africa was brutal on apar with the slave trade. Conrad mocks such Euro-pean trade practices through his ironic representa-tion of the generically named "Company," whichclearly stands in for the presence of Europeancompanies in Africa. The Company management isalso portrayed ironically, such as the manager whomaintains a high starched white collar in spite of thesigns of suffering and cruelty that he perpetuates inthe treatment of the Africans. Conrad also satirizesthe values of "efficiency" practiced by the Com-pany as both irrational and inhumane. The character

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Topics forFurther

StudyThe movie Apocalypse Now, directed by FrancisFord Coppola, is based on Conrad's "Heart ofDarkness." Compare and contrast it to Conrad'sstory. What elements of the original story arepreserved in the film? Conrad's story is a com-mentary on the conditions of imperialism in theCongo in the late nineteenth century; Coppola'sfilm is a commentary on the involvement of theUnited States in the Vietnam War. What, in youropinion, makes Conrad's story appropriate to thesituation of the Vietnam War? How would youdescribe Coppola's vision of the Vietnam war,and what perspective does he present? In whatways is the character of Kurtz different in thestory and in the movie?

Writer Chinua Achebe has criticized Conrad's"Heart of Darkness" as a racist depiction ofAfrica. Achebe's well-known novel, Things FallApart, is a very different representation of Africa,in what ways are Africa and Africans depicteddifferently in Achebe's novel as compared toConrad's story?

' 'Heart of Darkness'' is based on Conrad's expe-riences in the Congo in the 1890s. Learn moreabout the history of the Congo in the nine-teenth and twentieth centuries. What social, po-litical, and economic changes has it gone throughduring the century since Conrad's story waspublished?

Conrad's father was a resistance organizer in thePolish rebellion against the rule of the Russianempire in the nineteenth century. Learn moreabout the history of Poland under the Russianempire. What are the major events, and changesin Poland over the past century?

Conrad's novel Lord Jim, another sea story, wasadapted to the screen in a 1965 film directed byRichard Brooks, and starring Peter O'Toole andJames Mason. What themes does it address? Inwhat ways is the story concerned with similarelements of human nature and character to thosein ' 'Heart of Darkness?'' What elements of storydoes the film provide that are not possible in thewritten medium of the novel?

of Kurtz, whose "methods" are "unsound," repre-sents the height of hypocrisy—the "methods" ofthe Company seem to be thoroughly "unsound,"from a moral perspective.

Race and RacismWhether or not one concludes that Conrad's

story is racist, it is clear that the issue of race andracism in the European colonies is a central themeof the story. Marlow links colonial conquest di-rectly to racism in the often-quoted passage: ' 'Theconquest of the earth, which mostly means thetaking it away from those who have a differentcomplexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves,is not a pretty thing when you look into it toomuch." At the same time, however, the modernreader is struck by Conrad's nonchalant use of the

term "nigger," which is now considered thor-oughly racist.

LiesMarlow's narrative includes an underlying theme

regarding lies and lying. Marlow explains to hislisteners his disdain for lies and lying:

There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality inlies—which is exactly what I hate and detest in theworld—what I want to forget. It makes me miserableand sick like biting something rotten would do.

And yet, when faced with Kurtz's' 'Intended,"at the end of the story, Marlow deliberately defieshis own values in choosing to lie to her aboutKurtz's final words. Unable to bring himself to do' 'justice'' to Kurtz's dying wish that he be properlyrepresented, Marlow refrains from repeating those

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haunting words, "The horror! The horror!" tellingher instead that Kurtz had died with her name on hislips. Feeling that he has sinned in telling this lie,Marlow half expects ' 'that the heavens would fallupon my head," but concludes that' 'the heavens donot fall for such a trifle." Aware that he has be-trayed Kurtz through his lie, Marlow's justificationseems to be a desire to protect the white womanfrom the truth of the true evil that lurks in the soul ofman: ' 'I could not tell her. It would have been toodark—too dark altogether."

Style

NarrationNarrative technique is an important element of

Conrad's literary style. This story is structured as an"embedded narrative." This means that the centralstory, narrated by the fictional character CharlieMarlow, is "embedded" in a "frame" narrative,whereby the ' 'frame'' narrator introduces Marlow'scharacter, and presents the central story as a directquotation from Marlow. For this reason, nearlyevery paragraph of the story begins with a quotationmark, indicating that it is a continuation of the framenarrator's direct quotation of Marlow's narration.This type of "embedded" narrative constitutes thestructure of several of Conrad's stories, as thecharacter of Marlow is the ' 'embedded'' narrator.This narrative structure focuses the reader's atten-tion as much on the art of storytelling, and thecharacter of the storyteller, as it does on the centralstory itself. Conrad's "frame" narrator calls atten-tion to the significance of the frame narrator indescribing Marlow's storytelling style. The narratoruses the metaphor of a "nut"—indicating that, forMarlow, the meaning of the story lies more in the"shell" (the narration) than in the "nut" (thecentral story) it contains:

The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, thewhole meaning of which lies within the shell of acracked nut. But Marlow was not typical (if hispropensity to spin yarns be excepted) and to him themeaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel butoutside, enveloping the tale which brought it out onlyas a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one ofthese misty halos that, sometimes, are made visible bythe spectral illumination of moonshine.

SettingThe setting of the frame narrative is in England,

as a group of men relax on a private yacht. Thecentral story, narrated by the sailor Marlow, takes

place on the Congo River, in an area of Africa thencolonized by the Belgian King Leopold II, whodeceptively named it the Free State of the Congo.The story takes place in the 1890s. The setting issignificant because the tale is based in part onConrad's own personal experiences as the captainof a riverboat on the Congo in the 1890s. Conrad'scharacter of Marlow relates the brutal, slave-likeconditions under which the native Africans weretreated by their Belgian colonizers, and the storywas interpreted upon initial publication in 1899 asan indictment of Belgian imperialism. The ivorycompany for which Marlow works represents thehistorical circumstances of the ivory trade in Africa,by which European colonizers greedily exploitedboth the African people for their labor and theresources of the continent. Conrad paints an unflat-tering picture of the European presence in Africaduring the colonial period.

Imagery: Light and DarknessThe central imagery of the story revolves around

the binary oppositions suggested in the title: lightand darkness. This imagery sets up a contrast be-tween the "light" white Europeans in Africa, andthe ' 'dark'' native Africans. Likewise, the ' 'light''is suggestive of European "civilization," while the"darkness" refers to the culture of the Africanpeople, which Europeans perceived as ' 'primitive''and "savage." The imagery of light and darknessalso refers metaphorically to the ' 'light'' of what isnow referred to as the "conscious" self, which theEuropeans associated with their own society, asopposed to the "darkness" of the unconscious,which the Europeans associated with African soci-ety. The ' 'light'' also represents the realm of thatwhich is known and understandable to the Europe-ans (their own culture and native land), as opposedto the unknown (darkness), "mysterious" land,peoples and cultures of the African continent. Howone interprets the story generally revolves aroundthis central axis of light/dark imagery, and thevariety of metaphorical and symbolic implicationsof this imagery.

Historical Context

Apocalypse NowThe 1978 film Apocalypse Now, directed by

Francis Ford Coppola, is based on Conrad's story' 'Heart of Darkness.'' While Conrad's story is set inthe Congo in the 1890s, and is a commentary on

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Comparefc

ContrastNineteenth Century: The deceptively namedFree State of the Congo is under the rule of theBelgian King Leopold II, who exploits the natu-ral resources of the region, as well as its people inslavery-like conditions.

Twentieth Century: The Free State of the Congois renamed the Belgian Congo in 1908. It wins itsindependence from Belgium in 1960, and in1965 Mobutu becomes president, renaming thenation Zaire in 1971. In 1997, Zaire is renamedthe Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Nineteenth Century: Under the rule of Franceand Holland before 1830, Belgium attains na-tional independence in 1831 through the BelgianRevolution. In 1831, King Leopold I becomesthe first king of the newly established nation. Onhis death in 1865 he is succeeded by his son,Leopold II, who rules until his own death in 1909.

Twentieth Century: Leopold II is succeeded byhis nephew King Albert I, who rules from 1909to 1934. From 1914 to 1918, during the firstWorld War, Belgium is occupied by Germany.When Belgium is liberated from the Germansand the king is restored to power in 1918, univer-sal male suffrage (for those over age 21) isinstituted (women do not get the right to vote in

Belgium until 1948). In 1934, King Leopold IIIsucceeds his father Albert. In 1940, during WorldWar II, Belgium is once again invaded andoccupied by Germany. After refusing to flee thecountry, King Leopold III is held prisoner by theGermans until 1945. In 1951, Leopold III abdi-cates in favor of his son, Baudouin, who reignsuntil 1993. Between 1971 and 1992, Belgiumgoes through the process of becoming a federalstate made up of several autonomous regions,including the Flemish region, the Walloon re-gion, and Brussels. In 1993, the second son ofLeopold III, now Albert II, succeeds to the throne.

Nineteenth Century: During Conrad's lifetime,his native Poland is under the rule of the RussianEmpire. Conrad's father is a member of a resist-ance organization, which fights unsuccessfullyfor Polish independence from Russia.

Twentieth Century: Poland gains national in-dependence in the years following World War I.During World War II, Poland is occupied byNazi Germany and Russia, and after the war itcomes under Communist control. With the 1989collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, Po-land begins the process of converting to a demo-cratic government with a free-market economy.

imperialism in the form of Belgian colonization,Coppola's film is set during the Vietnam War in the1960s, and is a commentary on U.S. involvement inthe Vietnam conflict. Coppola retained the centralnarrative trajectory, in which a Captain Willard(played by Martin Sheen), substituted for Conrad'scharacter Marlow, is sent on a mission to retrieve arenegade Colonel Kurtz (played by Marlon Brando),whose' 'unsound methods'' in Cambodia have causedalarm among military leaders. Apocalypse Nowincludes a notable performance by Dennis Hopperas the character equivalent to Conrad's HarlequinRussian soldier, who maniacally worships Kurtz.While critics agree that Coppola's film is an impres-

sive achievement in cinematic style, they disagreeon the political implications of the film. It is clearlyan indictment of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, butis full of ambiguity in its greater implications. Thedocumentary, Hearts of Darkness (1992), chroni-cles the making of the film.

The Congo"Heart of Darkness" is based on Conrad's

experiences as the captain of a steamboat in theCongo River (the second longest river in Africa,after the Nile) during the 1890s. At that time, theCongo was under the rule of King Leopold II ofBelgium. Although he ' 'gave'' what was then called

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The Free State of the Congo to the Belgian people in1895, his rule over the region effectively remaineduntil his death in 1909. Under Leopold's rule, theAfrican people were exploited for their work, andtreated as badly and brutally as slaves. Upon Leo-pold's death, it became the Belgian Congo, and wasruled by Belgium until 1960, when it won indepen-dence. Between 1960 and 1965, the region sufferedfrom the political upheaval of formulating a newgovernment. In 1965, Joseph-Desire Mobutu be-came president of the Congo. In 1971, Mobutuchanged the country's name to Zaire, and his ownname to Mobutu Sese Seko, as well as changing thenames of other places within the nation. In 1997, itbecame the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Ford Madox FordConrad became a personal friend and co-author

of the novelist Ford Madox Ford, with whom hewrote two books. Ford, considered among the great-est of novelists, is best known for The Good Soldier(1915). Other important works include Parade'sEnd, a four-part series made up of: Some Do Not(1924), No More Parades (1925), A Man CouldStand Up (1926), and Last Post (1928). Ford wasknown for his close association with many of thegreat writers of his day, and for his encouragementof younger writers.

Blackwood's Magazine"Heart of Darkness" was first published in

three monthly installment's in Blackwood's Maga-zine. Blackwood's Magazine was an important liter-ary influence in nineteenth-century Britain. It wasoriginally founded by William Blackwood, a Scot-tish bookseller, in 1817, originally entitled Edin-burgh Monthly Magazine, and later Blackwood'sEdinburgh Magazine; in 1905 it became Blackwood'sMagazine. Originally focusing on political satire, itwas also a literary journal publishing poems, shortstories, and novels in serial form. Eventually, itbecame less political and more literary, publishingworks of such renowned authors as George Eliotand Anthony Trollope as well as Joseph Conrad.

Critical Overview

"Heart of Darkness" is widely considered to beConrad's masterpiece. It was first published inBlackwood's Magazine in a series of three install-ments, in February, March, and April of 1899. In

1902, it was published in the book, Youth: A Narra-tive, and Two Other Stories.

' 'Heart of Darkness" was understood by criticsat the time of its initial publication as an indictmentof Belgian colonial rule in the Free State of theCongo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo).According to Robert F. Haugh, in Joseph Conrad,"The story was taken by some as an attack uponBelgian colonial methods in the Congo; as a moraltract; and as a study of race relationships." Haughgoes on to say that,' 'Most contemporary reviewersread it as a criticism of Belgian colonialism, an issuethat remained alive until Conrad's death and gotattention in his obituary notices." Other reviewersinterpreted the story in terms of Christian religiousiconography. As Haugh explains, "Paul Wiley, inhis Conrad's Measure of Man ... finds the myth ofthe fall from innocence throughout Conrad, and . . .makes of Kurtz the man driven from the Gardenof Eden."

More recent critical debate on ' 'Heart of Dark-ness" has focused on the issue of whether the storyis actually a critique of racism, or if the story isbased on a fundamentally racist perspective. In alecture first given in 1975, entitled "An Image ofAfrica," African novelist Chinua Achebe made theargument that, based on this story, ' 'Joseph Conradwas a thoroughgoing racist." Achebe argues thatthe story is structured on a common racist concep-tion in Western thought, which perceives Africanpeople as uncivilized and white people as civilized,and that Conrad, rather than challenging racist con-ceptions, ' 'chose the role of purveyor of comfortingmyths. 'Heart of Darkness' projects the image ofAfrica as 'the other world,' the antithesis of Europeand therefore of civilization, a place where man'svaunted intelligence and refinement are finallymocked by triumphant bestiality." Achebe goes onto explain that this story continues the racist concep-tion that conceives' 'Africa as setting and backdropwhich eliminates the African as human factor. Af-rica as a metaphysical battlefield devoid of allrecognizable humanity. . . . " Achebe goes on tocriticize the body of Western criticism of Conrad'sstory, which continues to overlook these racistassumptions.' 'That this simple truth is glossed overin criticisms of his work is due to the fact that whiteracism against Africa is such a normal way ofthinking that its manifestations go completelyunremarked." Achebe posits that "the question iswhether a novel which celebrates this dehumaniza-tion, which depersonalizes a portion of the humanrace, can be called a great work of art. My answer is:

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Tim Roth, as Marlow, in the 1994 television movie, "Heart of Darkness."

No, it cannot." He concludes that Conrad's "obvi-ous racism has, however, not been addressed. And itis high time it was!"

Francis B. Singh, in a 1978 essay entitled "TheColonialistic Bias of 'Heart of Darkness,'" on theother hand, states that "it is a truth universallyacknowledged that 'Heart of Darkness' is one of themost powerful indictments of colonialism ever writ-ten." He qualifies this statement, however, by con-cluding that "ambivalent, in fact, is probably themost accurate way to sum up Conrad's attitudetoward colonialism." Singh goes on to explain that' 'the compromises that Marlow makes, as when hefights off identification with the blacks or when hetells lies about Kurtz to prevent the civilized West-ern world from collapsing, stem from Conrad's owninability to face unflinchingly the nature of coloni-alism." C. P. Saravan, in a 1980 article entitled"Racism and the 'Heart of Darkness,'" makes theclaim that Conrad was not necessarily in agreementwith his fictional character of Marlow on his per-ceptions of Africa and Africans. Saravan claims that"it is not correct to say that Marlow has Conrad'scomplete confidence," and that the "ironic dis-tance between Marlow and Conrad should not beoverlooked." He asserts that, through this story,"Conrad suggests that Europe's claim to be civi-

lized and therefore superior, needs earnest reexami-nation." Saravan concludes that "Conrad was notentirely immune to the infection of the beliefs andattitudes of his age, but he was ahead of most intrying to break free."

Criticism

Liz BrentBrent has a Ph.D. in American culture, special-

izing in cinema studies, from the University ofMichigan. She is a freelance writer and teachescourses in history of American cinema at the Uni-versity of Michigan. In the following essay, Brentdiscusses the minor female characters in Con-rad's story.

Many of Conrad's stories take place primarily in theall-male environment of the sailing ship, or otherall-male social or work settings. Yet, the femalecharacters in "Heart of Darkness" play an impor-tant role in the central themes and symbolism of thestory. Female characters here include: Marlow'saunt, who helps him to get the job on the steamboat;the two knitting women in the office of the Com-pany, in France; the African woman who seems to

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WhatDo I Read

Next?Lord Jim (1900) is Conrad's other "master-piece." This story focuses on a young sailor,Jim, who belongs to a crew that abandons theirship during a wreck, leaving hundreds of passen-gers to drown. It is narrated by Conrad's charac-ter Marlow.

The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale (1907) byJoseph Conrad is a novel from Conrad'slater period.

The Good Soldier (1915) by Ford Madox Ford isa masterpiece by Conrad's friend, contemporarynovelist, and sometime co-author. It concernsthe intrigues of two couples.

Conrad on Film (1997), edited by Gene M.Moore, is a collection of articles regarding adap-

tations of Conrad's stories to the screen. Severalarticles focus on Francis Ford Coppola's Apoca-lypse Now, based on "Heart of Darkness."

The Mirror of the Sea and A Personal Record(1988) by Joseph Conrad consists of reissues ofConrad's earlier autobiographical books.

The Complete Short Fiction of Joseph Conrad(1992), edited by Samuel Hynes, is a four-vol-ume set of the collected works of Conrad: Vol-umes I and II: The Stories; Volumes III and IV:The Tales.

Joseph Conrad: Selected Works (1994), writingsby Joseph Conrad, is a collection that containsConrad's most famous and most critically ac-claimed stories.

be Kurtz's companion; and, Kurtz's "Intended,"the white woman Kurtz is engaged to marry at thetime of his death. The following essay examines theroles of minor female characters—Marlow's auntand the two knitting women—in terms of theirsignificance to central themes of the story.

Then—would you believe it—I tried the women. I,Charlie Marlow, set the women to work—to get ajob! Heavens!

The first woman to be mentioned in the story isCharlie Marlow's aunt, who, through various socialconnections, secures him the job with the Companyas captain of a steamboat in the Congo. Marlow'sattitude toward his aunt is based on his sense ofhimself as a sailor, a man's man, independent of anywoman. It is with a tone of self-mockery thatMarlow marvels at the phenomenon that he, of allpeople, would allow himself to seek out the aid of awoman in his own affairs.

Marlow describes his aunt's response to hisrequest for help in getting a job in the Congo interms that imply he finds it somewhat infantile—inthe sense that he seems uncomfortable with havingsuch a "fuss" made over him by a woman. Along

the same lines, Marlow finds his aunt's attentions tohim somewhat emasculating, in the sense that theflowery enthusiasm of a society woman is alien tothe all-male world of seafaring men in which he is athome. Calling her "a dear enthusiastic soul," heexplains that,

She wrote: "It would be delightful. I am ready to doanything, anything for you. It is a glorious idea. Iknow the wife of a very high personage in the Admin-istration and also a man who has lots of influencewith," etc., etc. She was determined to make no endof fuss to get me appointed skipper of a river steam-boat, if such was my fancy.

Marlow explains his motivation for stooping toseek out the help of a woman as based on the fervorof his desire to find work that would take him toAfrica. He excuses his willingness to succumb tohis aunt's "fuss," by explaining "Well, you see,the notion drove me."

The next women Marlow encounters are thetwo women who greet him at the Company officesin France. Upon entering the office, he is greeted bytwo women, dressed rather austerely, who sit si-lently knitting. ' 'Two women, one fat and the otherslim, sat on straw-bottomed chairs knitting black



wool." These women strike Marlow as enigmatic,and he describes one as a "somnambulist"—asleepwalker.

The slim one got up and walked straight at me—stillknitting with downcast eyes—and only just as I beganto think of getting out of her way, as you would for asomnambulist, stood still, and looked up. Her dresswas as plain as an umbrella cover, and she turnedround without a word and preceded me into a wait-ing-room.

These women pose a picture of stark femininedomesticity—with their continual knitting, austereclothing, and plain countenance—and yet, theystrike Marlow as "ominous."

In the outer room the two women knitted black woolfeverishly. . . . The old one sat on her chair. Her flatcloth slippers were propped up on a foot-warmer and acast reposed on her lap. She wore a stretched whiteaffair on her head, had a wart on her cheek, and silver-rimmed spectacles hung on the tip of her nose. Sheglanced at me above the glasses. The swift andindifferent placidity of that look troubled me. . . . Aneerie feeling came over me. She seemed uncannyand fateful.

The significance of Marlow's description ofthese two women, which contrasts a "placid" do-mestic picture with an "uncanny" and "ominous"atmosphere, gains greater significance and meaningwhen contrasted with the "horror" of the Com-pany's activities, which Marlow eventually discov-ers in Africa. Once in Africa, Marlow perceives thetwo women as' 'guarding the door of Darkness''; inother words, their role of greeting the men whoenter the office of the Company on their way toAfrica—men who generally never return—imbuesthem with both the foreknowledge of the fate ofeach man, and suggests the dark, evil underbelly ofthe Company's exploitation of the African people—a trade in ivory, which, from the vantage point of theCompany offices in France, appears to be a ' 'placid''business, but which is, in fact, brutal and inhumaneto the point of "horror."

Often far away there I thought of these two, guardingthe door of Darkness, knitting black wool as for awarm pall, one introducing, introducing continuouslyto the unknown, the other scrutinising the cheery andfoolish faces with unconcerned old eyes.

The continual knitting of black wool, and theblack dresses worn by the women, resonate with thestory's central imagery of ' 'darkness''—darkness isassociated with death, with the unknown, and withevil. Thus, the ' 'door of Darkness'' that the women"guard" is a passage to death for the men whonaively sign on with the Company. Marlow's de-scription of the women takes on a tone of grim irony

women who wear black dresses

and knit black wool are

strongly associated with

death and darkness, the

aunt's perception of the

Company's role in Africa is

naively associated with

efforts at Christian

enlightenment of the native

Africans."

with the use of a Latin phrase: ' 'Ave/ Old knitter ofblack wool. Morituri te salutant"—meaning, "Hail!Old knitter of black wool. Those who are about todie salute you." The use of this Latin phrase (simi-lar to the phrase used by gladiators in the Romanarena) ironically elevates the impending death ofeach man whom the women greet to the level of aproud battle cry.

Marlow's subsequent goodbye visit to the auntwho got him the job with the Company acquiresgreater depth in comparison to his encounter withthe two knitting women. Marlow continues thecharacterization of his aunt as excessive in herfeminine enthusiasm regarding his imminent trav-els. Marlow's description of her suggests an affec-tionate indulgence of her good-hearted "fuss"over him:

One more thing remained to do—say good-bye to myexcellent aunt. I found her triumphant. . . . it becamequite plain to me 1 had been represented to the wife ofthe high dignitary and goodness knows to how manymore people besides as an exceptional and giftedcreature—a piece of good fortune for the Company—a man you don't get hold of every day. Good Heavens!

The domestic setting of tea and a chat by thefireside echoes the "ominous" domestic setting ofthe two women knitting.

I had a cup of tea—the last decent cup of tea for manydays—and in a room that most soothingly looked justas you would expect a lady's drawing-room to look,we had a long quiet chat by the fireside.

V o l u m e 12 1 2 1

Likewise, as the two

Heart of D a r k n e s s

But the aunt's fireside is described as "sooth-ing' ' in contrast with the Company's fireside, whichis "ominous." The "ominous" air of the twoknitting women—who seem to know that the fate ofeach man who enters the office is horror and death—iscontrasted with the aunt's complete innocence ofthe danger and horrors that await Marlow in Africa.Likewise, as the two women who wear black dressesand knit black wool are strongly associated withdeath and darkness, the aunt's perception of theCompany's role in Africa is naively associated withefforts at Christian enlightenment of the nativeAfricans. In other words, she imagines Marlow tobe a sort of Christian missionary.

It appears however I was also one of the Workers,with a capital—you know. Something like an emis-sary of light, something like a lower sort of apostle.There had been a lot of such rot let loose in print andtalk just about that time, and the excellent womanliving right in the rush of all that humbug got carriedoff her feet. She talked about "weaning those igno-rant millions from their horrid ways," till, upon myword, she made me quite uncomfortable.

Unlike his aunt, Marlow knows, even beforeleaving for Africa, that "the Company was run forprofit"—and that its mission was nothing morethan extracting the greatest possible profit from thesources of ivory in Africa.

His aunt's naive delusions about the nature ofthe Company's mission in Africa leads Marlow tomake a generalization about women that is key tothe central themes of the story. He concludes thatwomen live in a fantasy world that denies the brutalrealities of human thoughts and deeds—the ' 'hor-ror" that Marlow is forced to face head-on in hisencounter with Kurtz.

It's queer how out of touch with truth women are!They live in a world of their own and there had neverbeen anything like it and can never be. It is toobeautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up itwould go to pieces before sunset. Some confoundedfact we men have been living with ever since theday of Creation, would start up and knock thewhole thing over.

Conrad's treatment of these minor female char-acters—who seem only incidental upon first read-ing of the story—take on greater depth with closerexamination. They function to set up a contrast ofthe ' 'placid'' world of female domesticity in Europewith Marlow's experience of "horror" on the partof Europeans in Africa. A central irony of the storyis the idea that European "civilization" rests uponthe "horrors" of colonialism in Africa. Further-more, Marlow's affectionate, yet indulgent, de-scriptions of his aunt add a note of playful irony to

the "dark" ironies that characterize the storyas a whole.

Source: Liz Brent, Critical Essay on "Heart of Darkness,"in Short Stories for Students, The Gale Group, 2001.

Ted BillyIn the following essay, Billy focuses on Con-

rad's "critical attitude toward verbal expressionsof truth'' in ' 'Heart of Darkness'' and its parallelsto Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophies of language.

Conrad drew attention to the last pages of' 'Heart ofDarkness" in his letter of 31 May 1902 to WilliamBlackwood, in which he says that' 'the interview ofthe man and the girl locks in—as it were—the whole30000 words of narrative description into one sug-gestive view of a whole phase of life, and makes ofthat story something quite on another plane than ananecdote of a man who went mad in the Centre ofAfrica'' (. . . emphasis added). Instead of conclud-ing in the heart of the Congo, the tale comes fullcircle to its point of origin, the Thames, by way ofMarlow's return to the sepulchral city and subse-quent encounter with Kurtz's Intended.

Conrad's impressionistic depiction of Brussels,both early and late in the narrative, externalizes thesham and hypocrisy he sees at the heart of Westerncivilization. On the second visit, Marlow takesoffense at the "irritating pretense" of perfect secu-rity reflected in the faces of the insignificant citi-zens. Yet here, in the heart of the city of untruth,Marlow lies to conceal the horror of Kurtz's degra-dation and, apparently, to reinforce the Intended's"saving illusion." True, Marlow does admit hiscontempt for lies early in the narrative, but hisAfrican nightmare transcends conventional polari-ties such as truth and falsehood, good and evil,appearance and reality. He finally recognizes truthsas convenient fictions, useful in matters of survival,but totally invalid in terms of understanding thenature of life. Marlow lies (at least, so he tells us) topreserve the Intended's opportunity for affirmationand survival. He also lies because he perceivessomething of Kurtz in himself as well as in theIntended. The melodramatic interview ends withMarlow bowing before the inscrutable enigma ofexistence. Conrad insinuates throughout this cruciallocking, or summarizing, scene that in order tosustain life one must project one's own illusions forliving. Self-deception, the essential condition forhappiness, becomes a kind of existential higherunderstanding, and thus Conrad invalidates all con-ventional truths and moralities in his iconoclastic



narrative of the truth of fiction and the fictionof truth.

Conrad's critical attitude toward verbal expres-sions of truth in "Heart of Darkness" closelyparallels Nietzsche's skeptical outlook. As criticshave noted, Conrad and Nietzsche adopted similarattitudes toward language. Conrad views languageas an imprecise—if not deceptive—means of com-munication, as does Nietzsche in his essays "OnTruth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense" and "Onthe Prejudices of Philosophers." In the formeressay, Nietzsche argues that the mind is an arbitraryinstrument of knowledge more concerned with flat-tering deceptions than with perceiving the truthbeyond appearances. Defining man as an assem-blage of masks, roles, poses, and postures, he seesthe vanity of the human race as dependent on thecapacity for self-deceit. External reality mystifiesthe modern individual, who remains imprisonedwithin a self-deceiving consciousness that decrees,in accordance with "linguistic legislation," thattruth must be always agreeable and never damagingto the ego: "And, moreover, what about theseconventions of language? Are they really the prod-ucts of knowledge, of the sense of truth? Do thedesignations and the things coincide? Is languagethe adequate expression of all realities?'' Languageis general and conceptual, but each experience isparticular and unique, and therefore words fail tocommunicate without equivocation: "[T]ruths areillusions about which one has forgotten that this iswhat they are; metaphors which are worn out andwithout sensuous power; coins which have lost theirpictures and now matter only as metal, no longer ascoins." Truth, debased and defrauded into surfacetruths, no longer functions as anything but an agentfor conditioning and conformity: "LT]o be truthfulmeans using the customary metaphors—in moralterms: the obligation to lie according to fixed con-vention, to lie herd-like in a style obligatory for all."

In his essay "On the Prejudices of Philoso-phers," he further contends that since reality isunknowable through conventional means, primarilylogic and language, existence would be impossiblewithout a consistent falsification of the world as itis. Recognizing "untruth as a condition of life,"one can no longer seriously entertain questions oftruth or falsehood; instead, what really matters is theaffirmation or denial of life. If illusions are neces-sary to preserve and promote life, Nietzsche main-tains, the human ego will abandon the search fortrue judgments and explanations of existence infavor of conventional fictions, that is, the specious

Truth remains elusive,

and any effort to package it

in linguistic wrapping seems

doomed to failure. So why

speak at all?"

consolations of language, logic, and other formulaicsystems of reference.

Although I am not arguing that Nietzsche'slinguistic skepticism directly influenced Conrad,some of Nietzsche's works may have been availableto Conrad before he began writing ' 'Heart of Dark-ness." But what Nietzsche was propounding intheoretical terms Conrad expressed in the fabric ofhis fiction, becoming one of the first major twenti-eth-century authors to challenge the efficacy oflanguage as a vehicle for transmitting meaningfulcommunication. More specifically, Conrad targetsthe deleterious effects of the labeling function oflanguage. Words and things are not synonymous.Or, as Djuna Barnes puts it, writing almost fourdecades after the publication of "Heart of Dark-ness' ' : ' 'Life is not to be told, call it as loud as youlike, it will not tell itself. . . . There is no truth, . . .you have been unwise enough to make a formula;you have dressed the unknowable in the garments ofthe known."

Yet Conrad's ending involves more thanMarlow's lie and its motivation. In particular,Marlow's saving falsehood gains new significancein light of the intricate series of correspondingwords and phrases that pervade the final pages ofthe novella. These correspondences are sometimessuperficial, as when Marlow compares Kurtz's "ebb-ing' ' life to the swiftly running ' 'brown current." Inthe last paragraph, Conrad's narrator reports theDirector's announcement' 'We have lost the first ofthe ebb," and states that''the tranquil waterway . . .seemed to lead into the heart of an immense dark-ness." This takes us back to the opening of thenarrative, when the Nellie waits' 'for the turn of thetide'' at ' 'the beginning of an interminable water-way." Conrad's nautical imagery suggests thatMarlow and his auditors must share Kurtz's fate, animplication that seems substantiated by the name oftheir cruising yawl, the Nellie, perhaps a comic

V o l u m e 12 1 2 3


diminutive of death knell, as the geographical refer-ence to ' 'Gravesend'' may corroborate. Employingdeath as a metaphor for disillusionment, or spiritualextinction, Conrad chronicles the failure of humanintentions and lofty aspirations. At the heart ofdarkness, Marlow, who has been linked to Kurtz asone of the new breed of agents, finds himself' 'numbered with the dead." Conrad again identifiesMarlow with Kurtz in the final scene when Marlowrationalizes his visit to the Intended as an attempt togive up everything that remains of Kurtz. But themeeting does not unfold as Marlow imagines, andhe finally accepts the burden of insight as a perma-nent part of his psyche. Marlow must live with thememory of Kurtz's horror for the rest of his life.

Kurtz dies before the locking scene begins, buthe reappears as a phantom to haunt Marlow in thesepulchral city, speaking through the mouthpiece ofthe Intended to dumbfound him once again. Conradhints at the correspondence of Kurtz and the Intendedby punning on the word expression. In Marlow'sestimation, Kurtz's greatest attribute is his "gift ofnoble and lofty expression," and while admiringthe Intended's portrait, Marlow remarks that "shehad a beautiful expression.'' Kurtz's eloquent rhetoriccorresponds to the beauty of his fiancee's counte-nance. But we must also keep in mind that Marlowinterprets Kurtz's cry ' 'The horror'' as ' 'the expres-sion of some sort of belief; it had candor, it hadconviction, it had the appalling face of a glimpsedtruth." Much earlier, Marlow had digressed todiscuss the ' 'flavour of mortality in lies"; however,Conrad asserts that truth can also be appalling, as inKurtz's shock of recognition ("The horror!") pre-ceding his death. The "flavour of mortality" alsobecomes manifest in the final scene, when Marlowbegins a sentence and the Intended finishes it,substituting her own words and feelings for Marlow's:

Then before the appealing fixity of her gaze thatseemed to watch for more words on my lips I went on,"It was impossible not to ..."

"Love him," she finished eagerly, silencing me intoan appalled dumbness. "How true! How true!"

Truth can be appalling more often than appeal-ing whenever it negates life. The example of misun-derstanding above suggests that knowing the truthabout Kurtz might destroy the Intended's sentimen-tal cocoon. Marlow seems no more capable ofenlightening her than he was with Kurtz when heattempted to speak common sense to him at theInner Station. Conrad's linking of Marlow withKurtz and Kurtz with the Intended implies that weare prisoners of our own preconceptions about life.

Truth and falsehood have little to do with theaffirmations and negations that render existencepurposeful or pointless.

Conrad also links Kurtz to the Intended byemphasizing their mutual capacity for belief. InEurope, a journalist tells Marlow that Kurtz "hadthe faith. He could get himself to believe any-thing—anything." Marlow echoes this assessmentin much the same language when he describes theIntended: ' 'She had a mature capacity for fidelity,for belief, for suffering. The room seemed to havegrown darker as if all the sad light of the cloudyevening had taken refuge on her forehead." Here,light and darkness do not correspond to truth andfalsehood. Rather, the "sad light" represents adiminishing beacon of faith in a devouring chaos ofdarkness. Moreover, Conrad often calls attention tothe Intended's "ashy halo" (an arresting oxymo-ron) in this scene: "[W]ith every word spoken theroom was growing darker, and only her forehead,smooth and white, remained illumined by theunextinguishable light of belief and love." Fidelity,whether well-founded or unfounded, seems the solealternative to the psychological paralysis of unmiti-gated despair. Conrad transmutes the metaphysicsof despair into a poetics of immobility and blindnesswhen he immerses Kurtz in "impenetrable dark-ness' ' on his deathbed to contemplate the harrowingthought of his own emptiness. In similar fashion,Conrad stages the interview with the Intended in aroom that gradually succumbs to dusk and darkness.As the room grows darker, Marlow realizes he mustkeep secret Kurtz's withering words: "The duskwas repeating them in a persistent whisper allaround us, in a whisper that seemed to swell menac-ingly like the first whisper of a rising wind. 'Thehorror! The horror!'" By lying, Marlow does notgive Kurtz the justice he had requested:' 'I could nottell her. It would have been too dark—too darkaltogether. . . . " Yet, by attempting to save theIntended from the despair that consumed Kurtz,Marlow affirms Kurtz's original intentions, ratherthan the actual consequences of those intentions.Marlow keeps the darkness within himself, refusingto extinguish the Intended's dim light of belief. Hislie functions as a surface truth that preserves life atthe price of deceit.

There is also the question of how Marlow canbe convinced that he knows the truth about Kurtz.The Intended asks for Kurtz's last words, but Marlowwas dining in the mess room at the time of his death.It is possible that in his delirium Kurtz could havespoken almost anything without being overheard.

; 2 4 S h o r t S t o r i e s f o r S t u d e n t s


Marlow cannot be sure that Kurtz's last words were"The horror! The horror!" And even if they were,what do they really mean? The secret lies withKurtz, not with Marlow, who expatiates on the topicad nauseum without providing a clear-cut explana-tion. Does Kurtz's cry "The horror!" signify hisrecognition of the abominable evil he has commit-ted? Or is it an acknowledgment of his inner empti-ness? Like Ahab's doubloon in Moby-Dick, Kurtz'soutburst has as many meanings as interpreters.Ultimately, the meaning of this stirring exclamationmust be determined subjectively, and individually,by each reader and on each reading of the novella.

Throughout the locking scene, the Intendedrepresents the image of light threatened by dark-ness, of order besieged by chaos. In the dusk, her"pale head" seems to float toward Marlow, as ifdisembodied from her black garments. Conrad callsattention to ' 'the last gleams of twilight,'' the ' 'glit-ter of her eyes," and the "glimmer of gold" hairthat "seemed to catch all the remaining light."When the Intended assumes a posture of supplica-tion that reminds Marlow of Kurtz's other woman,his native mistress of inextinguishable faith, hedescribes her as "stretching bare brown arms overthe glitter of the infernal stream, the stream ofdarkness." Conrad's light and darkness correspondto affirmation and negation, not to truth and false-hood, for ' 'Heart of Darkness'' unfolds as a journeyto the brink of cosmic nihilism and back again to abroken world of dim beliefs. Marlow ultimatelyviews the Intended's delusion as a sanctuary fromthe snares of experience, as he finds himself' 'bow-ing my head before the faith that was in her, beforethat great and saving illusion that shone with anunearthly glow in the darkness, in the triumphantdarkness from which I could not have defendedher—from which I could not even defend myself."His lie forges a solidarity of belief among himself,Kurtz, and the Intended. Marlow's compassionateact may serve as a temporary triumph for life setagainst the backdrop of the inevitable triumph ofdarkness. A case can even be made for the view thatMarlow's real lie is his attempt to rid himself of theburden of Kurtz at the Intended's doorstep. Marlowrealizes that he cannot dispose of the memory soeasily, and he departs with the "truth" and thetrauma still within him. He confesses to a "feelingof infinite pity" for the woman who had more faithin Kurtz than Kurtz had in himself. Given a ' 'choiceof nightmares," Marlow ultimately selects the lesserof two negations—the appalling "lie" instead ofthe annihilating "truth."

Conrad presents Marlow's visit to the Intendedas a ghostly reunion with Kurtz; every detail givesthe impression of a posthumous existence. Even herstreet resembles a ' 'well-kept alley in a cemetery."Unable to cast off his memories, Marlow envisionsKurtz "on the stretcher opening his mouth vora-ciously as if to devour all the earth with all itsmankind." The voice that Conrad accentuatesthroughout the tale intimidates Marlow even longafter Kurtz's death. Marlow imagines Kurtz staringat him from the panel of the door "with that wideand immense stare embracing, condemning, loath-ing all the universe." The white and black pianokeys suggest the disparity of Kurtz's idealistic rhetoricand his rapacious lust for ivory.

But Conrad also employs more subtle tactics inthis scene. The Intended suddenly materializes,dressed in black, as if Kurtz had died only the daybefore. Catching sight of her, Marlow also feels thattime has stopped since the death of Kurtz:

I saw her and him in the same instant of time—hisdeath and her sorrow—I saw her sorrow in the verymoment of his death. Do you understand? I saw themtogether—I heard them together. She had said with adeep catch of the breath, "I have survived"—whilemy strained ears seemed to hear distinctly, mingledwith her tone of despairing regret, the summing-upwhisper of his eternal condemnation.

Beneath the rhetoric of late-Victorian melo-drama, Conrad implies that the Intended embodiesKurtz's short-lived intentions as an apostle of ideal-ism and that the phantom whisper represents Kurtz'swell-deserved damnation, his total psychologicalinversion in the heart of Africa. Marlow apprehendsthis duality as the general condition of mankind, notas an isolated eccentricity of human nature. Earlier,he had remarked that the human mind is capable ofanything. Marlow even perceives this duality withinhis own identity, when he faces the failure of hismisguided mission as an emissary of light andrealizes that company officials have lumped himwith Kurtz as practitioners of advanced methods ofcolonialism. But Marlow most distinctly hears thisjudgment against the hollowness of humanity in thedisconsolate words of the Intended: "[T]he soundof her low voice seemed to have the accompanimentof all the other sounds full of mystery, desolation,and sorrow I had ever heard . . . the faint ring ofincomprehensible words cried from afar, the whis-per of a voice speaking from beyond the thresholdof an eternal darkness." Seeing Kurtz in the glow-ing face of the ever-faithful Intended, hearing Kurtz'sinsane whisper in her trembling voice, Marlowrecognizes once again the inescapable phantom he

V o l u m e 12 I 2 5


had earlier called the "initiated wraith from theback of Nowhere." It dwells within him, within allhumankind. Kurtz literally is the nowhere man;his ancestry stems from all over Europe, and hiscorpse lies somewhere in a muddy hole. His shadeis everyone's shadow. Marlow understands thisimplicitly and realizes the futility of all ego-orientedactions. His lie temporarily preserves his integrityand the Intended's illusion, but like the ' 'life-lie'' inIbsen's The Wild Duck the deception does notensure salvation but merely survival.

Marlow does survive. He survives what Kurtzfailed to endure in the heart of the wilderness.Marlow affirms that like ancient explorers in thegreat age of navigation modern individuals mustlearn ' 'to live in the midst of the incomprehensiblewhich is also detestable." The language of "Heartof Darkness" amplifies "the incomprehensible"with acute exaggerations of Conrad's own accountof his journey to the inner recesses of Africa.Conrad's rhetoric, with its preponderance of super-lative and indefinite abstractions, consistently drama-tizes the gulf between human experiences and theimprecise linguistic representations of those events."Heart of Darkness" unfolds as an excursion intothe absurd, a penetrating scrutiny of nothingness,and a dramatic example of Conrad's evolving ar-ticulation of humanity's perennially frustrated searchfor meaning. The very novella itself, according toPeter Brooks, calls into question the ' 'epistemologyof narrative'' and demonstrates ' 'the inadequacy ofthe inherited orders of meaning." Truth remainselusive, and any effort to package it in linguis-tic wrapping seems doomed to failure. So whyspeak at all?

In the final paragraph, Marlow returns to hisoriginal posture, silent and detached ' 'in the pose ofa meditating Buddha.'' This ultimate parallel, Marlowas Buddha, actually conceals Marlow's role asmediator between the benevolence of Buddha andthe rapacity of Kurtz. Marlow plays the part of theman of action who turns to a life of contemplation,even though, paradoxically, he "still followed thesea." The external narrator's reference to Marlow's"pose" as Buddha may suggest that he is mockingMarlow's pontificating wisdom, yet Conrad's un-named external narrator does conclude the storywith the image of the Thames, the civilized counter-part of the primeval Congo, leading to ' 'the heart ofan immense darkness." If the external narrator hasany awareness of Marlow's grim revelation, then heis certainly unique, for the other auditors neverrespond to Marlow's interpretation of his experi-

ence, except by way of petty objections or stupefiedsilence. Enveloped in their own little word-worlds,invisible cocoons of catch phrases and slogans, theyconsider Marlow's "inconclusive" narration a usur-pation of their right to fritter away the hours playingdominoes. They function, in the more sophisticated"jungle" of progressive London, as counterparts tothe worthless pilgrims who litter the deck of Marlow'ssteamboat in the Congo. Like Kurtz, they exist onthe fringe of egomania, fitting inheritors of Kurtz'sI-me-mine sensibility: "My Intended, my station,my career, my ideas—these were the subjects forthe occasional utterances of elevated sentiments."The Managing Director's utterance in the last para-graph—"We have lost the first of the ebb"—ringswith the same hollowness. Even the Intended'sturn-of-the-century sentimentality is expressed inreflexive language. Each character speaks in theidiom of his or her cultural conditioning, from theminor figures to the Intended, Kurtz, and Marlowhimself. None of them breaks down the barriersprohibiting authentic communication.

By happenstance or design, Conrad has fash-ioned in "Heart of Darkness" a logomachy, orbattle of words. On one level, he constructs asemiotic framework whereby concrete signs standfor abstract symbols (e.g., the river is the inexorablestream of time; the wilderness, the irrationality oflife; and the darkness, the vacuous heart of man-kind). In juxtaposition to this scheme, he establishesa semantic pattern that undermines much of theparticularity of the narrative. For example, most ofthe characters either have no name, like the externalnarrator and Kurtz's African mistress, or are identi-fied only by occupation: the Director of Companies,the Lawyer, the Accountant, the manager, thebrickmaker, and so on. Or else Conrad links thecharacter to a verbal tag, as in the case of theIntended, the Harlequin, and Marlow's pose as amodern European Buddha. Conrad's rhetoric, re-plete with superlatives and indefinite abstractions,consistently dramatizes the gulf between humanexperiences and the imprecise linguistic formula-tions that allegedly correspond to them. Conrad'sverbal tactics tend to render the whole narrative ofMarlow's journey as an amorphous cloud of moon-mist and to alchemize abstractions such as "im-mense," "unspeakable," and "unknowable" intoconcrete form. The great fecundity of scholarlycommentaries on "Heart of Darkness" testifies toConrad's genius in crafting such a multifacetedjewel for meticulous appraisal. Critics, like earlyexplorers, must write ' 'in the midst of the incompre-



hensible." And every attempt at a definitive inter-pretation of the narrative ultimately falls short of afull disclosure. By taking us to the heart of dark-ness, Conrad paradoxically uses words to demon-strate the inability of language to encompass theunfathomability of human existence.

Source: Ted Billy, "The Clash of Nebulous Ideas," in AWilderness of Words: Closure and Disclosure in Conrad'sShort Fiction, Texas Tech University Press, 1997, pp. 69-77.

Adam GillonIn the following essay, Gillon examines some of

the complex moral issues in "Heart of Darkness,"including white exploitation of Africa as symbolizedb\ the ivory trade.

Thus, in discovering

the horrors of exploitation,

the brutality and hypocrisy

of the Belgian colonists,

Conrad also discovered (as

Marlow did) a terrifying

feeling of affinity with the

savagery of the jungle."

The transformation of this narrator into the Marlowof "Heart of Darkness" represents a great artisticstride forward. Once again there is the familiargroup of listeners whose common bond is the sea,seated on the deck of the Nellie, a cruising yawl: theDirector of Companies, the Lawyer, the Account-ant, Marlow, and the initial storyteller who providesthe description of the Thames, the four men, andsets the mood for the journey that will lead into the"heart of darkness," starting Marlow on his longdiscourse. But this time it is not a straightforwardtale of adventure. From the first Conrad giveswarning of his serious purpose, and later in the storyMarlow takes great pains to assure himself that hisaudience is following him:

Do you see him1? Do you see the story? Do you seeanything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you adream—making a vain attempt, because no relation ofa dream can convey the dream-sensation, that com-mingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in atremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being cap-tured by the incredible which is of the very essenceof dreams.

Perhaps Conrad is straining a bit this device ofcreating an air of verisimilitude, but he succeedssplendidly with the story as a whole. For "Heart ofDarkness" is not really a tale about a man calledKurtz, told by Marlow to a group of his friends. It isabout Marlow and, no doubt, about Conrad himself.The story, as one of Conrad's letters to WilliamBlackwood indicates, is about "the criminality ofinefficiency and pure selfishness when tackling thecivilizing work in Africa. . . . It turned out to bemuch more—an illuminating personal confession, aprofound discussion of man's moral complexity,and, last but not least, a remarkable short novelwhose literary merit is not lessened by its being atonce an adventure story and a psychological thriller.

Once more Conrad examines the plight of thewhite man in the wilderness of the jungle. As in"Karain" and the first two novels, the images oflight and darkness, of sound and stillness, abound,but their function is more effective here; they are notonly more numerous and varied, but they are usedon three different levels: literary, intellectual, andpsychological. The jungle becomes the symbol ofthe savage in man and a symbol of man's isolation.The white man in the darkness of the primeval forestwages a double battle against the destructive powersthat prey on his body, and also against the forcesthat undermine his moral integrity. People who livein an organized, civilized community, protected bylaw and police, cannot understand the powers ofdarkness.

Neither did Marlow—before he went to theCongo, and his search for Kurtz began in the depthsof the primeval forest symbolically representingman's quest for self-knowledge. This quest, whichappears in almost all of Conrad's works, is the coreof his literary method, and especially so in the twostories and two novels featuring Marlow, the spin-ner of yarns engaging the attention of his audiences.In each case the reader is drawn not merely intoMarlow's narrative about other people but also intoan exploration of Marlow's own personality. Ofcourse, this happens also in other tales, e.g., in "TheSecret Sharer," where the Captain reaches a meas-ure of self-knowledge only after he has totallyidentified himself with the problem of the confessedmurderer, Leggatt, whom he shelters from punish-ment. In Lord Jim Marlow is joined by Brierly andStein in his painstaking and painful efforts to under-stand Jim's motives, and each of them ends up withself-examination. Similarly, Marlow's unflagging

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pursuit of Kurtz is an attempt to fathom his ownsoul, conducted with accents of self-mockery.

The tone of Marlow's narrative is easy tounderstand when one recalls Conrad's own experi-ences in the Congo and his comments on his interestin geography and the strange fascination exercisedupon his boyish mind by Sir Leopold McClintock'sThe Voyage of the "Fox" in the Arctic Seas:

The great spirit of the realities of the story sent me offon the romantic explorations of my inner self; to thediscovery of the taste of poring over maps. . . . Onlyonce did that enthusiasm [geographical] expose me tothe derision of my schoolboy chums. One day, puttingmy finger on a spot in the very middle of the thenwhite heart of Africa, I declared that some day I wouldgo there.

What Conrad discovered when he did go toAfrica some eighteen years later was no romanticdream or exalted adventure but "the distastefulknowledge of the vilest scramble for loot that everdisfigured the history of human conscience andgeographical exploration." Little wonder Conradwas melancholy and lonely there in the heart of theAfrican continent, and was prompted to observewith considerable bitterness: "What an end to theidealized realities of a boy's daydreams!"

Yet the Congo journey was valuable to Conradbeyond supplying him with material for his fiction.Before it, he said, he was a mere animal. After it, helost his illusions, perhaps, but not love of humanityin general. Thus, in discovering the horrors ofexploitation, the brutality and hypocrisy of theBelgian colonists, Conrad also discovered (as Marlowdid) a terrifying feeling of affinity with the savageryof the jungle.

Marlow alone, among the members of the expe-dition, can understand the nature of Kurtz's fallbecause he has experienced the same temptation.But though the wilderness, to use his own phrase,has patted him on the head, he does not succumb toits momentary spell. He may feel alienated from hisfellow men, both in the jungle and upon his return tothe civilized world, but he has not cut himself offfrom the whole world, as Kurtz did.

The potent suggestiveness and the dreamlikequality of Kurtz's words shake Marlow profoundly,but he keeps his head, though not his soberness. Thefate of Kurtz is a symbolic warning to Marlow tobeware of the danger of extreme isolation. Kurtz"... had kicked himself loose of the earth . . . hehad kicked the very earth to pieces. . . . He wasalone. . . . " This is the penalty he must pay for

having yielded to the dark powers of the forest andto the darkness of his own soul.

Kurtz had arrived in the Congo with a notion ofbeing considerably more than a mere producer ofivory. He believed that the whites were regarded bythe savage natives as superior beings, and he meantto reform them. Instead of overcoming the savages'ignorance, however, Kurtz became one of them—astheir demigod, to be true. He submitted to adulationand rites in his own honor (probably involvingcannibalism and therefore not described but merelysuggested); he resorted to violence in extortingivory for his company. Yet he came to hate thenatives. The paper for the International Society forthe Suppression of Savage Customs, which theidealistic Kurtz had once written, bore a scrawlednote, "Exterminate all the brutes!" obviously jot-ted down much later.

For all his degradation, Kurtz stands, morallyspeaking, one notch above the manager of thecompany, who never wanted anything but financialgain for himself. In comparison with the managerKurt's corruption is rather attractive, for it lacks themanager's hollowness; and because of Kurtz's elo-quence it is dramatic, so much so, in fact, that itcasts a spell on the young bepatched Russian traderand on Marlow, for whom Kurtz's lot becomes ' 'thenightmare of [my] choice." Marlow is fascinatedbut not overcome by the power emanating from theface of the dying Kurtz. It seems to him that a veilhad been lifted from Kurtz's ivory face. Havingglanced over the edge of the precipice, Marlowknows the meaning of Kurtz's stare on his deathbed.

"Droll thing life is," Marlow declares, "thatmysterious arrangement of merciless logic for afutile purpose. The most you can hope from it issome knowledge of yourself—that comes too late—a crop of unextinguishable regrets." Yet Marlowconsiders Kurtz a remarkable man because his cry"The horror!" was ". . . the expression of somesort of belief', it had candor, it had conviction . . . ithad the appalling face of a glimpsed truth. . . . "That is why Marlow remains loyal to Kurtz; thelatter' 'had stepped over the edge'' while he, Marlow,was' 'permitted to draw back [my] hesitating foot.''Therein, he observes, lies the whole difference.Kurtz's cry represents a revulsion against his darkerself, a sign that he has not been lost completely. Infact, Marlow believes, "It was an affirmation, amoral victory...."

After he recovers from his illness Marlow comesto Brussels, full of disgust for its people, who are



intruders because they cannot possibly understandhis state of mind. He walks about the city, bitterlygrinning at people, haunted by the vision of Kurtzon the stretcher. The gloom of the jungle and thebeating of the drums are still vivid in his imagina-tion. When he brings this vision with him to Kurtz's"Intended," he realizes that he can never stopseeing that eloquent phantom as long as he lives.The memory of Kurtz is like a dream (or rather like anightmare) he can share with nobody else. Kurtz's' 'Intended'' is isolated by her grief and her illusionof Kurtz's integrity and greatness, as the Russianyouth was cut off from the rest of the white colonizersby his fervent belief in Kurtz's eminence. Thiswoman is endowed with a "... mature capacity forfidelity, for belief, for suffering."

Marlow's efforts to find Kurtz and to under-stand him represent, essentially, his search for truth.It is natural, therefore, that he cannot abide false-hood. Seeking the truth about himself, too, and atrue way to tell his story, he concludes that it isimpossible

to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch ofone's existence—that which makes its truth, its mean-ing—its subtle and penetrating essence.

It is one of the major ironies of the story thatMarlow, for all his dedication to truth, must stoop toa lie. Kurtz's fiancee asks what the dying man's lastwords were, and Marlow cannot tell her the truth,that Kurtz's last cryptic message to the world was anagonizing cry, "The horror! The horror!" He can-not because "It would have been too dark—toodark altogether. . . ." Marlow caustically observesthat the heavens didn't fall upon his head when heuttered the lie. Truth has become a rather ambigu-ous thing, and so has the notion of darkness. For,while Kurtz's voice reaches Marlow "... from thethreshold of an eternal darkness,'' he bows his headbefore the faith that was in Kurtz's Intended, "...before that great and saving illusion that shone withan unearthly glow in the darkness, in the triumphantdarkness from which I could not have defendedher—from which [I] could not even defend [my-self]. . . ." Marlow gives the young woman whatshe wants, something to treasure for the rest of herlife; he tells her that the last word Kurtz pronouncedwas her name. Conrad belabors the irony of thesituation. The woman's " . . . cry of inconceivabletriumph and of unspeakable pain" indicates that"She knew. She was sure. . . ."

Marlow was not; having proven his loyalty tothe darkness of Kurtz does he thereby prove that herillusion is true light? After all (to continue the

symbolism of dark and light), she remains in thedark about her beloved Kurtz. Conrad does not givea clear answer. Despite the light of her belief, the' 'ashy halo'' about her head, the room of the Intendedhas grown darker, and she is "all in black . . .floating . . . in the dusk."

Marlow has emerged from the depths of thejungle a wiser and a sadder man. The contact withKurtz has given him something valuable, a height-ened perception of life's complexity. He no longertakes things for granted; nothing is either black orwhite, for the two merge into each other. Thesupreme lesson he has learned is to respect man'sfaith, any faith or sincere conviction. He harbors asecret he cannot divulge to other people. Man mustforever remain shut within the shell of his ownpersonality. Like the captain in "The Secret Sharer,"whose special knowledge sets him apart from hiscrew, Marlow is unable to communicate with oth-ers. He doubts whether his experience can ever beconveyed to his listeners. He has come to believethat "... we live as we dream—alone."

Marlow is right in expressing this doubt, formany a reader of Conrad occasionally fails to distin-guish between the literal and the symbolic aspectsof his fiction. Yet the symbolic level is a mostessential feature of the writer's method. As Con-rad' s use of the central narrator enables the author toremove himself from his subject matter, so hissymbolism and his images convey and enhance thedoubts, ambiguities, and moral predicaments ofhis heroes.

Ivory is white and it is craved by the white manbut it also represents moral darkness; the two whitewomen in the Company's offices knit black wool;"... It seems to me," Marlow says, "I had steppedinto the gloomy circle of some Inferno." As heproceeds to fathom Kurtz's mystery, he perceivesthat its essentials ". . .lay deep under the surface,beyond [my] reach. . . ." Because Marlow's storygoes beyond the obvious it carries an abundance ofsuggestive words or images, e.g., silence, stillness,blazing heat, immobility, somber trees, decay, som-ber and brooding ferocity, skulls on posts, blindwhiteness of a fog, overcast sky, impenetrable dark-ness. Thus, the memory of an actual experience istransformed into a symbolic and deeply ironic ac-count of a modern descent into Hell.

We see, therefore, that "Heart of Darkness" isnot a simple story. The symbolic journeys of Kurtzand Marlow are one theme. Another, perhaps noless important, is the political issue of Belgian

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colonialism. Conrad, his own conservatism not-withstanding, indignantly condemns Belgian impe-rialism in the Congo.

The first narrator connects the story that is tocome from Marlow with some comments on thehistory of the Thames and the conquerors who hadgone out on that river. He paves the way to Marlow'sopening words, spoken against the setting of afalling dusk and the lights of moving ships, ' 'Andthis also . . . has been one of the dark places of theearth." Marlow takes up the theme of man's con-quest, briefly mentions the Romans, the fascinationof the mystery in the wilderness, and then, before hemakes the most significant observation, he assumes"the pose of a Buddha preaching in Europeanclothes and without a lotus flower.'' Marlow speaksof the ancient conquerors:

They grabbed what they could get for the sake of whatwas to be got. It was just robbery with violence,aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going atit blind—as is very proper for those who tackle adarkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostlymeans the taking it away from those who have adifferent complexion or slightly flatter noses thanourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into ittoo much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea atthe back of it; not sentimental pretence but an idea;and an unselfish belief in the idea—something youcan set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacri-fice to. ...

This is a fitting prelude to the picture of theBelgian exploitation of the Congo Marlow paintslater on, as he plunges into his narrative. With bitingirony he describes the activities of a French man-of-war, anchored off the coast, and shelling the bushalthough there was not a shed in sight. This wasindeed a passage into places which had a deadly butalso a farcical aspect. During this nightmarish pil-grimage Marlow comes upon a chain-gang of nativeslaves and then a group of black shapes crouchingamong the trees and dying. This is one of the mostpowerful and shocking evocations of man's brutal-ity, an indignant indictment of the white man'sinhumanity to the black man in the Congo.

They were dying slowly—it was very clear. Theywere nothing earthly now, nothing but black shadowsof disease and starvation, lying confusedly in thegreenish gloom. Brought from all the recesses of thecoast in all the legality of time contracts, lost inuncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food,they sickened, became inefficient, and were thenallowed to crawl away and rest. These moribundshapes were as free as air—and nearly as thin.

Little wonder Marlow has some strong wordsfor the so-called Eldorado Exploring Expedition.

These explorers were merely buccaneers who lackedthe idea, the only redeeming quality of the neces-sary brutality. They only wanted to wrest the treas-ure from the land with "... no more moral purposeat the back of it than there is in burglars breakinginto a safe."

' 'Heart of Darkness'' can thus be regarded as astudy of Belgian colonialism, and not a very com-plimentary one at that. Like The Nigger of the' 'Narcissus,'' however, it has provoked ire amongsome more extreme black writers of our age. Forexample, Chinua Achebe, the African novelist (AMan of the People and Things Fall Apart), in apaper entitled "An Image of Africa," presents acentral and strident thesis "that Conrad was abloody racist." He fails to see anything else in"Heart of Darkness" and does not mention anyother works of Joseph Conrad. Achebe's parochialand rather simplistic view of Conrad's achievementin this short novel is underscored by the recentavalanche of references to "Heart of Darkness" inthe media, following the disastrous war in Vietnamand the macabre events in the jungle of Guyanawhich ended with the mass murder-suicide of thefollowers of Rev. Jim Jones. The popular appeal ofthe story is further shown in Francis Ford Coppola'sfilm Apocalypse Now, which uses Kurtz's name andthe metaphor of the boat going up the river anddraws on several other motifs of the novella, whosetitle has entered the language as a term for the dramaof fanaticism, the dark mystery of the bush, and thedarkness of the human soul.

Yet it is a great deal more. Its many-leveledambiguities and apparently inexhaustible literaryallusiveness (conscious or unconscious) have in-spired or baffled numerous critics questing for anexplanation of its symbolic design and significance.Some, like E. M. Forster (in Abinger Harvest),assailed Conrad for his mistiness. The secret task ofConrad's genius, Forster asserted, contained a va-por rather than a jewel. There was no point discuss-ing the philosophy of Conrad in this work or in otherworks of Conrad, for they had no creed worthdiscussion. Others, like F. R. Leavis (in The GreatTradition), while agreeing with some tenets ofForster, considered "Heart of Darkness" one ofConrad's best performances. T. S. Eliot found in it afitting epigraph for his "The Hollow Men"—"Mistah Kurtz, he dead." One could argue itsappropriateness, for Kurtz is anything but hollow. Itis people like the Manager, or Kayerts and Carlier(in "An Outpost of Progress") who qualify forthe epithet.



Like any good work of art, this novel affordsmany interpretations, so many, in fact, that theywould fill several thick volumes. I shall mention afew only, to illustrate some critical possibilities.Lilian Feder suggests an analogy of Marlow's jour-ney with Vergil's [also spelled "Virgil"] visit toHades in the sixth book of the Aeneid. Robert O.Evans calls it a ' 'descent into the underworld." PaulWiley compares Kurtz's lot with the Christian mythof man's fall from innocence, Kurtz being the manexpelled from the Garden of Eden. Zdzislaw Najderdetects allusions to the legends about Alexander theGreat. Feder's view may offend some as being tooforced a literary exercise, and Wiley's as not quitein keeping with Conrad's own attitude to Christian-ity or the conventional understanding of the Chris-tian dogma. Marlow is no Christ-like figure, nor isKurtz the Christian Satan. Najder's parallel with thedeath of a great military leader is fascinating, but itis treated almost parenthetically in a note and thusnever fully developed. Cedric Watts (in Conrad's' 'Heart of Darkness'': A Critical and ContextualDiscussion) attempts a definitive answer to all othercritics of the novel, as he weaves into his argument"references to Dr. Johnson, T. S. Eliot, Vergil,Darwin, T. H. Exile, Shakespeare, Bucket, Berke-ley, UNESCO, Pound et al. (for this is only a partiallist). . . . He rejects 'allegorizing a non-allegoricwork' as Robert O. Evans's treatment of Danteanillusion. He rejects Hillis Miller's whole approachas being 'so vehement a tribute to Conrad's nihilismthat his ingenuity was strenuously exercised by thefact that Conrad had put pen to paper at all'; this hasled to Miller's neglect of 'the nobility of Marlow'shumanity and of Conrad's moral and political indig-nation.' He rejects Guerard's 'night-journey' the-ory, 'the prime weakness' of which is that we losemore by it than we gain." Watts's credo is simpleenough but, like all other theories that preceded it, ithardly offers an end to the continued exegesis of thiswork: ' 'The better the interpretation of a text, thelarger the number of salient narrative facts thatinterpretation will (in principle or in demonstration)accommodate, and the fewer it will contravene."

Perhaps the familiarity with Conrad's biographi-cal background of this novel and the existence of hisCongo Diary are partly responsible for the elaborateaesthetic and psychological interpretations whichmay obscure the author's basic preoccupation withman's guilt (as in "Karain" and "The Lagoon"),and thereby man's moral stance tested in the dark-ness of a jungle. Conrad did not choose vaguenessor mistiness in order to confuse or mystify his

readers or critics. Such mistiness, if one agrees withForster, as there is results from Conrad's narrativemethod (which makes the narrator a major protago-nist of the story, thus placing a distance betweenhim and the author) and his symbolic language. In asense, it is precisely this sense of mistiness, which Iprefer to call mystery, that is one of Conrad'sstylistic traits. The author cannot reveal the mysterywithout the reader's participation. Conrad's heroes(in this and in other novels) include both the Marlowswho tortuously seek self-knowledge and the Kurtzeswho leap into moral darkness and are swallowed byit. The contact between the two, sometimes theconflict, must be shared by the reader who is askedto experience a kind of moral and aesthetic ephiphany:the revelation of his own affinity with the netherregions of the human soul or an identificationwith the tragic triumphs of heroes who assert theirelusive glory by exalted idealism or misguidedconviction.

Source: Adam Gillon, "The Appalling Face of a GlimpsedTruth: 'Heart of Darkness,'" in Joseph Conrad, Twayne,1982, pp. 68-77.

Sources

Achebe, Chinua, "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's'Heart of Darkness,'" in Heart of Darkness, 3d ed., Norton,1988, pp. 251-53, 256-59.

Haugh, Robert F., '"Heart of Darkness': Problem for Crit-ics," in Heart of Darkness, 3d ed., Norton, 1988, pp. 239,241.

Saravan, C. P., "Racism and the 'Heart of Darkness,'" inHeart of Darkness, 3d ed., Norton, 1988, pp. 282, 283, 285.

Singh, Frances B., "The Colonialistic Bias of 'Heart ofDarkness,'" in Heart of Darkness, 3d ed., Norton, 1988, pp.268, 269, 279.

Further Reading

Batchelor, John, The Life of Joseph Conrad: A CriticalBiography, Blackwell, 1994.

Batchelor's book is a recent biography of Conrad,published by Blackwell press, which originally pub-lished many of Conrad's stories and novels.

Hammer, Robert D., ed., Joseph Conrad: Third World Per-spectives, Three Continents Press, 1990.

Conrad has been criticized for his Eurocentric depic-tions of Africa and other "Third World" cultures; thiscollection of critical essays presents a variety of ThirdWorld perspectives on Conrad's work.

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Hochschild, Adam, King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed,Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa, HoughtonMifflin, 1998.

This work is a history of Colonial Africa underBelgian King Leopold II, during the period in whichseveral of Conrad's stories take place.

Moore, Gene M, ed., Conrad on Film, Cambridge Univer-sity Press, 1997.

Moore's collection of critical essays on film adapta-tions of Conrad stories includes several essays onApocalypse Now, which was based on "Heart ofDarkness."

Nelson, Samuel H., Colonialism in the Congo Basin, 1880-1940, Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1994.

This work is a history of European conquest andcolonization of the Congo during the period in whichseveral of Conrad's stories take place.

Roberts, Andrew Michael, ed., Conrad and Gender,Rodopi, 1993.

This text is a collection of critical essays on Conrad'srepresentations of sex, gender, and sexuality in hisfictional work.

Wilson, Derek, and Peter Ayerst, White Gold: The Story ofAfrican Ivory, Heinemann, 1976.

Wilson's and Ayerst's book provides a history of theivory trade in Africa.

132 Short S t o r i e s for Students

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