Heart of Darkness Study Guide
Part II (102-133)
1. Marlow, unobserved, overhears a conversation about Kurtz between the manager and his
nephew ( ), and states, "...I seemed to see Kurtz for the first time," turning his [Kurtz's]
back on headquarters and home, "setting his face towards the depths of the wilderness..."
( ). Marlow wonders at Kurtz's motive in turning back to the Inner Station instead of
returning home as he had intended. Later, Marlow begins to supply an answer:
"Everything belonged to him--but that was a trifle. The thing was to know what he
belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own" ( ). What do
you think had called Kurtz back to his Inner Station in this "heart of darkness"? [See also
the Russian's narrative in Part III, p. .]
2. As Marlow progresses on his journey upriver, he grows "rather excited at the prospect of
meeting Kurtz" ( ); and when he thinks Kurtz might die before Marlow gets to him,
Marlow confesses "extreme disappointment": he had looked forward to "a talk with
Kurtz" ( )--Why? What do you think is the source of Marlow's fascination with Kurtz?
Why does Marlow feel that to miss Kurtz would be to miss "my destiny in life" ( )?
3. Marlow observes: "Going up the river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings
of the world" ( ), a past remembered "in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream" (
). The brilliant sunlit land offers "no joy," but a "treacherous appeal...to the hidden evil,
to the profound darkness of its heart" (
). This "strange" African "silence" has a
"stillness" without "peace"--the "stillness of an implacable force brooding over an
inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect" ( ). "We were wanderers
on a prehistoric earth"--an atavistic journey into the human past--"We could have fancied
ourselves the first of men taking possession of an accursed inheritance, to be subdued at
the cost of profound anguish and of excessive toil" (
). What is this "accursed
inheritance" that Marlow envisions? For Marlow, "little begrimed steamboat, like a
sluggish beetle" "crawled toward Kurtz" and "penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart
of darkness" (
; --note the title allusions). Kurtz has travelled up this river before
Marlow--what has happened to Kurtz? (See .)
4. Describe Marlow's attitude toward black Africans. In particular, consider the attitudes
expressed on p. . Why does he say that "the worst of it" is suspecting "their not being
inhuman"? Why is the thought of "remote kinship" with the Africans judged "Ugly" by
Marlow? What is their "terrible frankness"--"truth stripped of its cloak of time" ( )?
What does Marlow mean when he says: "The mind of man is capable of anything-because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future" ( )? What does it take to
prove that one is "as much of a man as these [Africans] on shore," to "meet that truth with
his own true stuff..." ( )?
5. Twenty "cannibals" travel with Marlow upriver, bringing with them provisions--stinky
hippopotamus meat ( ). Aware of the Africans onshore, their headman advises Marlow
to "'Catch 'im. Give 'im to us" so they can "Eat 'im'" ( ). Marlow then realizes that his
African crewmen "must be very hungry" ( ), and meditates on the "devilry of lingering
starvation, its exasperating torment,...its...ferocity" ( ). Yet these big powerful Africans
"didn't go for us [the white men on board]" and Marlow sees them "in a new light,"
"looked at them as you would on any human being," is dazzled and mystified by the fact
of their "Restraint!" (
). What is the source of such "restraint" that earns Marlow's
grudging admiration?
Heart of Darkness Study Guide
6. Discuss the theme of temptation and restraint in this chapter. Temptation toward what?
Restraint from what exactly? Such restraint takes more than "Principles"; it requires "a
deliberate belief," Marlow decides ( ) [a belief, perhaps, that only "excellent" women
such as Marlow's aunt and Kurtz's Intended, who are protected from reality, can sustain] .
Later Marlow declares that his Nellie listeners could not possibly understand what it
means to travel back into "the first ages"--far beyond society's built-in restraints--and
have only "your own innate strength" to fall back on--to have no neighbors, no
policemen, no public opinion, no "terror of scandal and gallows and lunatic asylums" (
). A "fool...too dull even to know you are being assaulted by the powers of darkness" or
"a thunderingly exalted creature ...deaf and blind to anything but heavenly sights and
sounds"--these might escape temptation; "But most of us are neither one or the other,"
Marlow states( ). This latter group includes Kurtz, presumably, for "[t]he wilderness
had patted him on the head, and, behold, it was like a ball--an ivory ball; it had caressed
him, and--lo!--he had withered; it had taken him, loved him, embraced him got into his
veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his soul to its own by the inconceivable ceremonies
of some devilish initiation" (
). [Note that Marlow admits he himself had felt "the
playful pawstrokes of the wilderness, the preliminary trifling before the more serious
onslaught which came in due course" ( ). [See also Part III, p.
, on Kurt's lack of
"restraint."] What are the built-in restraints of civilization and who escapes temptation?
Where does Kurtz fall in terms of exercising or failing or refraining from restraint?
7. In what sense has "All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz" ( )? "Mind, I am not
trying to excuse or even explain--I am trying to account to myself for--for--Mr Kurtz--for
the shade of Mr. Kurtz" ( ). Why do you think that Marlow feels the need to try to
"account to myself" for Kurtz?
8. Examine Marlow's attitude toward the African "fireman" ( ) and his "helmsman" ( ).
When Marlow ceased his watchful oversight, his African helmsman would fall into an
"abject funk" and let the crippled steamboat master him ( ). When Kurtz's Africans
attack the steamboat with "whizzing sticks" [spears] in the perfec[t] quiet ( ), the "mad"
helmsman noisily panics and Marlow's can do little: "I might just as well have ordered a
tree not to sway in the wind" ( ). Analyze the scene of the helmsman's death, Marlow's
shoes filled with blood ( ). His dead helmsman had "no restraint--just like Kurtz--a tree
swayed by the wind" ( ). What is their common deficiency? Marlow determines that
the cannibals cannot have his partner--that "the fishes alone would have him" ( ). Why
does Marlow miss "my late helmsman awfully" ( )? What is the helmsman's "claim of
distant kinship [to Marlow] affirmed in a supreme moment" ( )?
9. Fifty miles below the Inner Station, they find a cryptic message of warning and, in an
abandoned dwelling where a "white man had lived ( ). In it a old book with marginal
notes "in cipher" [Russian] is found: Towson's An Inquiry into some Points of
Seamanship. Why does Marlow consider this "an extraordinary find," "luminous with
another than a professional light" ( )? Later we learn that this book belonged to the
"harlequin" Russian ( ). Describe the Russian ( ). What seems to be his relationship to
Kurtz?
10. Marlow admits that there is "an appeal to me in this fiendish row [the "wild and
passionate uproar" of the Africans onshore]....Very well; I hear;...but I have a voice, too,
and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced" ( ). Yet, a bit later
arguing with himself about "whether or no I would talk openly with Kurtz," Marlow
doubts seriously whether it would matter: "my speech or my silence ...would be a mere
Heart of Darkness Study Guide
futility," for "The essentials of this affair lay deep under the surface, beyond my reach,
and beyond my power of meddling" ( ). Still, Marlow wants to talk to Kurtz and he
must tell the story [Kurtz's? Marlow's own?] of Heart of Darkness: Why?
11. Consider the recurring theme of voice(s). In a flashforward, Marlow reveals "the strange
discovery" that, above all else, Kurtz "presented himself as a voice" ( ). Of all Kurtz's
"gifts," according to Marlow, the pre-eminent one "was his ability to talk, his words--the
gift of expression, the bewildering, the illuminating, the most exalted and the most
contemptible, the pulsating stream of light, or the deceitful flow from the heart of an
impenetrable darkness" ( ). The Russian says, "'You don't talk with that man--you listen
to him,'..." ( ). Marlow characterizes Kurtz as "A voice. He was very little more than a
voice"--"Oh, yes, I heard more than enough" ( ). Consider the novel's examples of what
Kurtz has to say. "You should have heard [Kurtz] say,...'My Intended, my ivory, my
station, my river, my--' everything belonged to him" ( ). Or Kurtz's pamphlet for the
"International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs," with its 17 pages of
Kurtz's "eloquence," as well as its "luminous and terrifying" postcription (which Kurtz
seems to forget that he wrote): "Exterminate all the brutes!" ( ).
12. "The approach to this Kurtz grubbing for ivory in the wretched bush was beset by as
many dangers as though he had been an enchanted princess sleeping in a fabulous castle"
(
). Does this comparison seem ironic, accurate, or both? Is Marlow on a kind of
journey into hell, or dark Romantic quest of self-discovery?
13. Marlow's boat is attacked by Kurtz's natives, we learn, because "'They don't want him to
go'" ( ). And at one point Marlow sees "a face amongst the leaves...looking at me very
fierce and steady;" (
)--Kurtz's African woman. Note how she will be compared to
Kurtz's European fiancee, the "Intended."
14. Marlow believes that men must help keep European women like Kurtz's fiancee and
Marlow's aunt "in that beautiful world of their own, lest ours get worse" (
). This
statement follows Marlows proclaimation: "I laid the ghost of his [Kurtz's] gifts at last
with a lie" ( ). Consider the relationships among these statements to Marlow's notion of
a redeeming "idea," his earlier statements regarding "lies," and their implications for
Marlow's actions in the final scene (the interview with the Intended) in Part III.
15. Consider the characteristic ways that Marlow describes the African jungle setting--the
"wilderness"--in Part II: e.g., pp. , . What part does the African "wilderness" play in
this novel?