Babienko English
Heart of Darkness
Themes, Symbols, and Motifs – Just for starters! Be aware that many of these ideas overlap….
 Lies – What lies precede the story, envelop it? Do lies form the foundation of the tale (of
colonialism) itself? Look at lies in relation to “What redeems it is the idea only” (70).
 Self-knowledge and Self-deception – Who gains self-knowledge? What is it? What about selfdeception? What results does self-deception produce? (See epistemology below)
 Heart of Darkness as Quest - Like a knight on a quest, Marlow is frequently tested by signs he must
confront, question and interpret. Readers must also interpret the various stations/locations, objects,
and people along the journey as signs (Signs are things you see or experience or are told which have
meaning beyond the literal). For example, Brussels as a “whited sephulchre” (a sepulchre is a tomb,
and also a biblical allusion to Matthew 23: 27); the knitting women in the Trading Company offices
(gatekeepers to the underworld? Life is woven by Clotho, measured by Lachesis and the thread of life
is cut by Atropos.); the broken machinery, the artificial hole in the ground at the Inner Station…etc.
What is the object of his quest? Kurtz? Truth? Himself?
 The Night Journey: Heart of Darkness is in one sense the tale of a literal journey, but more
fundamentally it entails a psychological and spiritual journey: Marlow leaves the familiar, rational
world and enters the wilderness of a waking dream.
 Contrasting Imagery - Much of the imagery in Heart of Darkness is arranged in patterns of
opposition and contrast. As you read the novel, be aware of how Conrad uses this device. What does
Conrad accomplish by this contrast, especially of light and dark? Where does he reverse or
complicate traditional our associations of opposing imagery?
 Civilization vs. Savagery – Civilization as a construct designed to make men behave in a certain
way, reflecting a particular (but not absolute) set of values; civilization as a buffer to keep men from
“reverting” to their “darker tendencies” (see Freud); civilization as superficial; civilization as
savagery; savagery as the state of all men… Does Conrad still privilege one over the other?
 Symbolism of Black/White, Darkness/Light - watch Conrad twist and turn the meanings, and our
assumptions! “Redefining” of symbolism reveals political, psychological, and moral truths….
 Idols and Worship – Pay attention to images and descriptions of idols and worship. What do these
references suggest? For example, to what extent do Europeans act in a hypocritical manner by
partaking in rites and rituals that appear to be pagan (when they supposedly decry paganism? (C.P.
Sarvan states that, "As for pagan rites and savage dances, the Europeans with 'imbecile rapacity' were
'praying' to ivory, that is, to materialism, and one red-haired man 'positively danced,' bloodthirsty at
the thought that he and the others 'must have made a glorious slaughter' of the Africans in the bush.")
 Images of Brokenness, Waste, Decay– What do these suggest about the situation Marlow finds
himself in?
 The Problem of Narration – Heart of Darkness opens with an important statement about narration
in which Conrad addresses the (im)possibility of objective, “simple” narration. The nameless narrator
contrasts the simple yarns of seamen, in which meaning is clearly located and identifiable as a kernel
inside a shell, with Marlow’s tale: "To [Marlow] the meaning of an episode was not inside like a
kernel, but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out as a glow brings out a haze." Similarly,
much of the meaning of the book itself lies not in its center, in Africa, but in the periphery; Marlow’s
initial journey to Brussels, his return to Brussels after finding Kurtz, the impending “journey” aboard
the Nellie, what happens to the reader while reading, all contribute to meaning. Marlow’s subjective
position also calls into question the possibility of objective, autobiographical narration (e.g. pay
attention to Marlow’s attitude when he describes Africans and women).
Babienko English
Heart of Darkness
 Epistemological Concerns: questions of epistemology--questions that have to do with what kinds of
things are knowable and what procedures we can use to know them – are of great interest to Conrad.
Certainly the way in which Conrad chooses to tell his story makes epistemological questions relevant.
Here we have someone, an outside narrator, telling us a story he has heard from someone else, Marlow.
The story Marlow tells seems to be about a man named Kurtz, but most of what Marlow knows about
Kurtz he learns from other people, many of whom have all sorts of reasons for not telling Marlow
whatever simple truths they might know. Marlow has to piece together much of Kurtz's story, and make
guesses to fill in the things he cannot know for sure. So do we really get to know anything about Kurtz?
Is there, in fact, really a Kurtz about whom anything specific can be known? It is worth recalling here
that one of the traditional connotations of the word darkness is ignorance and that one of the traditional
connotations of the word light is knowledge. Is there the light of knowledge in the Heart of Darkness?
What kind of knowledge? What kind of knowing?
 The Relationship between Knowledge and Language – Is the ability to name connected to the
ability to know? The ability to decide, to discern between one thing and another, dependent upon
clarity? Upon the maintenance of binary oppositions? Does language depend on it?
 Division of the Book into Thirds - It might be profitable to ask what happens in each of those
chapters, and why Conrad chooses to make the breaks where he does. It is also worth noting that
Marlow breaks off his story exactly three times--three times the outside narrator comes back to say
something--once in chapter one, twice in chapter two, and not at all until the end in chapter three. It will
be worth your while to see what Marlow is talking about in the page or so before each break, and how it
relates to what the outside narrator says is happening on the Nelly, and to what Marlow says when he
starts speaking again. Are there other things that come in threes in Heart of Darkness?
 Russian Doll Effect - At the center is the story of Kurtz, around that the story of Marlow, around that
the story of the narrator, and, by implication, around that there is still another story going on, the story of
your reading of the book. As a formal device the Russian doll effect lends a particular structure to the
book. What it signifies about the nature of the experience--and how it relates to epistemological
questions—is another question to consider.
 Heart of Darkness as Modernist Work—with its ambiguity, irony, a distrust of abstraction and
rational systems, an interest in the psychological, a sense of the multiplicity of experience and of the
rather privileged position art holds as a response to that experience--is a modernist novel, characterized
by:
o a distrust of abstractions as a way of delineating truth
o an interest in an exploration of the psychological
o a belief in art as a separate and somewhat privileged kind of human experience
o a desire for transcendence mingled with a feeling that transcendence cannot be achieved
o an awareness of primitiveness and savagery as the condition upon which civilization is built,
and therefore an interest in the experience and expressions of non-European peoples
o a skepticism that emerges from the notion that human ideas about the world seldom fit the
complexity of the world itself, and thus a sense that multiplicity, ambiguity, and irony--in life
and in art--are the necessary responses of the intelligent mind to the human condition.