Heart of Darkness
GRAHAM GREENE, Journey without Maps (1936)
Liberia
I thought for some reason even then of
Africa, not a particular place, but a shape, a
strangeness, a wanting to know. The
unconscious mind is often sentimental; I
have written ‘a shape’, and the shape, of
course, is roughly that of the human heart.
Africa will always be the Africa of the
Victorian atlas, the blank unexplored
continent the shape of the human heart.
Factual/Historical Viewpoint
The Congo River was discovered by Europeans in 1482
• No one traveled more than
200 miles upstream until
1877
• Is 1,600 miles long and only
impassable to water traffic
between two places, creating
a two-hundred mile overland
trip
 Matadi (the Company
Station)
 Kinshasa (the Central
Station)
History of the Congo
1878 – King Leopold II of Belgium asked explorer
Henry Morton Stanley to set up a Belgian colony in
the Congo
Wanted to “end slavery and civilize the natives”
Actually interested in more material benefits
1885 – Congress of Berlin forms Congo Free State
This was ruled by Leopold II alone
The Congress of Berlin is referred to in the book as “the
International Society for the Suppression of Savage
Customs.”
Leopold never even visited the Congo. He set up “the
Company” to run it for him.
CONGO FREE STATE
(1885)
1879-1885
Henry Morton Stanley
explores the region for
Leopold II of Belgium
1890
Conrad’s expedition to
the Congo (“Before the
Congo I was a mere
animal”)
Colonial Africa, circa 1892
Democratic Republic
of the Congo (1997)
The name of this African nation derives from a people known
as the BaKongo, first rendered as “Congo” in Portuguese
chronicles of exploration in 1482. In their language, the
2,900-mile-long Congo River is called nzadi, “the river that
swallows all rivers.”
King Leopold II (reigned 1865 – 1909)
Belgian exploitation of the Congo
initially focused on the rubber
industry.
King Leopold and the Congo
Belgium, as a small country, did not
possess numerous overseas colonies,
unlike its neighbours, Holland, France,
Germany, and Great Britain, but shared
their imperial ambitions. Leopold
persuaded other European powers at the
Berlin Conference of 1884-85 to give
him personal possession of the Congo.
In 1876 he organized an international
association as a front for his private plan
to “develop” central Africa.
Leopold used the Congo as a huge
money-making resource, committing
human rights violations in the process, as
he built public works projects in Belgium
with the money he accrued.
10
Belgium’s Stranglehold on the Congo
5-8 Million Victims
(50% of Population)
“It is blood-curdling to see them (the
soldiers) returning with the hands of
the slain, and to find the hands of
young children amongst the bigger
ones evidencing their bravery...The
rubber from this district has cost
hundreds of lives, and the scenes I
have witnessed, while unable to help
the oppressed, have been almost
enough to make me wish I were dead...
This rubber traffic is steeped in blood,
and if the natives were to rise and
sweep every white person on the
Upper Congo into eternity, there
would still be left a fearful balance to
their credit.” -- Belgian Official
White King, Red Rubber, Black Death
Countries such as France, the Netherlands, and
Great Britain that acquired large empires exploited
both land and people. However…
Some measures to protect the rights of overseas subjects were
introduced.
Rights of women and men to vote.
Protection against industrial exploitation was making child
labour illegal and improving employment conditions.
Some of these rights were followed in the African
colonies…..but NOT BY LEOPOLD II
Leopold had to give up the Congo to Belgium in
1908 as a result of the international campaign
exposing Leopold’s activities in the Congo.
King Leopold’s Ghost
Novel by Adam Hochschild
written in 1998
Tells the horrific story of King
Leopold’s colonial rule over a
country and it’s native peoples.
Based on the true story of the
colonial activities.
King Leopold II, never set foot in
the Congo, but managed to ruin a
country…his ghost remains today
in memories of the Congolese.
14
The Explorer Stanley’s Role
H. M. Stanley, a journalist who
explored the Congo on an
expedition financed by King
Leopold of Belgium.
Stanley greatly aided his backer in
gaining a firm foothold in what was
to become the Belgian Congo (later
Zaire), now the Democratic
Republic of Congo.
“The White Man’s Burden”*
“King Leopold found the Congo…cursed by
cannibalism, savagery, and despair; and he
has been trying with patience, which I can
never sufficiently admire, to relieve it of its
horrors, rescue it from its oppressors, and
save it from perdition.” --H.M. Stanley
*The idea that Europeans must carry the burden of civilizing Africa.
16
Different Motives of Imperialism
Some Westerners felt it was their duty to “civilize” the “savage” inhabitant of
colonial lands in order to make them more “modern” and European. The English
writer Rudyard Kipling displayed such an attitude in 1899 with a poem entitle
“The White Man’s Burden.”
Take up the White Man’s burden-Send forth the best ye breed-Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild-Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
17
Ivory and “the White Man’s Burden”
Most Europeans in the 1890s felt
that the African peoples needed
exposure to European culture
and technology to become more
evolved.
This responsibility was known
as “the white man’s burden”
and the fervor to bring
Christianity and commerce to
Africa grew.
In return for these “benefits,”
the Europeans extracted HUGE
amounts of ivory.
Ivory, cont.
Uses of ivory in the 1890s
Jewelry and other decorative items
Piano keys
Billiard balls
From 1888 to 1892, the amount of ivory exported
from the Congo rose from 13,000 pounds to more
than a quarter million pounds.
1892 – Leopold declares all natural resources in the
Congo are his sole property
This gave the Belgians free reign to take whatever they
wanted however they wished.
Trade expands, new stations are established farther and
farther away
The Results of Ivory Fever
Documented atrocities committed by the Belgian ivory
traders include the severing of hands and heads.
Reports of this, combined with Conrad’s portrayal of the
system in Heart of Darkness, led to an international
protest movement against Belgium’s presence in Africa
Leopold outlawed these practices, but his decree had
little effect
Belgian parliament finally took control away from the
king
Belgium did not grant independence to the Congo until
1960
Joseph Conrad’s Life
Born Josef Teodore Konrad
Nalecz Korzeniowski, in
Podolia, Ukraine, 3 December
1857.
Conrad’s father and mother,
Apollo and Ewa, were political
activists. They were imprisoned 7 months
and eventually deported to Vologda.
Apollo introduced his son to the work of
Dickens, Fenimore Cooper and Captain
Marryat in Polish and French translations.
Joseph Conrad’s Life
His father died of tuberculosis and his funeral was
attended by a thousand admirers
Conrad was raised by his uncle; attended school (he
was disobedient)
Uncle was an aristocrat
Cultural background was Western; was taught primarily in
French
In 1874, Conrad went to Marseilles, France, and joined
the Merchant Navy.
Smuggling guns for the Spanish and a love affair led to
a suicide attempt.
Conrad became a British merchant sailor (switched
from the French navy) and eventually a master mariner
and citizen in 1886. His ten years in the British
Merchant Marine shaped most of his stories.
Joseph Conrad’s Life
Wrote in a language that was not native to
him
English was his fourth language
Taught himself
Joseph Conrad’s Life
Conrad traveled widely in the
east.
After 15-20 years, Conrad rose
from the lowest rank of to
become captain
He took on a stint as a steamer
captain (1890) in the Congo, but
became ill within three months
and had to leave.
Conrad retired from sailing and
took up writing full time.
Died of a heart attack in 1924.
Buried in Canterbury Cathedral.
Joseph Conrad in response to the rumor that
he hesitated between French and English
when he started writing
“ English was for me neither a matter of
choice nor adoption…there was adoption; but
it was I who was adopted by the genius of the
language…its very idioms…had a direct
action on my temperament and fashioned my
still plastic characters.” (Conrad)
Heart of Darkness
First published as a serial in
London’s Blackwood
Magazine in 1899
First unified publication in1902
Considered by many to be the
finest short novel ever written
in English
Bridges the Victorian and
Modern literary periods
Modern criticism sharply
divided over merit due to
racist/imperialist themes
Victorian and Modern Literature
Victorian (1837 – 1901)
Traditional subject matter,
form, and style
Deals with issues of the
day, including
• Social, economic, religious,
and intellectual issues
• Industrial Revolution
• Class tensions, early
feminist movement,
pressures for social and
political reform
• Impact of Darwin’s theories
on evolution
Modern (post WWI
– WWII)
Authors experiment with
subject matter, form, and
style
Deals with issues of the
day, including
•
•
•
•
Horrors of WWI
Massive loss of life
Loss of faith
Expanding technology and
science
• Also encompassed/is
related to Postmodernism
Heart of Darkness Background
After a long stint in the east had come to an end,
Conrad was having trouble finding a new position.
With the help of a relative in Brussels he got the
position as captain of a steamer for a Belgian
trading company.
Conrad had always dreamed of sailing the Congo
He had to leave early for the job, as the previous
captain was killed in a trivial quarrel
Heart of Darkness Background
Conrad saw some of the most shocking and depraved
examples of human corruption he’d ever witnessed.
He was disgusted by the ill treatment of the natives,
the scrabble for loot, the terrible heat and the lack of
water.
He saw human skeletons of bodies left to rot - many
were men from the chain gangs building the railroads.
He found his ship was damaged.
Dysentary was rampant as was malaria; Conrad had
to terminate his contract due to illness and never fully
recovered
Conrad’s View
For Conrad, the world as we
experience it is not a sort of place
that can be reduced to a set of clear,
explicit truths.
Its truths—the truths of the psyche,
of the human mind and soul—are
messy, vague, irrational, suggestive,
and dark.
Conrad’s View
Conrad’s intention?: to lead his
readers to an experience of the
“heart of darkness,”not to shed the
light of reason on it…but to recreate
his experience of darkness in our
feelings, our sensibilities, our own
dark and mysterious hearts.
About the Novel
Since its publication, Heart of
Darkness has fascinated readers and
critics, almost all of whom regard the
novel as significant because of its use
of ambiguity and (in Conrad's own
words) "foggishness" to dramatize
Marlow's perceptions of the horrors
he encounters.
Key Facts
Full Title: Heart of Darkness
Author: Joseph Conrad
Type of Work: Novella (between a novel
and a short story in length and scope)
Genre: Symbolism, colonial literature,
adventure tale, frame story, almost a
romance in its insistence on heroism and
the supernatural and its preference for the
symbolic over the realistic
Key Facts
Time and Place Written: England, 1898–
1899; inspired by Conrad’s journey to the
Congo in 1890.
Date of First Publication: Published in 1902
in the volume Youth: A Narrative; and Two
Other Stories.
Narrator: There are two narrators: an
anonymous passenger on a pleasure ship,
who listens to Marlow’s story, and Marlow
himself, a middle-aged ship’s captain.
Key Facts
Point of View: The first narrator speaks in
the first-person plural, on behalf of four
other passengers who listen to Marlow’s
tale. Marlow narrates his story in the first
person, describing only what he witnesses
and experiences, and provides his own
commentary on the story.
Tone: Ambivalent: Marlow is disgusted at
the brutality of the Company and horrified
by Kurtz’s degeneration, but he claims that
any thinking man would be tempted into
similar behavior.
Key Facts
Setting (time): Latter part of the nineteenth
century, probably sometime between 1876
and 1892.
Setting (place): Opens on the Thames
River outside London, where Marlow is
telling the story that makes up Heart of
Darkness. Events of the story take place in
Brussels, at the Company’s offices, and in
the Congo, then a Belgian territory.
Protagonist: Charlie Marlow.
Key Facts
Major Conflict: Both Marlow and Kurtz
confront a conflict between their images of
themselves as “civilized” Europeans and
the temptation to abandon morality
completely once they leave the context of
European society.
Rising Action: The brutality Marlow
witnesses in the Company’s employees,
the rumors he hears that Kurtz is a
remarkable man, and the numerous
examples of Europeans breaking down
mentally or physically in the environment
of Africa.
Key Facts
Climax: Marlow’s discovery, upon reaching
the Inner Station, that Kurtz has
completely abandoned European morals
and norms of behavior.
Falling Action: Marlow’s acceptance of
responsibility for Kurtz’s legacy, Marlow’s
encounters with Company officials and
Kurtz’s family and friends, Marlow’s visit to
Kurtz’s “Intended.”
Themes: The hypocrisy of imperialism,
madness as a result of imperialism, the
absurdity of evil.
Heart of Darkness
Narrative Structure
Framed Narrative
Narrator begins
Marlow takes over
Narrator breaks in occasionally
Marlow is Conrad’s alter-ego, he shows up in some of
Conrad’s other works including “Youth: A Narrative”
and Lord Jim
Marlow recounts his tale while he is on a small vessel
on the Thames with some drinking buddies who are
ex-merchant seamen. As he recounts his story the
group sits in an all-encompassing darkness.
Heart of Darkness Motifs
Darkness
Primitive Impulses (Kurtz, previous captain, etc.)
Cruelty of Man (Kurtz and Company)
Immorality/Amorality (Kurtz)
Lies/Hypocrisy (Marlow chooses Kurtz’s evil versus
Company’s hypocritical evil)
Imperialization/Colonization (Belgian Company)
Greed / Exploitation of People
Power Corrupts
Savage vs. Civil
Heart of Darkness Motifs
Role of Women
Civilization exploitive of women
Civilization as a binding and selfperpetuating force
Physical connected to
Psychological
Barriers (fog, thick forest)
Rivers (connection to past,
parallels time and journey)
Key Facts
Motifs: Darkness (very seldom opposed by
light), interiors vs. surfaces (kernel/shell,
coast/inland, station/forest, etc.), ironic
understatement, hyperbolic language,
inability to find words to describe situation
adequately, images of ridiculous waste,
upriver versus downriver/toward and away
from Kurtz/away from and back toward
civilization (quest or journey structure).
Contrasts in Heart of Darkness
Light vs. Dark
Heavy vs. Light
Inferiority vs.
Superiority
Civil vs. Savage
Interior vs. Exterior
Illusion vs. Truth
Misogyny vs.
Misanthropy
Insanity vs. Sanity
Racism vs. Antiracism
Imperialism vs.
Insularity
Evil
What makes wellintentioned people do
bad things?
Key Facts
Symbols: Rivers, fog, women (Kurtz’s
Intended, his African mistress), French
warship shelling forested coast, grove of
death, severed heads on fence posts,
Kurtz’s “Report,” dead helmsman, maps,
“whited sepulchre” of Brussels, knitting
women in Company offices, man trying to
fill bucket with hole in it.
Order in the Midst of Chaos
Heart of Darkness’s Structure
Three’s:
Chapters
Marlow breaks off story 3 times
Stations
Women
Central Characters
Frame Narrative
Light and Dark
Transformation
Movie Versions of the Book
Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now is a film
directed by Francis Ford
Coppola starring Martin Sheen,
Robert Duvall and Marlon
Brando
This film was based on
Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
Coppola takes the story to
Vietnam. Captain Willard
(Marlow) is sent on a mission
to kill Colonel Kurtz who has
gone renegade
Circle of Influence
Thomas Pynchon
T.S. Eliot
Ernest Hemingway
F. Scott Fitzgerald
William Faulkner
Gabriel Garcia
Marquez
Mario Vargas Llosa
Jorge Luis Borges
Carlos Fuentes
George Orwell
Saul Bellow
Eugene O’Neill
Graham Greene
Joseph Conrad’s Other Works
Almayer’s Folly (1895)
The Nigger of the Narcissus
(1897)
Lord Jim (1900)
Heart of Darkness (1902)
Typhoon (1902)
Nostromo (1904)
The Secret Sharer (1907)
Under Western Eyes (1910)
Chance (1914)
Bibliography
PowerPoint from Sandra Effinger
http://mseffie.com/assignments/heart_of_da
rkness/hod.html