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
language · English
time and place written · England, 1898–1899;
inspired by Conrad's journey to the Congo in 1890
date of first publication · Serialized in Blackwood's Magazine in 1899;
published in 1902 in the volume Youth:
A Narrative; and Two Other Stories
publisher · J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd.
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
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 witnessed and experienced, and providing 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.
tense · Past
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 · Marlow
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 and humane man, and the
numerous examples of Europeans breaking down mentally or physically
in the environment of Africa.
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
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
vs. downriver/toward and away from Kurtz/away from and back toward
civilization (quest or journey structure)
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
foreshadowing · Permeates every moment of the narrative—mostly operates
on the level of imagery, which is consistently dark, gloomy, and threatening
