Marlow’s visit to the Company Headquarters through
his parting with his aunt.
Summary: Part 1
After he hears that he has gotten the job, Marlow travels
across the English Channel to a city that reminds him of a “whited
sepulchre” (probably Brussels) to sign his employment contract at
the Company’s office. First, however, he digresses to tell the story
of his predecessor with the Company, Fresleven. Much later, after
the events Marlow is about to recount, Marlow was sent to recover
Fresleven’s bones, which he found lying in the center of a deserted
African village. Despite his reputation as mild mannered, Fresleven
was killed in a scuffle over some hens: after striking the village
chief, he was stabbed by the chief’s son. He was left there to die,
and the superstitious natives immediately abandoned the village.
Marlow notes that he never did find out what became of the hens.
Arriving at the Company’s offices, Marlow finds two sinister women
there knitting black wool, one of whom admits him to a waiting room,
where he looks at a map of Africa color-coded by colonial powers.
A secretary takes him into the inner office for a cursory meeting
with the head of the Company. Marlow signs his contract, and the
secretary takes him off to be checked over by a doctor. The doctor
takes measurements of his skull, remarking that he unfortunately
doesn’t get to see those men who make it back from Africa. More
important, the doctor tells Marlow, “the changes take place inside.”
The doctor is interested in learning anything that may give Belgians
an advantage in colonial situations.
With all formalities completed, Marlow stops off to say
goodbye to his aunt, who expresses her hope that he will aid in
the civilization of savages during his service to the Company, “weaning
those ignorant millions from their horrid ways.” Well aware that
the Company operates for profit and not for the good of humanity,
and bothered by his aunt’s naïveté, Marlow takes his leave of her.
Before boarding the French steamer that is to take him to Africa,
Marlow has a brief but strange feeling about his journey: the feeling
that he is setting off for the center of the earth.
Read a translation of
Part 1 →
Analysis
This section has several concrete objectives. The first
of these is to locate Marlow more specifically within the wider
history of colonialism. It is important that he goes to Africa in
the service of a Belgian company rather than a British one. The
map that Marlow sees in the Company offices shows the continent
overlaid with blotches of color, each color standing for a different
imperial power. While the map represents a relatively neutral way
of describing imperial presences in Africa, Marlow’s comments about
the map reveal that imperial powers were not all the same. In fact,
the yellow patch—“dead in the center”—covers the site of some of
the most disturbing atrocities committed in the name of empire.
The Belgian king, Leopold, treated the Congo as his private treasury,
and the Belgians had the reputation of being far and away the most
cruel and rapacious of the colonial powers. The reference to Brussels
as a “whited sepulchre” is meant to bring to mind a passage from
the Book of Matthew concerning hypocrisy. The Belgian monarch spoke
rhetorically about the civilizing benefits of colonialism, but the
Belgian version of the practice was the bloodiest and most inhumane.
This does not, however, mean that Conrad seeks to indict
the Belgians and praise other colonial powers. As Marlow journeys
into the Congo, he meets men from a variety of European nations,
all of whom are violent and willing to do anything to make their
fortunes. Moreover, it must be remembered that Marlow himself willingly goes
to work for this Belgian concern: at the moment he decides to do
so, his personal desire for adventure far outweighs any concerns he
might have about particular colonial practices. This section of
the book also introduces another set of concerns, this time regarding women. Heart
of Darkness has been attacked by critics as misogynistic,
and there is some justification for this point of view. Marlow’s aunt
does express a naïvely idealistic view of the Company’s mission,
and Marlow is thus right to fault her for being “out of touch with
truth.” However, he phrases his criticism so as to make it applicable
to all women, suggesting that women do not even live in the same
world as men and that they must be protected from reality. Moreover,
the female characters in Marlow’s story are extremely flat and stylized.
In part this may be because Marlow uses women symbolically as representatives
of “home.” Marlow associates home with ideas gotten from books and
religion rather than from experience. Home is the seat of naïveté,
prejudice, confinement, and oppression. It is the place of people
who have not gone out into the world and experienced, and who therefore
cannot understand. Nonetheless, the women in Marlow’s story exert
a great deal of power. The influence of Marlow’s aunt does not stop
at getting him the job but continues to echo through the Company’s
correspondence in Africa. At the Company’s headquarters, Marlow
encounters a number of apparently influential women, hinting that
all enterprises are ultimately female-driven.
Marlow’s departure from the world of Belgium and women
is facilitated, according to him, by two eccentric men. The first
of these is Fresleven, the story of whose death serves to build
suspense and suggest to the reader the transformations that Europeans
undergo in Africa. By European standards, Fresleven was a good and
gentle man, not one likely to die as he did. This means either that
the European view of people is wrong and useless or else that there
is something about Africa that makes men behave aberrantly. Both
of these conclusions are difficult to accept practically or politically,
and thus the story of Fresleven leaves the reader feeling ambivalent
and cautious about Marlow’s story to come.