Heart
of Darkness is about imperialism, a man named Charlie Marlowe tells the story
of how he traveled into Africa and met a man named Kurtz who was working for a
European trading company, Kurtz went into the jungle to find ivory but also
apparently with these ideas about bringing European civilization to Africans,
whom Europeans considered savages but Kurtz’s ideas failed, and he became a
savage himself, the book begins with some men lazing around on the deck of a
yacht waiting for the tide to go out on the Thames river, one of the men
Charlie Marlow imagines what it was like when the first Romans explored the
area some 19 hundred years earlier back when it was still untamed marshland
that had yet to be civilized.
The
thought leads him to recount his own story about travelling to an uncivilized
place, Marlow has already been a sailor for years at this point, and he gets a
desire to go to Africa which had fascinated him when he was a boy, because it
was largely unexplored right away he finds a job with a European trading
company, he’s the captain of a steamboat that’s headed into the center of
Africa where they export ivory, Marlow leaves on a French steamer and heads
down the African coast to the river where he’s supposed to meet his boat, the
trip takes more than 30 days and along the way he sees a French gunboat firing
blindly into the jungle apparently engaged in a war with the natives, he says
there seemed to be something insane about it, Marlow arrives at the first
company stationed all around, he sees men who have been taken captive and put
to work the company calls them criminals, but they’re basically slaves.
Marlow
is stuck at the station for another 10 days and he learns about mr. Kurtz,
an agent for the company in the deepest part of the jungle, he hears Kurtz as a
remarkable man, and that the higher ups in Europe have big plans for him, it
takes another 15 days of hiking through the jungle before Marlow finally
reaches the Central Station where he’s supposed to pick up his steamboat, but
when he gets there, he finds out his steam boat has sunk, the manager of the
station estimates it will take Marlow three months to fix it, and urges Marlow
to hurry, they need to relieve the upriver stations and there have already been
so many delays that he doesn’t know who’s dead and who’s alive up there, the
manager also mentions Kurtz calling him the best agent they have he sends out
more I read and all the other agents combined in the months, it takes him to
fix the bow. Marlow meets the station’s brick maker,
though Marlow never sees evidence of any bricks being made in his time there.
The
brick maker mentions Kurtz calling him a prodigy, and an emissary of pity and
science and progress one evening, Marlow overhears a conversation between the
station manager and another man this man who happens to be the station managers
uncle is the leader of the Eldorado exploring expedition a greedy mining group
searching for anything valuable in the region, Marlow only picks up snippets of
their talk, but he gathers that more than a year ago Kurtz sent a note to the
manager asking to be left alone since then Kurtz had sent a large quantity of
high-quality ivory down the river and a fleet of canoes, Marlow also hears them
say that a competitor has intruded on Kurtz’s district, and they think he
should be hanged to make an example of him, eventually Marlow begins the long
journey upriver the manager and some others go with him and they enlist 20
Africans who Marlow says they’re cannibals, the manager favors one of them, a
young boy during the trip they past tribal villages whose inhabitants shout and
jump around when they see the boat.
Marlow
says it thrilled him to think of the humanity he shared with these prehistoric
people, he implies in an arguably racist way that even though he’s civilized in
European he could feel a primitive part in himself responding to their shouts,
and that everyone has this vestigial prehistoric instinct, they come to a hut
made of reeds on the riverbank , and Marlow gets off the boat to explore
there’s a wood pile out front and on top of the pile is a board with writing
that says wood for you hurry up approach cautiously in the hut, he finds a book
called an inquiry into some points of seamanship, so Marlow surmises the
resident must have been English the manager thinks it’s the intruder he heard
about in the morning.
A
few days later, a thick fog holds them up they can’t move because they can’t
see anything, and then they hear this loud scream, but nothing happens and
eventually the fog clears they’re attacked two hours later when they enter a
very narrow channel of the river, the attackers fire arrows at them a spear
hits the helmsman in the pilothouse with Marlow, and the helmsman collapses and
dies, his blood gets all over Marlowe’s shoes, Marlowe thinks that with
hostility around Kurtz must surely be dead, and he laments that he’ll never get
to hear Kurtz speak, he thinks of Kurtz and his ideas and of rapport Kurtz
wrote for the International Society for the suppression of savage customs in
the report, Kurtz wrote that the white man because he is so developed must
appear to the savages like a supernatural being with that authority, the white
man can exert a power for good that is practically unbounded in other words.
The
white man can symbolize them, but Marlow says Kurtz wrote this before he became
unstable and started taking part in tribal rituals after that happened, Kurtz
added a note at the end of the report that said exterminate all the brutes on
the river, they come to a clearing and up on a slope, they can see a decaying
building a man waves to them from the shore, they finally reached the inter
station two months after leaving the central station while the manager and some
of the others hiked up to the station, Marlow talks to this man the man is a
Russian who works for a Dutch trading company, and for two years he’d been on
the river that’s how he met Kurtz, he’s the intruder the manager worried about
and the one who left, the wood for them at the hut which used to be his house,
this Russian says the locals didn’t mean any harm by attacking, they were
afraid Kurtz would be taken from them, he tells Marlow that Kurtz has enlarged
his mind and says Kurtz speaks eloquently about things like love.
Marlow
learns that Kurtz has been raiding the nearby villages for ivory with the help
of this tribe which treats him like a god, while Marlow talked to the Russian,
he looks up at the station through binoculars, and he realized that the tops of
the fence posts are actually human heads, apparently Kurtz had lost any sense
of restraint and had taken to mounting the heads of men he considered rebels
outside his station, Marlow laughs when the Russian says these men were rebels,
and he recalls the slaves at the company station that the company called
criminals, he thinks the wilderness has overtaken Kurtz and implies that Kurtz
himself has become a savage, the manager and the other men come back to the
steamer carrying Kurtz who is extremely sick, while Kurtz goes through his mail
the manager motions to Marlow to leave so he can speak in private with Kurtz.
Marlow hears Kurtz shouting about how they’re interrupting his plans, and he
swears he’ll return and carry out his ideas, the manager comes out and tells
Marlow that Kurtz has done the company harm than good because Kurtz’s method
was so unsound.
The
Russian approaches Marlow and asked him not to talk about anything that will
damage Kurtz’s reputation when they go back, Marlow tells the Russian he should
leave and warns him that the manager wanted to hang him, and the Russian runs
away that night sometime after midnight, Marlow awakes and finds Kurt’s gone
when he climbs onto the riverbank he can see the trail with Kurt scrawled on
all fours through the grass heading toward a fire in the distance, and he
decides to circle around him and head him off, Kurtz tells Marlow to leave and
hide and Marlow realizes that if Kurtz just shouts loud enough for someone to
hear ,he could be killed Kurtz tells him he had great plans that he was on the
threshold of great things, but Marla threatens to beat him if he doesn’t return
to the steamer at noon.
The next day they leave with Kurtz and the people of the tribe
gather on the riverbank and shout mournfully at Kurtz’s departure, Kurtz grows
weaker and weaker as they head back down the river toward the sea one night,
Marlow enters his room and Kurt says he’s waiting to die, while Marlow watches
him a change comes over his face as if he were seeing something his last words
are the horror the horror shortly after the boy comes into the mess room where
the men are eating dinner, and announces that Kurtz is dead, Marlow returns to
Europe after that he says he couldn’t stand to be around ordinary people who
didn’t know the things, he knew one day an official from the company comes to
visit Marlow before Kurtz died , he gave Marlow all his papers and
correspondence and the official says the company has the rights to the
documents, Marlow only gives him the report for the International Society for
the suppression of savage customs with the last part about exterminating all
the brutes torn off but the official isn’t interested.
Two days later a man saying he’s Kurtz his cousin comes to
Marlowe’s door, he and Marlow talked for a little and Marlow learns that Kurtz
was a musician, in addition to being a painter and journalist lastly a
journalist shows up who says he was a colleague of Kurtz’s, he says Kurtz was
an incredible speaker and should have been in politics leading some extremist
party, Marlow gives some Kurtz’s report Kurtz had mentioned his fiancee to
Marlow, and Marlow goes to see her and to give her the rest of Kurtz’s papers,
she guesses that Marlow must admired Kurtz as everyone did who knew him.
Kurtz was an example of goodness who drew men toward him, before
Marlow leaves Kurtz’s fiance wants to know what his last words were, Marlow
lies and says the last thing Curt said was her name Marlow story is ove,r and
with the tide out they start to go up the Thames toward London, the narrator
says the Thames to lead into the heart of an immense darkness suggesting that
this civilized place isn’t far removed from the primitive jungle 1-point
critics debate is whether heart of darkness is racist, the black people in the
book are hardly even people they’re a metaphor for savage primitive man, but
the book also points out how false this European idea of civilizing Africa was
the Europeans brutalized, and enslaved the Africans in the end nobody really
looks good except for maybe Marlow who stands by commenting on what he sees.