Heart of Darkness Study Guide

Study Guide: Heart of Darkness - PRINT VERSION
(1899, 3-part serial, Blackwood's Magazine; 1902, rev. Blackwood)
by Joseph Conrad (Polish, wrote in English
b. 1857: Josef Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski; d. 1924)

Part I (Longman pp. 2192-2213)

In Heart of Darkness, we encounter a "frame narrative": who are the two narrators of the novel? Describe the situation and characters on board the Nellie. How does Marlow differ from the other men, his audience, on board the Nellie? What does the narrative frame contribute to the ensuing story of Marlow's journey up the Congo River?

The unnamed first-person narrator prepares the way for Marlow's initial meditation "evok[ing] the great spirit of the past upon the lower reaches of the Thames" river (2193). Marlow begins his story suddenly: "'And this [England] also . . . has been one of the dark places of the earth'" (2194), "'when the Romans first came here nineteen hundred years ago--the other day . . .'" (2194). In describing the Roman conquest of England (2194-2195), Marlow suggests parallels to the main story of Heart of Darkness: what seems to be foreshadowed? How does Marlow define "conquerors" and what kind of "idea" might redeem such conquest (2195)?

The unnamed Nellie narrator describes Marlow at various moments in the novel. What is Marlow like? How do the others regard him? How does the unnamed narrator characterize Marlow's tales (2194)? Marlow suggests that his audience must "'understand the effect'" on him to construct the meaning of this story--what the unnamed narrator calls another of "Marlow's inconclusive experiences" (2195). Later Marlow says, "It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream,'" perhaps an "'impossible task'" (2210). What, then, is the nature of such story-telling?

Try constructing a chart, timeline, or map identifying the key places, events, and stages of Marlow's journey: his initial attraction to Africa, the Company's office in the "city," the voyage from Europe to Africa, the first stop in the Congo, stages of the journey up the Congo River to Kurtz, and the return.

Consider Marlow's account of what drew him out to Africa. What is suggested by his likening the Congo River to a "snake" and himself to a foolish, charmed "bird" (2196)? Note the case of Fresleven, the river captain whom Marlow is to replace (2196-2197); Marlow's comparison of the city of his employers to "a whited sepulchre" (2197); the ominous atmosphere of the Company's office with the two women knitting black wool and "guarding the door of Darkness" (2197, 2198); the doctor [an "alienist"--2199, n. 2] who measures Marlow's head because he has a scientific interest in measuring "the mental changes of individuals" who venture out to Africa in the Company's employ (2199; cf. 2205). What type of experience, what type of journey, do these signs seem to predict?

Characterize Marlow's attitude toward "excellent" women like his aunt (2199). Despite his protest that the Company is "run for profit," note that Marlow has been "represented"--like Kurtz before him (see 2208, 2209)--as "an exceptional and gifted creature": "Something like an emissary of light" or "lower sort of apostle," and his "excellent" aunt runs on about '''weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways'" (2199).   Afterwards he feels he is "an imposter." Compare that "too beautiful" world such women live in, apt to fall apart at the first encounter with reality (2199), to the image of the blind-folded woman " carrying a lighted torch" depicted in Kurtz's painting (2208) in the room of the young "gentlemanly" agent at Central Station.

Describe Marlow's first impressions of the European presence in Africa, captured in his observations regarding the French man-of-war firing into the coast (2200) and regarding the Company's lower station (2201-2204). Contrast the Europeans' naming of the Africans as "enemies" to Marlow's view of the Africans (2200, 2201-2202).

Consider Marlow's description of the "devils" he has seen (2202). What are the different types of "devils" he describes? Marlow "foresaw" that he would meet with "a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly," an "insidious" devil "several months later and a thousand miles farther" [i.e. Kurtz?] (2202). When he hobbles into the Central Station, Marlow remarks that "the first glance at the place was enough to let you see the flabby devil was running the show" (2205). What does he mean?

Consider the Europeans that Marlow meets at the Company's stations: (a) the Company's chief accountant (2203-2204: why does Marlow respect him?), (b) the manager (2205-2207: why is such a man in command?), (c) the "faithless pilgrims" (2207: why does Marlow call them that?), (d) the "manager's spy" (2207): what kind of "devil" is this "papier-mache Mephistopheles" with "nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe" (2209)?; and (e) the "sordid buccaneers" of the Eldorado Exploring Expedition, with "no more moral purpose...than there is in burglars breaking into a safe" (2212). How does Marlow assess these men and their motives for coming to and remaining in Africa?

How does Marlow describe the setting: the Congo jungle--the "wilderness"--the land, "great, expectant, mute" (e.g., 2204-2205, 2209, & throughout)? [Consider how Conrad's representation of physical nature compares that in Romantic and/or Victorian literature.]

Long before he meets Kurtz, Marlow hears from others that Kurtz is "remarkable" (2204), "exceptional" (2206), "'a prodigy,...an emissary of pity, and science, and progress, and devil knows what else'" (2208). On what evidence do these claims seem to be based? By the end of Part I, Marlow develops curiosity about Kurtz (2213). Why?

Marlow sometimes leaps ahead of his story, as when he says that he would not have fought for Kurtz, "but I went for him near enough to lie" (2210; cf. Prt II: p. 2225). Why does Marlow "flashforward" in this way at times in his narrative? What is Marlow's attitude toward lies (2210)? What is the consequence of his allowing the "young fool" to overestimate Marlow's "influence in Europe" (2210)? Here we are returned to the "narrative present" of the narrative frame. Marlow addresses his Nellie listeners: "Do you see the story ? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain attempt...'" (2210). Why does Marlow say his attempt is "vain"? What does he mean when he states, "'We live, as we dream--alone. . . .'" (2210)? How does the unnamed Nellie narrator feel at this point in Marlow's narrative (2210)?

Analyze Marlow's statements about "work" & why he is so intent upon wanting "rivets" (2210-2211)? Given his surroundings, the example of the other Europeans around him, his admission that he doesn't really like work (2211)--why do you think Marlow now turns so avidly to the "battered, twisted, ruined, tin-pot steamboat" (2211)?

Part II (Longman pp. 2213-2230)

14. Marlow, unobserved, overhears a conversation about Kurtz between the manager and his nephew (2213-2214), and states, "...I seemed to see Kurtz for the first time," turning his [Kurtz's] back on headquarters and home, "setting his face towards the depths of the wilderness..." (2213). Marlow wonders at Kurtz's motive in turning back to the Inner Station instead of returning home as he had intended. Later, Marlow begins to supply an answer: "Everything belonged to him--but that was a trifle. The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own" (2225). What do you think had called Kurtz back to his Inner Station in this "heart of darkness"? [See also the Russian's narrative in Part III, p. 2231.]

15. As Marlow progresses on his journey upriver, he grows "rather excited at the prospect of meeting Kurtz" (2214); and when he thinks Kurtz might die before Marlow gets to him, Marlow confesses "extreme disappointment": he had looked forward to "a talk with Kurtz" (2224)--Why? What do you think is the source of Marlow's fascination with Kurtz? Why does Marlow feel that to miss Kurtz would be to miss "my destiny in life" (2224)?

16. Marlow observes: "Going up the river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world" (2214), a past remembered "in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream" (2215). The brilliant sunlit land offers "no joy," but a "treacherous appeal...to the hidden evil, to the profound darkness of its heart" (2214). This "strange" African "silence" has a "stillness" without "peace"--the "stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect" (2215). "We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth"--an atavistic journey into the human past--"We could have fancied ourselves the first of men taking possession of an accursed inheritance, to be subdued at the cost of profound anguish and of excessive toil" (2216). What is this "accursed inheritance" that Marlow envisions? For Marlow, "little begrimed steamboat, like a sluggish beetle" "crawled toward Kurtz" and "penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness" (2216; emphasis mine--note the title allusions). Kurtz has travelled up this river before Marlow--what has happened to Kurtz? (See 2225-2226.)

17. Describe Marlow's attitude toward black Africans. In particular, consider the attitudes expressed on p. 2216. Why does he say that "the worst of it" is suspecting "their not being inhuman"? Why is the thought of "remote kinship" with the Africans judged "Ugly" by Marlow? What is their "terrible frankness"--"truth stripped of its cloak of time" (2216)? What does Marlow mean when he says: "The mind of man is capable of anything--because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future" (2216)? What does it take to prove that one is "as much of a man as these [Africans] on shore," to "meet that truth with his own true stuff..." (2216)?

18. Twenty "cannibals" travel with Marlow upriver, bringing with them provisions--stinky hippopotamus meat (2215). Aware of the Africans onshore, their headman advises Marlow to "'Catch 'im. Give 'im to us" so they can "Eat 'im'" (2219). Marlow then realizes that his African crewmen "must be very hungry" (2219), and meditates on the "devilry of lingering starvation, its exasperating torment,...its...ferocity" (2220). Yet these big powerful Africans "didn't go for us [the white men on board]" and Marlow sees them "in a new light," "looked at them as you would on any human being," is dazzled and mystified by the fact of their "Restraint!" (2220-2221). What is the source of such "restraint" that earns Marlow's grudging admiration?

Such restraint takes more than "Principles"; it requires "a deliberate belief," Marlow decides (2216) [a belief, perhaps, that only "excellent" women such as Marlow's aunt and Kurtz's Intended, who are protected from reality, can sustain?]   Later Marlow declares that his Nellie listeners could not possibly understand what it means to travel back into "the first ages"--far beyond society's built-in restraints--and have only "your own innate strength" to fall back on--to have no neighbors, no policemen, no public opinion, no "terror of scandal and gallows and lunatic asylums" (2225-2226). A "fool...too dull even to know you are being assaulted by the powers of darkness" or "a thunderingly exalted creature ...deaf and blind to anything but heavenly sights and sounds"--these might escape temptation; "But most of us are neither one or the other," Marlow states(2226). This latter group includes Kurtz, presumably, for "[t]he wilderness had patted him on the head, and, behold, it was like a ball--an ivory ball; it had caressed him, and--lo!--he had withered; it had taken him, loved him, embraced him got into his veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his soul to its own by the inconceivable ceremonies of some devilish initiation" (2225). [Note that Marlow admits he himself had felt "the playful pawstrokes of the wilderness, the preliminary trifling before the more serious onslaught which came in due course" (2220). See also Part III, p. 2232, on Kurt's lack of "restraint."]

In what sense has "All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz" (2226)? "Mind, I am not trying to excuse or even explain--I am trying to account to myself for--for--Mr Kurtz--for the shade of Mr. Kurtz" (2226). Why do you think that Marlow feels the need to try to "account to myself" for Kurtz?

19. Examine Marlow's attitude toward the African "fireman" (2217) and his "helmsman" (2222). When Marlow ceased his watchful oversight, his African helmsman would fall into an "abject funk" and let the crippled steamboat master him (2222). When Kurtz's Africans attack the steamboat with "whizzing sticks" [spears] in the perfec[t] quiet (2222), the "mad" helmsman noisily panics and Marlow's can do little: "I might just as well have ordered a tree not to sway in the wind" (2223). Analyze the scene of the helmsman's death, Marlow's shoes filled with blood (2223-2224). His dead helmsman had "no restraint--just like Kurtz--a tree swayed by the wind" (2227). What is their common deficiency? Marlow determines that the cannibals cannot have his partner--that "the fishes alone would have him" (2227). Why does Marlow miss "my late helmsman awfully" (2227)? What is the helmsman's "claim of distant kinship [to Marlow] affirmed in a supreme moment" (2227)?

20. Fifty miles below the Inner Station, they find a cryptic message of warning and, in an abandoned dwelling where a "white man had lived (2217). In it a old book with marginal notes "in cipher" [Russian] is found: Towson's An Inquiry into some Points of Seamanship. Why does Marlow consider this "an extraordinary find," "luminous with another than a professional light" (2218)? Later we learn that this book belonged to the "harlequin" Russian (2228). Describe the Russian (2228-2230]. What seems to be his relationship to Kurtz?

21. Marlow admits that there is "an appeal to me in this fiendish row [the "wild and passionate uproar" of the Africans onshore]....Very well; I hear;...but I have a voice, too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced" (2216). Yet, a bit later arguing with himself about "whether or no I would talk openly with Kurtz," Marlow doubts seriously whether it would matter: "my speech or my silence ...would be a mere futility," for "The essentials of this affair lay deep under the surface, beyond my reach, and beyond my power of meddling" (2218). Still, Marlow wants to talk to Kurtz and he must tell the story [Kurtz's? Marlow's own?] of Heart of Darkness: Why?

Consider the recurring theme of voice(s). In a flashforward, Marlow reveals "the strange discovery" that, above all else, Kurtz "presented himself as a voice" (2224). Of all Kurtz's "gifts," according to Marlow, the pre-eminent one "was his ability to talk, his words--the gift of expression, the bewildering, the illuminating, the most exalted and the most contemptible, the pulsating stream of light, or the deceitful flow from the heart of an impenetrable darkness" (2224). The Russian says, "'You don't talk with that man--you listen to him,'..." (2229). Marlow characterizes Kurtz as "A voice. He was very little more than a voice"--"Oh, yes, I heard more than enough" (2225). Consider the novel's examples of what Kurtz has to say. "You should have heard [Kurtz] say,...'My Intended, my ivory, my station, my river, my--' everything belonged to him" (2225). Or Kurtz's pamphlet for the "International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs," with its 17 pages of Kurtz's "eloquence," as well as its "luminous and terrifying" postcription (which Kurtz seems to forget that he wrote): "Exterminate all the brutes!" (2226).

22. "The approach to this Kurtz grubbing for ivory in the wretched bush was beset by as many dangers as though he had been an enchanted princess sleeping in a fabulous castle" (2221). Does this comparison seem ironic, accurate, or both? Is Marlow on a kind of journey into hell, or dark Romantic quest of self-discovery?

23. Marlow's boat is attacked by Kurtz's natives, we learn, because "'They don't want him to go'" (2229). And at one point Marlow sees "a face amongst the leaves...looking at me very fierce and steady;" (2223)--Kurtz's African woman. Note how she will be compared to Kurtz's European fiancee, the "Intended."

Marlow believes that men must help keep European women like Kurtz's fiancee and Marlow's aunt "in that beautiful world of their own, lest ours get worse" (2225). This statement follows Marlows proclaimation: "I laid the ghost of his [Kurtz's] gifts at last with a lie" (2225). Consider the relationships among these statements to Marlow's notion of a redeeming "idea," his earlier statements regarding "lies," and their implications for Marlow's actions in the final scene (the interview with the Intended) in Part III.

24. Consider the characteristic ways that Marlow describes the African jungle setting--the "wilderness"--in Part II: e.g., pp. 2218, 2225. What part does the African "wilderness" play in this novel?

Part III (Longman pp. 2230-2246)

25. Why does Marlow consider the Russian "bewildering," "an insoluable problem" (2230)? What is the function of the Russian in the novel? What motivates him? What do we and Marlow learn about Kurtz from the Russian? What is his relationship to Kurtz (2230-2235)? What was Kurtz doing in the "heart of darkness"?

26. What do the "heads on the stakes" reveal about Kurtz (2232)? When Marlow first makes out what he had taken for "attempts at ornamentation," "its first result was to make me throw my head back as if before a blow" (2232). But then he explains that he "was not so shocked as you might think" (2232). How do you interpret Marlow's response that this "was only a savage sight"----"being something that had a right to exist--obviously--in the sunshine"--that "pure, uncomplicated savagery was a positive relief"--but from what? (2232)? Why does Marlow scoff at the description of the heads belonging to "Rebels!" (2232-2233)?--compare to his Part I reaction to Africans being labeled "enemies."   The heads, Marlow decides, "only showed that Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint...," and his "magnificent eloquence" could not help him (2232). What is the "deficiency" that Marlow perceives in Kurtz--the lack of "restraint" that left Kurtz vulnerable to "the wilderness [which] had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion" (2232)?

27. When Kurtz finally appears in the story (2233 & following), does he confirm the advance accounts that we have had of him? Marlow describes Kurtz repeatedly as "a voice"--again (see also Part II: #21--theme of voice). What is the significance of this description? What other terms used to describe Kurtz seem to you particularly important?

28. The African woman, "a wild and gorgeous apparition," appears on p. 2234.   Note how she is described, and the characteristic gesture she makes more than once (e.g. pp. 2234, 2239), Marlow associates her and the "wilderness" itself (2234). What is her significance? Compare/contrast her to later descriptions of Kurtz's European "Intended."

29. The manager judges Kurtz's "method...unsound" (2232, 2235). Why? And why does Marlow react the manager with such disgust?--he says, "...I had never breathed an atmosphere so vile" (2235). What prompts Marlow to turn, instead, "mentally to Kurtz for relief"--and ultimately pronounce Kurtz "a remarkable man" (2235)? Marlow observes that he has "at least a choice of nightmares" (2235): what "choice" does he mean? (See also pp. 2237, 2239, when Marlow repeats this expression, identifies his "choice" with Kurtz, and confesses he "remained to dream the nightmare out to the end, and to show my loyalty to Kurtz once more...My destiny!" p. 2241.)

30. What is the source of Marlow's feeling of kinship with Kurtz? What leads him to call himself "Mr Kurtz's friend--in a way" (2235), to declare Kurtz's "'reputation is safe with me'" (2236), and confess that "I did not betray Mr. Kurtz--it was ordered I should never betray him--it was written that I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice" (2237), and to take into his keeping Kurtz's personal papers and his fiancee's photograph, and to remain "loyal" to Kurtz to the end?

31. Drum beats and "weird incantation" in the night induce "a strange narcotic effect" upon Marlow's senses, and he discovers Kurtz missing (2236). Then Marlow experiences "a sheer blank fright," an "overpowering" emotion induced by "moral shock...as if something altogether monstrous, intolerable to thought and odious to the soul, had been thrust upon me unexpectedly" (2236-2237). The sensation lasts "the merest fraction of a second"; then Marlow follows Kurtz's trail into the darkness. What "moral shock" has Marlow experienced, do you think?

32. When Marlow finds Kurtz, it is the "moment, when the foundations of our intimacy were being laid" (2237). Marlow tries "to break the spell--the heavy, mute spell of the wilderness--that seemed to draw [Kurtz] to its pitiless breast"--and understands what "had driven him out to the edge of the forest...towards...the throb of drums, the drone of weird incantations;...beguiled his unlawful soul...beyond the bounds of permitted aspiration" (2238). What is driving Marlow into this terrible "intimacy" with Kurtz? Here, in the heart of darkness, Marlow proclaims: "Soul! If anybody had ever struggled with a soul, I am the man" (2238). Kurtz's soul, "Being alone in the wilderness,...had looked into itself, and by heavens! I tell you, it had gone mad. I had--for my sins, I suppose--to go through the ordeal of looking into it myself" (2238). Interpret this moment of crisis--for Kurtz and for Marlow.

33.On board the boat, moved by the "brown current...swiftly out of the heart of darkness" (2239), that soul "that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear" (2238), still continues to struggle (2238). What opposing forces do you believe struggle within Kurtz? What "diabolic love and...unearthly hate of the mysteries it had penetrated" contend for "possession of that soul satiated with primitive emotions, avid of lying fame, of sham distinction, of all the appearances of success and power" (2239)?

34. To what do Kurtz's final words, "The horror! The horror!" refer (2240)? It is because of Kurtz's last words, finally, that Marlow affirms, "Kurtz was a remarkable man" (2241). Why does Marlow call these words "an affirmation, a moral victory" (2241)? And why does Marlow later lie to the Intended (2246) when she asks for Kurtz's final words? [Cf. Marlow's earlier declaration against lies: Part I: 2210.] Why does Marlow believe, "It would have been too dark--too dark altogether...." (2246) to tell her the truth?

35. When Marlow returns to Europe and "the sepulchral city," why does he find it so profoundly "irritating" and "offensive" (2241-2242)?

36. Marlow goes to see Kurtz's Intended--whether out of "unconscious loyalty" or "ironic necessit[y]," he's not sure (2243). Why do you think he goes?

37. The final scene (pp. 2243-2246) between Marlow and Kurtz's fiancee is charged throughout with verbal and dramatic irony: that is, when the speaker's implicit meanings differ from what he says, and/or the readers share with the author or character knowledge of which another character (i.e. the Intended) is ignorant. Identify some instances of such ironies in this final scene.

38. Revisit the opening section of Part I, from "when the Romans first came here" to "What redeems it is the idea only...an unselfish belief in the idea--something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to..." (2194-2195). Consider the parallels foreshadowing what you now know happens to Kurtz, and to Marlow, in the heart of darkness. Reconsider also Marlow's allusion to a redeeming "idea" (Part I: 2195) in relation to the Intended's "mature capacity for fidelity, for belief, for suffering" (1418), "the faith that was in her,...that great and saving illusion" before which Marlow bows his head (2245)--and which Marlow preserves by telling a lie.

39. The novel concludes by returning to the narrative frame, set aboard the Nellie: the tide is now turning; the unnamed narrator observes that "the tranquil waterway [the Thames]" seems now "to lead into the heart of an immense darkness" (2246). Marlow is described as sitting "apart...in the pose of a meditating Buddha": do you think Marlow has achieved some sort of enlightenment? Have you? Now that you, too, have experienced Marlow's story, revisit Part I, and reinterpret the unnamed narrator's description of where the meaning lies of one of Marlow's tales on p. 2194. What, for you, seem to be the meaning(s) of Heart of Darkness?

HEART OF DARKNESS (1899; 1902) STUDY GUIDE:
Page numbers refer to text used in Eng 103, Spring 2001:
Damrosch, David, et al., ed. The Longman Anthology of British Literature:
Vol. B. Compact ed. New York: Longman - Addison Wesley Longman, 2000.

See also lecture outline (week 6)
Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness & Early Modernism
http://www.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/eng103/ConradearlyModernism.htm

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