The Heart of Darkness
(Joseph Conrad)

Heart of Darkness was written after Konrad’s sailing career had ended. Most biographers will point to his service aboard the Belgian steamer Roi des Belges in Africa. Many parallels between his real-life experience and Marlow’s can be correlated. The sharp illness contracted by Marlow towards the end of the novel is comparable to Konrad’s own illness. For a long time, Konrad was considered by many to be a narrator of exotic locales- a pulp genre of the time- despite the fact that he was writing literature about the human condition; it was a preconception he was irritated by.

The book serves as his greatest novel and is one of the most influential works in the canon of Western literature.

Settings

The Sepulchral City

The location of the Company’s head offices, the Sepulchral city represents death, imperialism and the abject ignorance of the world to Marlow. He sees the citizens of that place as oblivious and opportunistic. On his first visit to the place- when signing up for the job- he meets the women in the front office who appear to him as ushers of death, leading men into a world from which they’ll never return. The citizens of the place seem disconnected from the greater world and have hopes of creating “an overseas empire.”

On his second visit to the city- once his work in the jungle has finished and he is recovering from his sickness- he “[resents] the sight of people hurrying to filch a little money from each other.” Marlow’s unfortunate impression of the city has increased tenfold and sees the people as even greater satires of Europeans than they already were.

The River/ The Jungle

Upon first sight, the jungle appears as an impenetrable screen to Marlow. As he heads deeper into it, the power it holds and the chaos it causes grows exponentially. It’s where he finds the bodies of dead natives left along the wayside. It surrounds the central station- the latter feeling like a blotch on the continent ready to be devoured by the surrounding foliage.

The jungle is where Marlow looks whenever he comes to gain some terrible knowledge about the nature of the world. Whether overhearing the manager, listening to the Russian, or hearing Kurtz attempt to claim possession over everything, each time he turns to the jungle.

The untamed nature of the land gives Marlow the sensation of going back in time to when man was a stranger to all the earth.

Corporate Locations

As Marlow travels deeper into the jungle, each outpost of European civilization begins to break down more. While sailing down the coast, he feels as if each port evokes a sense of strangeness. The outer station has natives being imprisoned and worked to death, but the accountant keeps things in an order that Marlow admires. The central station has the rules of European society breaking down, with the manager’s manservant treating the other white men badly without remorse or fear of reprisal (in stark contrast to the other natives who run away if they suspect retaliation from the whites). The stations along the river seem to Marlow like a cursed prison. Lastly, the inner station has no semblance of order at all, with Kurtz ruling through fear and indulging his every whim.