Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899)

"Authenticity comes from a single faithfulness: that to the ambiguity of experience." -- John Berger

Page references are to Heart of Darkness, ed. Murfin

First approaches

Title

Cf. Henry Morton Stanley, Through the Dark Continent (1878); In Darkest Africa (1890).

Style

• The sunset over London, pp. 17, 18, 19 (metaphor)
• Firing into a continent, p. 29 (irony)
• The darkness of the landscape, p. 43 (personification)

Setting

• London, the Thames, heroic exploits, p. 18-19
• The head office of the Company (Brussels), pp. 24
• The Company station, the grove of death, pp. 30-31

Narrator

• Participant narrator, pp. 17-19
• Marlow; his kind of tale, p. 19-20, etc.

Character

• Marlow as protagonist: his motivation:
• the river, p. 22
• rivets, p. 43
• to talk with Kurtz, p. 54
• Kurtz: lacked restraint, p. 74
• Other characters, e.g., The Intended, pp. 91-4

Structure

• Narrative breaks, pp. 43, 50, 63-4

Consciousness

• Sympathy with the natives, p. 51
• Delayed perception, pp. 60, 62

Language, as theme

• To talk with Kurtz, pp. 54, 63

Conrad

• 1857 born, Poland
• 1874 crew of French vessel
• 1878 joins English merchant ship
• 1884 Master's certificate
• 1890 May: to the Congo; arrives Matadi June 13; June 28 - Aug 2 trek to Leopoldville (Kinshasa); Nov. voyage upstream on Roi des Belges, death of agent Klein on return; Conrad falls ill, returns to England in January 1891.
• 1894 leaves the sea, devotes himself to writing
• 1898 November, moves to Rye, Sussex
• 1899 Heart of Darkness serial publication in Blackwood's Magazine (Feb, Mar, Apr)
• 1900 Lord Jim
• 1904 Nostromo
• 1907 The Secret Agent
• 1915 Victory
• 1924 dies

Possible topics for group discussion:

• Setting (note personification of forest, etc.)
• Style: from poetic to portentous, also ironic
• Character: Marlow's response to events; Kurtz, the representative of European civilization; the Intended
• To what extent is the narration unreliable; what difference this makes
• The figurative and hyperbolic uses of language ("The fascination of the abomination," p. 21, etc.)
• The administration of the Congo, from Head Office to "pilgrims"
• The question of racism in the novella, first raised by Achebe, disputed by Sarvan

Further reading, the question of race

Candice Bradley, "Africa and Africans in Conrad's Heart of Darkness" (Lawrence University Freshman Studies Lecture) http://www.cx.unibe.ch/ens/cg/africanfiction/conrad/bradley/bradley.html

Heart of Darkness, some web resources (see second main section of site) http://commhum.mccneb.edu/philos/phl206.htm

Conrad, Heart of Darkness. Norton Critical Edition, ed. Robert Kimbrough (3rd ed. 1988)
PR 6005 O4 H42 1988

John Hope Franklin, George Washington Williams, a Biography (1985). [Williams's report on the Congo, pp. 264-279; Letter to King Leopold, pp. 192-195.]
E 185.97 W695 F833 1985

Guy Burrows, The Land of the Pigmies (1898). [King Leopold on The Sacred Mission of Civilization, p. 286.]
DT 644 B97 1898 BARD

Wack, Henry Wellington. The Story of the Congo Free State. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1905.
DT 652 W11 HSS:3

Hochschild, Adam. King Leopold's Ghost. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. DT 655 H63 1998

Chinua Achebe, "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness." Massachusetts Review, 18 (1977): 782-794.
AS 30 M3 A2 Rutherford: South 1 Also at: http://www.erinyes.org/hod/image.of.africa.html

C. P. Sarvan, "Racism and The Heart of Darkness." International Fiction Review, 7 (1980): 6-10.
PN 3311 I62

Ian Watt, Conrad in the Nineteenth Century (1979). [See especially pp. 168-200, 249-253.]
PR 6005 O4 Z7 W34 1979

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Document prepared February 25th 2005