Heart Of Darkness By Joseph Conrad Book Review Heart of Darkness 2 pages Read “Heart of Darkness” (upload) Then pick ONE TOPIC below Try to connect the

Heart Of Darkness By Joseph Conrad Book Review Heart of Darkness 2 pages

Read “Heart of Darkness” (upload)

Then pick ONE TOPIC below

Try to connect the book to the class discussion

Please Use simple languages

Make clear of your points

1. As you read the novel, be aware of how Conrad uses repeated “doubling” patterns of opposition and contrast in Heart of Darkness: light and dark, white and black, “savagery” and “civilization,” outer and inner? What does Conrad accomplish by this contrast, especially of light and dark?

2. Marlow constantly uses vague and often redundant phrases like “unspeakable secrets”, “inconceivable mystery”, “impenetrable darkness”, and “insoluble problem”. At other times, however, he is capable of powerful imagery and considerable eloquence. Why does Marlow use vague, “inconclusive” language and opposing adjectives so frequently?

3. Analyze Marlow’s use of the terms “the idea” and “the work” in the novel. Why are there so many ironic suggestions to what these terms actually mean in his observations of the colonial practices in King Leopold’s Congo?

4. What is your understanding of Marlow’s references to “the thing” as his journey unfolds through the African rainforest?

5. Why is Conrad’s use of irony, as a narrative strategy, so powerful throughout the novel? In your opinion, what are the moments/events when Marlow’s ironic statements are the most powerful?

6. Interpret Kurtz’s dying words (“The horror! The horror!”). What do they mean? What are the possible “horrors” to which he is referring? Why is Marlow the recipient of Kurtz’s last words?

7. What do women represent in Heart of Darkness? There are three significant women in this story: Kurtz’s Intended, Marlow’s aunt, and the African woman at Kurtz’s station. How are they described? Contrast Kurtz’s African mistress with his Intended. Are both negative portrayals of women? Describe how each portrayal functions in the narrative. Does it make any difference in your interpretation to know that Conrad supported the women’s suffrage movement? What does Marlow mean early in Part 1 when he suggests that women are “out of touch with truth” and live in a beautiful world of their own?

8. Describe the use of “darkness” both in the book’s title and as a symbol throughout the text. What does darkness represent? Is its meaning constant or does it change? MLA Singles spaces Heart of Darkness
By Joseph Conrad
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I
T
he Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without
a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made,
the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river,
the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of
the tide.
The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the
beginning of an interminable waterway. In the offing the
sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and
in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of
canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A
haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther
back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on
earth.
The Director of Companies was our captain and our
host. We four affectionately watched his back as he stood
in the bows looking to seaward. On the whole river there
was nothing that looked half so nautical. He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness personified. It was
difficult to realize his work was not out there in the luminous estuary, but behind him, within the brooding gloom.
Between us there was, as I have already said somewhere,

Heart of Darkness
the bond of the sea. Besides holding our hearts together
through long periods of separation, it had the effect of making us tolerant of each other’s yarns—and even convictions.
The Lawyer—the best of old fellows—had, because of his
many years and many virtues, the only cushion on deck,
and was lying on the only rug. The Accountant had brought
out already a box of dominoes, and was toying architecturally with the bones. Marlow sat cross-legged right aft,
leaning against the mizzen-mast. He had sunken cheeks, a
yellow complexion, a straight back, an ascetic aspect, and,
with his arms dropped, the palms of hands outwards, resembled an idol. The director, satisfied the anchor had good
hold, made his way aft and sat down amongst us. We exchanged a few words lazily. Afterwards there was silence
on board the yacht. For some reason or other we did not
begin that game of dominoes. We felt meditative, and fit for
nothing but placid staring. The day was ending in a serenity
of still and exquisite brilliance. The water shone pacifically;
the sky, without a speck, was a benign immensity of unstained light; the very mist on the Essex marsh was like a
gauzy and radiant fabric, hung from the wooded rises inland, and draping the low shores in diaphanous folds. Only
the gloom to the west, brooding over the upper reaches,
became more sombre every minute, as if angered by the approach of the sun.
And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun
sank low, and from glowing white changed to a dull red
without rays and without heat, as if about to go out suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of that gloom brooding
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over a crowd of men.
Forthwith a change came over the waters, and the serenity became less brilliant but more profound. The old river in
its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day, after
ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks,
spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to
the uttermost ends of the earth. We looked at the venerable
stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and
departs for ever, but in the august light of abiding memories. And indeed nothing is easier for a man who has, as
the phrase goes, ‘followed the sea’ with reverence and affection, that to evoke the great spirit of the past upon the lower
reaches of the Thames. The tidal current runs to and fro in
its unceasing service, crowded with memories of men and
ships it had borne to the rest of home or to the battles of the
sea. It had known and served all the men of whom the nation is proud, from Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin,
knights all, titled and untitled—the great knights-errant of
the sea. It had borne all the ships whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of time, from the GOLDEN HIND
returning with her rotund flanks full of treasure, to be visited by the Queen’s Highness and thus pass out of the gigantic
tale, to the EREBUS and TERROR, bound on other conquests— and that never returned. It had known the ships
and the men. They had sailed from Deptford, from Greenwich, from Erith— the adventurers and the settlers; kings’
ships and the ships of men on ‘Change; captains, admirals,
the dark ‘interlopers’ of the Eastern trade, and the commissioned ‘generals’ of East India fleets. Hunters for gold

Heart of Darkness
or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream,
bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the
might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred
fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river
into the mystery of an unknown earth! … The dreams of
men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires.
The sun set; the dusk fell on the stream, and lights began to appear along the shore. The Chapman light-house,
a three-legged thing erect on a mud-flat, shone strongly.
Lights of ships moved in the fairway—a great stir of lights
going up and going down. And farther west on the upper
reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked
ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.
‘And this also,’ said Marlow suddenly, ‘has been one of
the dark places of the earth.’
He was the only man of us who still ‘followed the sea.’
The worst that could be said of him was that he did not represent his class. He was a seaman, but he was a wanderer,
too, while most seamen lead, if one may so express it, a
sedentary life. Their minds are of the stay-at-home order,
and their home is always with them—the ship; and so is
their country—the sea. One ship is very much like another, and the sea is always the same. In the immutability of
their surroundings the foreign shores, the foreign faces, the
changing immensity of life, glide past, veiled not by a sense
of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance; for there
is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself,
which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as
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Destiny. For the rest, after his hours of work, a casual stroll
or a casual spree on shore suffices to unfold for him the secret of a whole continent, and generally he finds the secret
not worth knowing. The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of
a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical (if his propensity to spin yarns be excepted), and to him the meaning of
an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings
out a haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that
sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of
moonshine.
His remark did not seem at all surprising. It was just like
Marlow. It was accepted in silence. No one took the trouble to grunt even; and presently he said, very slow—‘I was
thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came
here, nineteen hundred years ago—the other day…. Light
came out of this river since—you say Knights? Yes; but it
is like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning
in the clouds. We live in the flicker—may it last as long as
the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday.
Imagine the feelings of a commander of a fine—what d’ye
call ‘em?—trireme in the Mediterranean, ordered suddenly
to the north; run overland across the Gauls in a hurry; put
in charge of one of these craft the legionaries—a wonderful
lot of handy men they must have been, too—used to build,
apparently by the hundred, in a month or two, if we may
believe what we read. Imagine him here—the very end of
the world, a sea the colour of lead, a sky the colour of smoke,

Heart of Darkness
a kind of ship about as rigid as a concertina— and going
up this river with stores, or orders, or what you like. Sandbanks, marshes, forests, savages,—precious little to eat fit
for a civilized man, nothing but Thames water to drink. No
Falernian wine here, no going ashore. Here and there a military camp lost in a wilderness, like a needle in a bundle of
hay—cold, fog, tempests, disease, exile, and death—death
skulking in the air, in the water, in the bush. They must have
been dying like flies here. Oh, yes—he did it. Did it very
well, too, no doubt, and without thinking much about it either, except afterwards to brag of what he had gone through
in his time, perhaps. They were men enough to face the
darkness. And perhaps he was cheered by keeping his eye
on a chance of promotion to the fleet at Ravenna by and by,
if he had good friends in Rome and survived the awful climate. Or think of a decent young citizen in a toga—perhaps
too much dice, you know—coming out here in the train of
some prefect, or tax-gatherer, or trader even, to mend his
fortunes. Land in a swamp, march through the woods, and
in some inland post feel the savagery, the utter savagery,
had closed round him—all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts
of wild men. There’s no initiation either into such mysteries.
He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which
is also detestable. And it has a fascination, too, that goes to
work upon him. The fascination of the abomination—you
know, imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape,
the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate.’
He paused.
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‘Mind,’ he began again, lifting one arm from the elbow,
the palm of the hand outwards, so that, with his legs folded
before him, he had the pose of a Buddha preaching in European clothes and without a lotus-flower—‘Mind, none of us
would feel exactly like this. What saves us is efficiency—the
devotion to efficiency. But these chaps were not much account, really. They were no colonists; their administration
was merely a squeeze, and nothing more, I suspect. They
were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force—
nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is
just an accident arising from the weakness of others. They
grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to
be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind—as is very
proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the
earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those
who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses
than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it
too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the
back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an
unselfish belief in the idea—something you can set up, and
bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to. …’
He broke off. Flames glided in the river, small green
flames, red flames, white flames, pursuing, overtaking,
joining, crossing each other— then separating slowly or
hastily. The traffic of the great city went on in the deepening night upon the sleepless river. We looked on, waiting
patiently—there was nothing else to do till the end of the
flood; but it was only after a long silence, when he said, in a

Heart of Darkness
hesitating voice, ‘I suppose you fellows remember I did once
turn fresh-water sailor for a bit,’ that we knew we were fated,
before the ebb began to run, to hear about one of Marlow’s
inconclusive experiences.
‘I don’t want to bother you much with what happened to
me personally,’ he began, showing in this remark the weakness of many tellers of tales who seem so often unaware of
what their audience would like best to hear; ‘yet to understand the effect of it on me you ought to know how I got
out there, what I saw, how I went up that river to the place
where I first met the poor chap. It was the farthest point
of navigation and the culminating point of my experience.
It seemed somehow to throw a kind of light on everything
about me— and into my thoughts. It was sombre enough,
too—and pitiful— not extraordinary in any way—not very
clear either. No, not very clear. And yet it seemed to throw
a kind of light.
‘I had then, as you remember, just returned to London
after a lot of Indian Ocean, Pacific, China Seas—a regular
dose of the East—six years or so, and I was loafing about,
hindering you fellows in your work and invading your
homes, just as though I had got a heavenly mission to civilize you. It was very fine for a time, but after a bit I did get
tired of resting. Then I began to look for a ship—I should
think the hardest work on earth. But the ships wouldn’t
even look at me. And I got tired of that game, too.
‘Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I
would look for hours at South America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all the glories of exploration. At
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that time there were many blank spaces on the earth, and
when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map
(but they all look that) I would put my finger on it and say,
‘When I grow up I will go there.’ The North Pole was one of
these places, I remember. Well, I haven’t been there yet, and
shall not try now. The glamour’s off. Other places were scattered about the hemispheres. I have been in some of them,
and … well, we won’t talk about that. But there was one
yet—the biggest, the most blank, so to speak— that I had a
hankering after.
‘True, by this time it was not a blank space any more. It
had got filled since my boyhood with rivers and lakes and
names. It had ceased to be a blank space of delightful mystery— a white patch for a boy to dream gloriously over. It
had become a place of darkness. But there was in it one river especially, a mighty big river, that you could see on the
map, resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head
in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country,
and its tail lost in the depths of the land. And as I looked at
the map of it in a shop-window, it fascinated me as a snake
would a bird—a silly little bird. Then I remembered there
was a big concern, a Company for trade on that river. Dash
it all! I thought to myself, they can’t trade without using
some kind of craft on that lot of fresh water—steamboats!
Why shouldn’t I try to get charge of one? I went on along
Fleet Street, but could not shake off the idea. The snake had
charmed me.
‘You understand it was a Continental concern, that
Trading society; but I have a lot of relations living on the
10
Heart of Darkness
Continent, because it’s cheap and not so nasty as it looks,
they say.
‘I am sorry to own I began to worry them. This was already a fresh departure for me. I was not used to get things
that way, you know. I always went my own road and on my
own legs where I had a mind to go. I wouldn’t have believed
it of myself; but, then—you see—I felt somehow I must get
there by hook or by crook. So I worried them. The men said
‘My dear fellow,’ and did nothing. Then—would you believe
it?—I tried the women. I, Charlie Marlow, set the women
to work— to get a job. Heavens! Well, you see, the notion
drove me. I had an aunt, a dear enthusiastic soul. She wrote:
‘It will be delightful. I am ready to do anything, anything
for you. It is a glorious idea. I know the wife of a very high
personage in the Administration, and also a man who has
lots of influence with,’ etc. She was determined to make no
end of fuss to get me appointed skipper of a river steamboat,
if such was my fancy.
‘I got my appointment—of course; and I got it very quick.
It appears the Company had received news that one of their
captains had been killed in a scuffle with the natives. This
was my chance, and it made me the more anxious to go. It
was only months and months afterwards, when I made the
attempt to recover what was left of the body, that I heard
the original quarrel arose from a misunderstanding about
some hens. Yes, two black hens. Fresleven—that was the fellow’s name, a Dane—thought himself wronged somehow in
the bargain, so he went ashore and started to hammer the
chief of the village with a stick. Oh, it didn’t surprise me
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11
in the least to hear this, and at the same time to be told
that Fresleven was the gentlest, quietest creature that ever
walked on two legs. No doubt he was; but he had been a
couple of years already out there engaged in the noble cause,
you know, and he probably felt the need at last of asserting
his self-respect in some way. Therefore he whacked the old
nigger mercilessly, while a big crowd of his people watched
him, thunderstruck, till some man— I was told the chief’s
son—in desperation at hearing the old chap yell, made a
tentative jab with a spear at the white man— and of course
it went quite easy between the shoulder-blades. Then the
whole population cleared into the forest, expecting all
kinds of calamities to happen, while, on the other hand,
the steamer Fresleven commanded left also in a bad panic, in charge of the engineer, I believe. Afterwards nobody
seemed to trouble much about Fresleven’s remains, till I got
out and stepped into his shoes. I couldn’t let it rest, though;
but when an opportunity offered at last to meet my predecessor, the grass growing through his ribs was tall enough
to hide his bones. They were all there. The supernatural being had not been touched after he fell. And the village was
deserted, the huts gaped black, rotting, all askew within the
fallen enclosures. A calamity had come to it, sure enough.
The people had vanished. Mad terror had scattered them,
men, women, and children, through the bush, and they had
never returned. What became of the hens I don’t know either. I should think the cause of progress got them, anyhow.
However, through this glorious affair I got my appointment,
before I had fairly begun to hope for it.
12
Heart of Darkness
‘I flew around like mad to get ready, and before fortyeight hours I was crossing the Channel to show myself to
my employers, and sign the contract. In a very few hours
I arrived in a city that always makes me think of a whited
sepulchre. Prejudice no doubt. I had no difficulty in finding
the Company’s offices. It was the biggest thing in the town,
and everybody I met was full of it. They were going to run
an over-sea empire, and make no end of coin by trade.
‘A narrow and deserted street in deep shadow, high
houses, innumerable windows with venetian blinds, a dead
silence, grass sprouting right and left, immense double
doors standing ponderously ajar. I slipped through one of
these cracks, went up a swept and ungarnished staircase, as
arid as a desert, and opened the first door I came to. Two
women, one fat and the other slim, sat on straw-bottomed
chairs, knitting black wool. The slim one got up and walked
straight at me— still knitting with downcast eyes—and
only just as I began to think of getting out of her way, as
you would for a somnambulist, stood still, and looked up.
Her dress was as plain as an umbrella-cover, and she turned
round without a word and preceded me into a waiting-room.
I gave my name, and looked about. Deal table in the middle,
plain chairs all round the walls, on one end a large shining
map, marked with all the colours of a rainbow. There was
a vast amount of red—good to see at any time, because one
knows that some real work is done in there, a deuce of a lot
of b…
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