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Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

-Joseph Conrad was born in Poland and immigrated to the U.K. with his parents when he was
quite young.
-He didnt learn to speak or write English until he was 21.
-His experiences later in life gave his writing an unusual depth in terms of imagery images
brought to ones mind from reading.
-His descriptions enable readers to visualize settings without the discomfort people often
associate with foreign places (different climate, language, social customs, etc.).

Themes in Heart of Darkness

-human capacity for delight & wonder
-sense of mystery surrounding human life
-fellowship/interconnectedness with all creation
-solidarity of human emotion (universality of emotion)
-mans dream of himself can serve to either unite him with his fellows or divide him from them
-mans life can be wrecked or sustained by his dreams and illusions

Literary Concepts
Point of View: First person told by Marlow
Tone: war-like: Marlow is disgusted by the brutality of the Company for which he and Kurtz
work. He is also sickened by Kurtzs degeneration.
Setting: between 1876-1892. The novel opens on the Thames River outside of London, where
Marlow is telling the story in flashback of the events that occur in the novel.
Events in the novel take place in Brussels, Belgium, at the companys offices and in the African
Congo, then a Belgian territory.
Protagonist: Marlow
Conflicts: mainly internal. Both Marlow and Kurtz experience a conflict between their images
of themselves as civilized Europeans and the temptation to abandon morality completely once
they leave the context of European society. External conflicts (man vs. nature, for example) are
readily seen. Both Belgium and England have relatively cool climates. The Congo region of
Africa then was dense rainforest. The climate was extremely humid with high temperatures.

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Other Themes:
-the hypocrisy of imperialism (the policy of extending rule of authority of an empire over foreign
countries). Hypocritical because empires are created by entrepreneurial practices people creating their
own destinies (U.S./Revolutionary era). Then for those same empires to come in and establish rules over
foreign people, forbidding them the creation of their own destinies, is hypocritical.
-madness as a result of imperialism (Kurtz, for example, losing his mind because he is torn between
greed and the inherent wrong of what he is doing to the people of the Congo to become richer and richer).
-the absurdity of evil (evil practices go against all that humans aspire to be).

Motifs (reoccurring subject, theme, idea)

-darkness (literal and figurative darkness is very seldom opposed to light).
-interiors vs. surfaces (appearance vs. reality)
-ironic understatement (theory of omission)
-obvious and intentional exaggeration (hyperbolic language)
-images of ridiculous waste (elephants, for example)
-upriver vs. downriver
-toward Kurtz/away from civilization (quest or journey structure of novels/stories).

Symbolism
-rivers
-fog
-French warship firing on forested coast
-grove of death
-severed heads on fence posts
-maps