The Literature Book

DEPICTING REAL LIFE 197

what he calls “the conquest of the

earth,” which is “Not a pretty thing

when you look into it too much.”

Conquest relies on dispossession,

on taking “from those who have a

different complexion or slightly

flatter noses than ourselves.”

Marlow’s journey up the Congo

reads like a voyage into hell: black

Africans dying of overwork and

malnutrition; white Europeans

going slowly insane; his boat under

attack from those who live in the

jungle. He is obsessed with stories

about Kurtz, who has amassed

huge amounts of ivory but has

embraced the darkness around

him—or within him. The report

that Kurtz has written about how

to suppress “savage customs” ends,

Marlow discovers, with a scrawled

sentence: “Exterminate all the

brutes!” Conrad here suggests that

under the surface of the supposed

mission to “civilize” Africa lies an

urge to exterminate those of a

different complexion.

But just as Marlow realizes his

kinship with his cannibal crew

(“good fellows,” he calls them), so

he understands his kinship with

Kurtz. Conrad, a contemporary of

psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud,

offers the suggestion that the

“heart of darkness” may lie inside,

that Marlow’s voyage deep into the

African continent can be read as a

voyage into the human psyche. ■

Africa is exploited by imperial conquerors

for natural resources.

The mistreatment of Africans lays bare the

racism inherent in imperialism.

Marlow’s cannibal shipmates are

less savage than Europeans.

The journey up the river

is a journey into the darkness

of the human psyche.

Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad was born Jozef

Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski

on December 3, 1857, in the

Polish Ukraine. After his

mother’s early death and

his father’s political exile to

Siberia, Conrad was brought

up by his mother’s brother

in Kraków. At the age of 17,

he moved to France and made

many bohemian friends; he

took work at sea as a pilot,

and his observations during

this time laid the groundwork

for much of the detail in his

novels. Conrad later settled

in England, with the intention

of becoming a naval officer.

He spent 20 years as a sailor,

slowly learning English

and beginning to write.

He became a British subject

in 1886 and began his first

novel, Almayer’s Folly, in

1889. The time he spent in
      command of a steamship
      named Le roi des Belges in
      the Belgian Congo in 1890
      provided the outline for Heart
      of Darkness. Conrad died in
      1924 at the age of 67.

Other key works

1900 Lord Jim

1904 Nostromo

1907 The Secret Agent

1911 Under Western Eyes

See also: Robinson Crusoe 94–95 ■ The Story of an African Farm 201 ■

Nostromo 240 ■ A Passage to India 241– 42 ■ Things Fall Apart 266–69

Marlow’s journey up the Congo

US_196-197_HeartDarkness.indd 197 08/10/2015 13:07