    (c) 1991 Bureau Development, Inc.

    File: \DP\0034\00349.TXT         Wed Apr 13 15:54:39 1994
Database: Monarch Notes By Author


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Heart Of Darkness: Parts 1 and 2}
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Title:       Works of Joseph Conrad
Book:        Heart of Darkness
Author:      Conrad, Joseph
Critic:      Weiss, James
Affiliation: Department Of English Education, New York University

Heart Of Darkness: Parts 1 and 2

Introduction:

     In September of 1889, Conrad began writing his first novel, Almayer's
Folly, but he was more interested in beginning an adventure which was to
provide material for one of his most widely read works, Heart of Darkness.
Years before, in 1868, when he was a boy of nine, Conrad had been staring at a
map of Africa. Pointing with his finger to the blank space that was the then
unexplored heart of the continent, he said, "When I grow up I shall go there."
Now, twenty-one years later and in a different country, Conrad decided to
make good on his boyhood promise. The blank space on the map of Africa was no
longer blank; it was the Belgian Congo Conrad decided to ask for the job of
captain on one of the steamers that plied the river which leads into the
center of that territory.

     Thus, in September of 1889, a letter was presented to Albert Thys, acting
head of the Societe Anonyme Belge pour les Commerce du Haut-Congo,
recommending Captain Korzeniowski for the job. In January of 1890, Captain
Koreniowski (or Conrad, as he will be called from now on) wrote to an aunt by
marriage, Madame Marguerite Poradowska, asking her to see what she could do to
help him to obtain his appointment. Madame Poradowska was a woman of thirty,
beautiful, and surrounded by a circle of influential friends. If anyone in
Brussels could help Conrad, she could. On the fifth of February, Conrad began
a trip from England to the Ukraine, where he was to visit relatives. He
stopped off in Brussels to see Madame Poradowska, and then continued his trip.
He spent several months in the Ukraine, but he corresponded with Madame
Poradowska about his hoped-for job. Finally, on April 29, 1890, Conrad
arrived for a second time in Brussels, this time to sign a contract to act as
a riverboat pilot on the Congo River in Africa. On May 11, 1890, he set out
for Bordeaux, France, where he would get a boat that would carry him off to
Africa. The story Marlow tells in Heart of Darkness, about how he came to go
to Africa, is almost exactly the same in the important details as the
experience that Conrad had in 1889-1890. Later, when we compare the diary
that Conrad kept of his Congo adventures with the part of the story that
takes. place in Africa, we will again notice how closely Conrad followed the
details of his actual experience when he wrote his story.

The Narrative Technique Of Heart Of Darkness:

     Heart of Darkness is written as a narrative within a narrative. The first
narrator never enters into the story itself; he merely describes events that
occur on the deck of a yacht, the Nellie, anchored in the Thames in the middle
of London. This first narrator is Conrad himself. He describes the deck of the
Nellie where he and a group of four other persons have gathered: the Director
of Companies, the Lawyer, the Accountant, and Marlow, "the only man of us who
still 'followed the sea.'" It is Marlow who narrates the adventures in the
Congo. From time to time, the scene moves back to the deck of the yacht, and
the first narrator picks up the story.

     Why has Conrad gone to the trouble of introducing a character, Marlow
between the story to be told and the author, Conrad himself? One possibility
is that Conrad felt he needed an additional character, not identified with the
"pilgrims" (Conrad's ironic name for the agents of the Societe ... HautCongo)
of the trading company, nor with the author himself. The function of this
character would be to establish a norm against whom we can compare the actions
of the other characters. Marlow stands for Man as he usually is, while the
"pilgrims" and Kurtz stand for Man when he deviates from the norm. If this is
the case, however-if both Conrad and Marlow are represented in the story -
we must be careful about ascribing feelings and ideas of Marlow to Conrad.
Although we can expect Conrad to agree with most of Marlow's opinions, Conrad
is not Marlow; the two are separate.

     If we think of Marlow as a bit of a mystery, and he is, how much more
mysterious in his creator! Marlow, we are told early in the story, is
"inscrutable," that is, he is incapable of being understood. Fortunately
Marlow does tell us how he feels about the things that happen around him.
Although we may not understand him, at least we know whose side he is on. We
never can be sure about that other narrator, the fifth person on the deck of
the yacht. He merely reports what is going on around him.

The Plot Of Heart Of Darkness. Part I: Toward The Heart Of Darkness.

     To the four other men on the deck of the Nellie, which is anchored in the
Thames, Captain Marlow proposes to tell of an adventure that happened to him
years ago. Before he begins his story, he thinks about the history of England
at the time when it was a backward country and Roman soldiers came to it to
plunder and to conquer.

Comment:

     Conrad wishes us to compare England two thousand years ago to Africa in
the nineteenth century. Just as Marlow is about to travel into the heart of a
wilderness, so the Roman soldiers traveled into the heart of a wilderness. An
accident of time separates Marlow from those Roman soldiers. Perhaps Conrad is
suggesting that the veneer of civilization merely covers the primitive
foundation which gives structure to any society, whether it be in England in
prehistoric ages, Africa in the nineteenth century, or, by extension, America
in the twentieth century.

     Marlow first describes how he came to make the trip to the Congo. He was
a young man out of a job; he had been interested in the Congo for a long time;
he had an aunt who could help him to get an appointment as a river-boat
pilot. In short, Marlow retells the story that Conrad had actually
experienced. He takes a French steamer to the mouth of the Congo River. The
steamer has made many stops along the way and Marlow is impressed with the
sameness of the jungle landscape, and the mysteriousness of it. They pass a
French gunboat firing shells into the jungle. Marlow is told that there are
natives in the jungle, but the idea is apparently ludicrous to him (as if one
could shoot the jungle, as the Roman emperor tried to beat the sea because it
would not obey his commands).

     Finally, the steamer reaches the mouth of the Congo and Marlow
disembarks. He boards a smaller steamer, this one commanded by a Swedish
captain, and starts on the first leg of his journey up the river. Before
Marlow leaves the Swede, he is told about another Swede who hanged himself;
apparently, the jungle has a dangerous effect on the people who travel in it.
Marlow leaves the Swedish captain at the Company Station. This station is
hardly the model of efficiency that one might expect. In fact, we are told
only of the broken machinery, the useless effort, the dying natives, and one
strangely incongruous dandy, complete with starched collar and polished boots.
It is the dandy, the company accountant, who first tells Marlow of Kurtz.

Comment:

     We are not told very much about Kurtz in the beginning. From this point
onward we are given bits of information, a few at a time, about him. The
effect of this information is to create a mystery about Kurtz rather than to
make him a clearly drawn character.

     Marlow spends a total of ten days at the Company Station before he
continues his journey up the river. The next stage of this journey is through
the jungle because the river is not navigable for a stretch of two hundred
miles. In the jungle Marlow sees further signs of the inefficiency and chaos
that pervade the story. He comes upon the body of a native, shot through the
forehead. Along the path are abandoned native villages; the countryside had
been deserted. A drunken European settler is camped by the side of the path,
anxious to tell his story of frustration and disease. At the end of fifteen
days of walking through the jungle, Marlow reaches the Central Station.

     The company manager does not invite him to sit down. Instead, he
confronts him with yet another obstacle: the steamer which he is to pilot is
at the bottom of the river. Not only must Marlow raise the steamer and repair
the bottom, but he must do it without the proper tools because, inexplicably,
no rivets can be found upstream, although they lay strewn all over the station
two hundred miles down the river. In all, it will be three months before the
steamer is repaired and Marlow can start upstream on the next leg of his
journey. One further accident vexes the Europeans at this station. A shed
mysteriously bursts into flame one night. One of the company employees
attempts to fight the fire, but he fails to notice that the pail he is using
has a hole in the bottom. Such is the inefficiency of Europeans in Africa. The
narrative is sharply interrupted at this point with the words, "He was silent
for a while."

Comment:

     Here is the first of several occasions when the mysterious, unnamed first
narrator on the deck of the Nellie back in London breaks in upon Marlow's
narrative. In our imaginations we jump several decades and several thousand
miles from one paragraph to the next. Such a shift reminds us of the fictional
nature of the story we are reading while the details and direct conversation
given to us by Marlow convince us of the truth of the story. Thus we have two
opposing forces at work, reality and fiction, which generate a tension within
the story. This "story-within-a story" technique in fiction is very much
like framing a painting with an ornate frame. The frame helps us to
distinguish between the painting and the surface upon which it hangs (our
living-room wall, say). So the literary framework, the first of the two
narratives, helps us to distinguish between what is happening in the Congo,
and what is happening around us (we are actually sitting in school, say).

     The first part of the narrative draws to a conclusion with additional
information about Kurtz and additional comment on the "pilgrims."

Comment:

     Apparently, there are not one, but two kinds of "pilgrims": there are the
"pilgrims" who are in Africa to make a fortune, and there are "pilgrims" who
are there with a sense of mission. This mission translates into something like
"white man's burden" for us today, but in the late nineteenth century the idea
was probably less formulated. Then, that sense of mission might have been a
little more tolerable than it is now. Kurtz seems to be one of the "new men,"
that is, he is an idealist. He is also extremely successful: no one ships more
ivory to the coast than he. His success bothers the profit-motivated
"pilgrims" because they feel that their own position in the company is being
challenged. All these ideas are introduced when Marlow meets the agent in
charge of brick making, and when the "Eldorado Expedition" arrives at the
Central Station.

The Plot Of Heart Of Darkness Part II: In The Heart Of Darkness.

     Just as Part I opened with Marlow on deck, the deck of the Nellie in
London, as Part II opens with him on another deck, the deck of the little tin
river-boat at the Company Station, several hundred miles up the river in the
Congo. While he is lying on the deck one evening, the chief agent strolls by
in the company of his uncle, who is leading the Eldorado Exploring Expedition.
They stop alongside the boat, which has been drawn up upon the river bank to
be repaired; and unaware of Marlow's presence, they begin to discuss Kurtz.
They recall how, one year ago, Kurtz started down the river with a shipment of
ivory. After travelling three hundred miles, Kurtz turned back with only four
oarsmen and a single canoe. Even though he was out of supplies with which to
trade with the natives for ivory, he decides to go back for more. Why has he
done this? Marlow imagines that Kurtz returned because he was "a fine fellow
who stuck to his work for its own sake."

Comment:

     It is at this point that the dichotomy between Kurtz, one of the
"pilgrims" with a sense of mission, and the other agents or "pilgrims,"
becomes clear. Although Marlow is still an impartial observer, when he has his
choice between the types of men who go to Africa (he will call it choice of
"nightmares"), he chooses Kurtz.

     The interview between the chief agent and his uncle is abruptly brought
to its conclusion when they realize that Marlow is on the deck of the river -
boat listening to their conversation. The two men have been discussing the
mortality rate among the agents in the Congo. The uncle says that one can
trust to the jungle to take care of killing off the agents. He gestures toward
the jungle, the river, the sunlight and the shadow. Marlow, who has been
listening and watching, is so startled that he jumps to his feet.

Comment:

     Why is Marlow so startled by the appearance of the jungle? It is the
contrast between the blackness of the jungle itself and the brilliance of the
sunlit surface that amazes him. He says that he expected the jungle to make
some answer to the two men. Marlow has been wakened from dozing when the two
men talk beneath the deck of his beached boat. He himself tries to offer an
explanation for his own strange reaction to the gesture of the leader of the
"Eldorado Exploring Expedition." He says, "You know the foolish notions that
come to one sometimes." But foolish notions or not, what Marlow's words do is
to suggest that the jungle does have a personality of its own, and that
personality is not at all friendly.

     The river-boat is finally repaired, and a party of "pilgrims," led by
the chief agent, begins the trip up the river to Kurtz's station. In all, the
trip will take them two months. Marlow, of course, is the pilot of the boat,
and for a crew he has a party of cannibals. They must chop wood every day, the
wood used as fuel for the river-boat. As the boat progresses up the river,
Marlow is consistently impressed by the primitive nature of the country around
him. He compares the trip up the river to a trip back into time, back to the
beginning of time itself.

Comment:

     We are reminded, at this point, of Marlow's earlier statement, at the
very beginning of the story. Then he imagined what a Roman soldier, fresh from
the civilization of Rome, must have felt as he travelled up the then primitive
Thames.

     Marlow insists upon the mysterious nature of the trip up the river. The
jungle, he says, in all its silence seemed to be a brooding, sinister force.
All of his attention was taken up by the daily job of avoiding snags and rocks
in the river that would sink the boat. (What a hair-raising job it must have
been!) The strain of constantly attending to the physical signs around him has
a strange effect on Marlows:the physical world begins to seem unreal, and he
is aware of another kind of presence, one that watches him as it watches those
who are listening to him. Once again, Marlow's tale is interrupted by a voice
from one of his auditors on the deck of the Nellie. It is a voice reported to
us by the first narrator, Conrad himself.

Comment:

     Again, we notice the sudden shift we must make in our imaginations: from
the Congo to the Thames; from the past to the present; from the wilderness to
an outpost of civilization. In addition, we cannot fail to notice how
noncommittal the words of Conrad are in his own story: it is impossible to
judge, from his own words, what he is thinking and feeling.

     Marlow continues his preoccupied musings on the nature of the wilderness.
As the river-boat goes deeper and deeper into the heart of the continent, he
says it goes deeper and deeper into the "heart of darkness." He wonders at the
primitive people who live along the shore of the river. To Marlow, the most
wonderful thing about them is that, despite their savagery, they are human.
More than that, it is wonderful to realize that we too are savage, in the same
way that these primitive people are, but we manage to conceal our savagery. In
a sense, continues Marlow, we have, in our own minds, the experiences of the
past.

Comment:

     More remarkable than Marlow's understanding of the nature of primitive
people, both civilized and uncivilized, is the appearance here of ideas that
we have come to associate with Carl Jung, doctor of medicine, psychiatrist,
philosopher, mystic and thinker. Jung published his own ideas about the
continuance of cultural history (that we inherit certain cultural ideas in the
same way that we inherit the color of our eyes) long after Conrad wrote Heart
of Darkness.

     Fifty miles below Kurtz's station, Marlow and the "pilgrims" discover a
ruined hut and wood, already cut and stacked. There is a note attached to the
pile of wood. The note contains both a plea for help and a warning. While the
cannibals and the "pilgrims" load the wood onto the boat, Marlow investigates
the ruined hut. Within, he discovers a book, An Inquiry into Some Points of
Seamanship. It is obvious that the book had been used well: the pages are very
soiled, the covers have come off and the pages have been resewn to the
binding, and extensive notes have been made in the margins, apparently in
code.

Comment:

     Marlow is amazed, and delighted, to discover this sign of civilization
and of order in the wilderness. He has noticed nothing but chaos and disorder
for the hundreds of miles he has travelled in the Congo. Now he suddenly comes
across a seaman's manual, an English book, hundreds of miles from the sea, and
thousands of miles from England. No wonder he later says the experience was
like running into an old friend. (Wallace Stevens, the American poet,
describes a similar feeling in his poem, Anecdote of the Jar. Stevens sees
that the jar imposes order upon the wilderness around it, just as the book
makes sense of the wilderness and just as Marlow makes sense of the "pilgrims"
and of Kurtz.)

     The manager remarks that an illusive renegade trader must have left the
wood for them. Thus, with a new mystery, Marlow guides his little riverboat
into the innermost heart of darkness. In two days' time they are eight miles
from Kurtz's station, but they have to anchor because it is evening and the
river is too treacherous to navigate at night. When the morning comes, it
brings with it a dense, thick, warm, clammy white fog. The "pilgrims," of
course, are completely immobilized. Then, when they are unable either to move
or to see, they hear a loud cry, first by a single voice, then by many voices.
Marlow says that the voice seemed to be that of the fog itself. The "pilgrims"
are terrified.

Comment:

     Perhaps in no other part of the story has Conrad so clearly insisted upon
the idea of reality, and its antithesis, the idea of dream. Continually,
Marlow says that the reality "fades" around him. At this exciting point in the
story-we are waiting to see Kurtz; the journey is almost finished; strange
sounds and sights surround the boat (a little island of civilization in the
wilderness) - Conrad most clearly reveals to us that life is a process of
passing between dreams and reality, and that none of us can be completely sure
which is which. Later, in a separate essay on the fogs, mists, lights, and
darknesses, we will see how carefully Conrad has worked out a pattern of
dreams (and nightmares) in his story.

     The "pilgrims" are afraid the natives in the jungle will attack. The
cannibals who are working on the river-boat hope they will. When Marlow asks
them why they want to fight the natives, the cannibals reply that they want to
catch them and eat them.

Comment:

     This brief piece of action is important for two reasons: it illustrates
Conrad's idea about cannibalism which was generally accepted in his day,
although it appears amusing and old-fashioned to us; and it suggests his
attitude about self-discipline. Of course, we now know that cannibalism is
primarily a ritualistic action, and has nothing at all to do with satisfying
the hunger for food. Conrad, however, assumes that the cannibals enjoy human
flesh, in the same way that we, for example, might be partial to pork chops.
The second idea is much more important: if the cannibals do enjoy human food,
and we know their own supply of food, hippo-meat, has long since gone bad,
what has prevented them from devouring the "pilgrims" long ago? The only
answer to this question must be that the cannibals have exercised a very
severe kind of discipline over themselves: they have overcome their own hunger
(and if you have ever been really hungry, you know what a strong feeling that
is) and they have subordinated that hunger to an idea. The idea may be as
prosaic as "One doesn't eat one's employer," or it may be considerably more
complex; but whatever it is, the cannibals respect it enough to go hungry for
days. Clearly, they have a great deal of self-discipline, more than the
"pilgrims" who later will shoot innocent natives merely on a whim.

[Hear Cannibals' Self Discipline]

     Marlow, however, believes the natives on the shore will not attack,
because the wailing sounds they are making are more like cries of grief than
cries of warlike hostility. As it turns out, no one is completely correct. The
fog lifts, and the steamer continues up the river. Only a mile and a half
below their destination, according to Marlow's calculations, they come across
an island in the river. To pass by the island, it is necessary to choose a
channel which takes the river-boat quite close to the shore; as a matter of
fact, the boat is so close that it brushes against the bushes growing from the
river bank. Then the natives attack. First, in perfect silence, thousands of
arrows fly through the air, killing the poleman who operates the sounding
pole. Marlow leans over to close the shutter and not ten feet away he sees the
natives hidden among the bush on the shore. Marlow's helmsman, a native
himself, becomes hysterical and lets go of the wheel to fire a rifle into the
bush. He is hit by a spear thrown from the shore, falls back into the cabin,
and dies in silence in a pool of his own blood. At this point Marlow blows the
river-boat's steam whistle, which terrifies the natives on the shore. The
shooting stops. Marlow's shoes have become soaked in the blood of his
helmsman, so he pulls them off and throws them overboard. It occurs to Marlow
that Kurtz himself must be dead.

Comment:

     Throughout this, the most action-filled scene in the story, the figure
of Kurtz has been looming in the background. Before the fog has lifted, when
the "pilgrims" are worried about being attacked by the natives, Marlow thinks
to himself that getting to Kurtz is as difficult as reaching "an enchanted
princess in a fabulous castle." While still in the fog, the chief agent has
told Marlow he could take whatever risks he wanted to reach Kurtz (although
Marlow doubts, and rightly so, his sincerity). Finally, when the helmsman is
killed by a spear thrown from the shore, it is of Kurtz that they think.

     Marlow is very disappointed when he believes that Kurtz must be dead.
Only now does he realize how much he has been looking forward to a talk with
Kurtz. As Marlow gives way to a feeling of profound sorrow over the loss of
Kurtz, he is made aware again of the sorrowing noise made by the natives in
the bush. At this point there is another of those dramatic shifts, from Africa
to England, as someone on the deck of the Nellie lets out a sigh.

Comment:

     The natives, Marlow, and the listener on the deck of the Nellie, all sigh
for the same reason. Marlow has already said that the noise of the natives was
more of sorrow than of rage; and by anticipating a bit, we realize that the
sorrow of the natives is for the loss of Kurtz.

     That omniscient (all-knowing, because he can report on everything that
happens) first narrator is back with us again. Now he describes Marlow on the
deck of the Nellie in London, as Marlow strikes a match to re-light his
pipe. His eyelids are drooped, his face seems to recede and advance in the
little light of the match until-the match goes out.

Comment:

     We have already seen, in Lord Jim, how Conrad loves to introduce tiny
points of light (remember Jim on the beach of Patusan, all the sunlight
gathering into him), to illuminate, that is, to throw light upon, his main
characters with these points of light, and then to have the dimness, the
obscurity, the darkness close in again.

     Marlow, we have been told by the narrator, has become little more than a
voice. Now Marlow, speaking of Kurtz, makes the same observation; for him,
Kurtz had become little more than a voice. Marlow interrupts his narrative to
anticipate his story and tell us something about Kurtz, and about the fiancee
whom Kurtz calls "my Intended." Kurtz is bald.

Comment:

     Kurtz, metaphorically speaking, is also dead. When Marlow describes
Kurtz's baldness, he says, "They say the hair goes on growing sometimes."
Clearly, he is thinking of the tradition that a dead man's hair and
fingernails continue to grow. May critics feel that Marlow is taking a trip
into Hell itself, the real heart of darkness. If this is so, then the idea of
Kurtz's death begins to make sense; who else but a dead man could we expect to
find in Hell?

     Marlow sees to the burial of his helmsman in the river. He says he wants
to remove temptation from the eyes of the hungry cannibal crew. Meantime, the
"pilgrims" have been discussing the probability of Kurtz's death and of the
destruction of the company trading post. As they discuss plans to flee down
the river, the trading post comes into view. It is not destroyed. Marlow scans
the area with his glasses and notices several posts around the large shed on
the summit of the hill. He assumes these are the remains of a fence. Standing
on the shore is a man, a European, beckoning the ship to land. The man is
dressed in a suit that has been patched with many brightly colored pieces of
cloth. Marlow remarks that he looks like a harlequin, a clown. Marlow lands
the river-boat. The manager and the "pilgrims" go up to the house while
Marlow interviews the strangely dressed newcomer. It is he who left the cut
wood down the river, and it is he who has been reading Towson's book on
navigation, An Inquiry into Some Points of Seamanship.

Comment:

     At this point, the end of the second section of Conrad's short story, we
are in the very heart of darkness itself. We can expect to reach the point of
the story soon, although we must remember that the first narrator has called
Marlow's tales "inconclusive." That clownishly dressed European has turned out
to be a Russian, and we remember that Conrad himself was a Pole who had lived,
as a boy, in Russia.

