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Heart of Darkness is a novel written by Joseph Conrad. Before its 1902 publication, it appeared as a three-part series (1899) in Blackwood's Magazine. It is widely regarded as a significant work of English literature^[1] and part of the Western canon.

The story tells of when Marlow, an Englishman, took a foreign assignment from a Belgian trading company as a ferry-boat captain in Africa. Although Conrad does not give the name of the river, at the time, Congo Free State, the location of the large and important Congo River was a private colony of Belgium's King Leopold II. Marlow is employed to transport ivory downriver. However, his more pressing assignment is to return Kurtz, another ivory trader, to civilization, in a cover-up. Kurtz has a reputation throughout the region.

This symbolic story is a story within a story or frame narrative. It follows Marlow as he recounts from dusk through to late night, to a group of men aboard a ship anchored in the Thames Estuary his Congolese adventure. The passage of time and the darkening sky during the fictitious narrative-within-the-narrative parallels the atmosphere of the story.

Background

Eight and a half years before writing the book, Conrad had gone to serve as the captain of a Congo steamer. On arriving in the Congo, he found his steamer damaged and under repair. He became ill and returned to Europe before serving as captain. Some of Conrad's experiences in the Congo and the story's historic background, including possible models for Kurtz are recounted in Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost.^[2]

The story-within-a-story device (called framed narrative by literary critics) that Conrad chose for Heart of Darkness — one in which an unnamed narrator relates Charles Marlow's account of his journey — has many literary precedents. Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein used a similar device but the best known examples are Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, The Arabian Nights and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Plot summary

The story opens with five men, apparently colleagues, on a boat on the Thames. Marlow begins telling a story of a job he took as captain of a steamship in Africa. He begins by ruminating on how Britain's image among Ancient Roman officials must have been similar to Africa's image among 19th century British officials. He describes how his "dear aunt" used many of her contacts to secure the job for him. When he arrives at the job, he encounters many men he dislikes as they strike him as untrustworthy. They speak often of a man named Kurtz, who has quite a reputation in many areas of expertise. He is somewhat of a rogue ivory collector, "essentially a great musician," a journalist, a skilled painter and "a universal genius."

Marlow arrives at the Central Station run by the general manager, an unwholesome conspiratorial character. He finds that his steamship has been sunk and spends several months waiting for parts to repair it. Kurtz is rumored to be ill, making the delays in repairing the ship all the more costly. Marlow eventually gets the parts and he and the manager set out with a few agents and a crew of cannibals on a long, difficult voyage up the river. The dense jungle and the oppressive silence make everyone aboard a little jumpy, and the occasional glimpse of a native village or the sound of drums works the voyagers into a frenzy.

Marlow and his crew come across a hut with stacked firewood together with a note saying that the wood is for them but that they should approach cautiously. Shortly after the steamer has taken on the firewood it is surrounded by a dense fog. When the fog clears, the ship is attacked by an unseen band of natives, who fire arrows from the safety of the forest. A Russian trader who meets them as they come ashore, assures them that everything is fine and informs them that he is the one who left the wood. Kurtz has established himself as a god with the natives and has gone on brutal raids in the surrounding territory in search of ivory.

Marlow and his crew take the ailing Kurtz aboard their ship and depart. Kurtz is lodged in Marlow's pilothouse and Marlow begins to see that Kurtz is every bit as grandiose as previously described. During this time, Kurtz gives Marlow a collection of papers and a photograph for safekeeping; both had witnessed the manager going through Kurtz's belongings. The photograph is of a beautiful woman whom Marlow assumes is Kurtz's love interest.

One night Marlow happens upon Kurtz, obviously near death. As Marlow comes closer with a candle, Kurtz seems to experience a moment of clarity and speaks his last words: "The horror! The horror!" Marlow believes this to be Kurtz's reflection on the events of his life. Marlow does not inform the manager or any of the other voyagers of Kurtz's death; the news is instead broken by the manager's child-servant.

Marlow later returns to his home city and is confronted by many people seeking things and ideas of Kurtz. Marlow eventually sees Kurtz's fiancée about a year later; she is still in mourning. She asks Marlow about Kurtz's death and Marlow informs her that his last words were her name — rather than, as really happened, "The horror! The horror!"

The story concludes as the scene returns to the trip on the Thames and mentions how it seems as though the boat is drifting into the heart of the darkness.

Motifs

T. S. Eliot's use of a quotation from The Heart of Darkness—"Mistah Kurtz, he dead"—as an epigraph to the original manuscript of his poem, The Hollow Men, contrasted its dark horror with the presumed "light of civilization," and suggested the ambiguity of both the dark motives of civilization and the freedom of barbarism, as well as the "spiritual darkness" of several characters in Heart of Darkness. This sense of darkness also lends itself to a related theme of obscurity—again, in various senses, reflecting the ambiguities in the work. Morality is ambiguous, that which is traditionally placed on the side of "light" is in darkness and vice versa.

Africa was known as "The Dark Continent" in the Victorian Era with all the negative connotations attributed to Africans by many of the British. One of the possible influences for the Kurtz character was Henry Morton Stanley of "Dr. Livingstone, I presume" fame, as he was a principal explorer of "The Dark Heart of Africa", particularly the Congo. Stanley was supposedly infamous for his violence against his porters while in Africa, although records indicate this was perhaps an exaggeration ^[3] and he was later honoured with a knighthood. An agent Conrad met when travelling in the Congo, Georges-Antoine Klein (klein means 'small' in German, as Kurtz alludes to kurz, 'short'), could have served as a model for Kurtz. Klein died aboard Conrad's steamer and was interred along the Congo, much like Kurtz in the novel.^[4] Among the people Conrad may have encountered on his journey was a trader called Leon Rom, who was later named chief of the Stanley Falls Station. In 1895 a British traveller reported that Rom had decorated his flower-bed with the skulls of some twenty-one victims of his displeasure (including women and children) resembling the posts of Kurtz's Station.^[5]

Duality of Human Nature

To emphasize the theme of darkness within mankind^[6], Marlow's narration takes place on a yawl in the Thames tidal estuary. Early in the novella, Marlow recounts how London, the largest, most populous and wealthiest city in the world, was a "dark" place in Roman times. The idea that the Romans conquered the "savage" Britons parallels Conrad's tale of the Belgians conquering the "savage" Africans. The theme of darkness lurking beneath the surface of even "civilized" persons appears prominently and is explored in the character of Kurtz and through Marlow's passing sense of understanding with the Africans.

Kurtz embodies all forms of an urge to be more or less than human. He employs his faculties for aims in the opposite to the idealism announced in his self-deconstructing report as a civilizer. His writings show in Marlow's view an "exotic Immensity ruled by an august Benevolence" and they appeal to "every altruistic sentiment." His predisposition for benevolence is clear in the statement "We whites...must necessarily appear to them [savages] in the nature of supernatural beings....By the simple exercise of our will we can exert a power for good practically unbounded". The Central Station manager quotes Kurtz, the exemplar: "Each station should be like a beacon on the road towards better things, a centre for trade of course, but also for humanizing, improving, instructing". Kurtz's inexperienced, scientific self in the fiery report is alive with the possibility of the cultivation and conversion of the "savages". He would have subscribed to Moreau's proposition that "a pig may be educated".^[6]

Themes developed in the novella's later scenes include the naïveté of Europeans (particularly women) regarding the various forms of darkness in the Congo; the British traders and Belgian colonialists' abuse of the natives and man's potential for duplicity. The symbolism in the book expands on these as a struggle between good and evil (light and darkness), not so much between people as in every major character's soul.

Readings

Conrad's novel is called an archetypal modern text for a number of reasons, one being its many interpretations. These readings include:

Symbolic A symbolic reading of the text may note that contrasts between light and dark have been part of life since the origins of humanity. Light equaling good, dark equaling evil plays an important part in the novel. Symbolic comparisons are also made between the River Thames and the Congo river, between the City of London seen at the start of the novel and the African settlement where Marlow lives for a time during his journey. Marlow is symbolically compared to the maverick Kurtz and Kurtz can also be seen as a symbol of the imperial, ignorant and callous European mind.

Mythical A mythical reading has ideas of the primitive, the nature of primitive existence and the role of a vague but powerful idea has upon humanity, as well as embodying a return to the origins of existence and a confrontation with darkness. The myth of the Seer or apparent 'All-seeing Wise Man' is included, is embodied by Kurtz. Although this idea is not fulfilled as we learn Kurtz is not the God-like figure described by colonists and natives alike, Marlow still learns from Kurtz, even at a point where the idea of Empire is in decline.

Psychological This reading Conrad's tale has been a common form of interpretation and the most obvious and introspective reading of the novella is as a journey into Marlow's inner self. It is an exploration of identity on how the outside world may alter and disrupt the inner ideals and morals of even the most incorruptible person.

Political Since the late 1960s, political readings of Heart of Darkness have increased, exploring and commenting on the ideology of imperialism. Marlow's reference at the start of the novel to the actions of the Romans is a comparison to the actions of those exploring the Africa in the novel's context, particularly the Congo river. Through a political reading much of the text can be interpreted as a satire of the greed and ignorance of Europe. Marlow indicates that the British colonial effort is superior to that of any other country, particularly Belgians' colonial activities, "There was a vast amount of red [British colonies] -good to see at any time, because one knows that some real work is done in there". Marlow experiences something of a revelation as we see him change his opinions during the story.

Realist Many readers view Conrad as a realist and a documenter of the events he saw in the Congo. Readers of this approach argue that Heart of Darkness is a document of Conrad's visit to the Congo and should be read as a judgment of Belgian colonialism rather than a psychological analysis.

Historical context

The Roi des Belges, the ship Conrad used to travel up the Congo

The novel is partly autobiographical, based on Joseph Conrad's six-month journey up the Congo River where he took command of a steamboat in 1890 after the death of its captain. At the time the river was called the Congo and the country was the Congo Free State. The area Conrad refers to as the Company Station was a place called Matadi, two hundred miles up river. The Central Station was called Kinshasa and these places marked a stretch of river impassable by steamboat on which Marlow takes a "two-hundred mile tramp."

Conrad met Roger Casement at Matadi on 13 June 1890, writing "Made the acquaintance of Mr Roger Casement, which I should consider as a great pleasure under any circumstances and now it becomes a positive piece of luck. Thinks, speaks well, most intelligent and very sympathetic." The two were to share a room for several weeks, barring a period when Casement went down river to Boma escorting "a large lot of ivory."

The Company was the 'Anglo-Belgian India-Rubber Company' formed by King Leopold II of Belgium. The Congo Free State was voted into existence by the Berlin Conference (1884), which Conrad refers to sarcastically in his novella as "the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs".

Leopold II declared the Congo Free State his property in 1892, legally permitting the Belgians to take what rubber they wished from the area without having to trade with Africans. This caused more atrocities by the Belgian traders.

The Congo Free State ceased to be the property of the king and became a colony of Belgium called Belgian Congo, in 1908 after the extent of the atrocities committed there became known in the West, in part through Conrad's novella but mainly through Casement's exposé.

Reception

In a post-colonial reading, the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe famously criticized Heart of Darkness in his 1975 lecture An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", saying the novella de-humanized Africans, denied them language and culture and reduced them to a metaphorical extension of the dark and dangerous jungle into which the Europeans venture. Achebe's lecture prompted a lively debate, reactions at the time ranged from dismay and outrage — Achebe recounted a Professor Emeritus from the University of Massachusetts saying to Achebe after the lecture, "How dare you upset everything we have taught, everything we teach? Heart of Darkness is the most widely taught text in the university in this country. So how dare you say it’s different?"^[7] — to support for Achebe's view — "I now realize that I had never really read Heart of Darkness although I have taught it for years," ^[8] one professor told Achebe. Other critiques include Hugh Curtler's Achebe on Conrad: Racism and Greatness in Heart of Darkness (1997).^[9]

In King Leopold's Ghost (1998), Adam Hochschild argues that literary scholars have made too much of the psychological aspects of Heart of Darkness while scanting the horror of Conrad's accurate recounting of the methods and effects of colonialism. He quotes Conrad as saying, "Heart of Darkness is experience ... pushed a little (and only very little) beyond the actual facts of the case."^[10]

Heart of Darkness is also criticized for its portrayal of women. In the novel, Marlow says that "It's queer how out of touch with truth women are.". Marlow also suggests that women have to be sheltered from the truth in order to keep their fantasy world from "shattering before the first sunset.".

Adaptations

Orson Welles adapted and narrated the novel for his Mercury Theater radio show. When Welles signed his contract with RKO Radio Pictures in 1940, he considered making films based on Heart of Darkness and on the C. Day Lewis novel The Smiler With a Knife (1939) before deciding on Citizen Kane (1941).

The CBS television anthology Playhouse 90 aired a loose adaptation in 1958. This version, written by Stewart Stern, uses the encounter between Marlow (Roddy McDowall) and Kurtz (Boris Karloff) as its final act, and adds a backstory in which Marlow had been Kurtz's adopted son. The cast includes Inga Swenson and Eartha Kitt.

The most famous adaptation of Heart of Darkness is Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 movie Apocalypse Now, which moves the story from the Congo to Vietnam and Cambodia during the Vietnam War.^[11] In Apocalypse Now, Martin Sheen plays Captain Benjamin L. Willard a US Army officer charged with "terminating" the command of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz (who was also based on Green Beret Colonel Robert B. Rheault of Project GAMMA). Marlon Brando played Kurtz, and it remains one of his most famous roles.

A production documentary of the film was titled, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, which exposed some of the major difficulties director Coppola faced in seeing the movie through to completion. Ironically, the difficulties Coppola and his crew faced often mirrored some of the themes of the book.

On March 13, 1993, TNT aired a new version of the story directed by Nicolas Roeg, starring Tim Roth as Marlow and John Malkovich as Kurtz.^[12]

In 1989, British poet Matthew Francis published Demonland, a short story strongly influenced by Heart of Darkness, mixed with elements from his experience as a worker in the computer industry.

Swiss author Christian Kracht's 2008 novel Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten also draws heavily upon basic story elements of Heart of Darkness, but transposes them into fictitious, post-apocalyptic Switzerland.

One could also cite Werner Herzog's Aguirre: Wrath of God, a film chronicalling a group of conquistadors' journey down the Amazon river attempting to find El Dorado, but only finding the silent, defensive malice of the amerindians and madness.

One perhaps more debatable adaptation, or is at least inspired by the book is the Ubisoft produced title Far Cry 2, taking the setting, theme and major plot elements from the novella. So much so that the final part of the game (Act 3) takes place within an area named the 'Heart of Darkness' and is where the 'Jackal' (The game's primary antagonist, largely based on Kurtz) is finally confronted.

Notes

References

• Conrad, Joseph (1998-01-05). Heart of Darkness & Other Stories. Wordsworth Editions Ltd. ISBN 1853262404. 
• Hochschild, Adam (October 1999). King Leopold's Ghost. Mariner Books. ISBN 0618001905. 
• Murfin, Ross C (ed.) (1989). Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness. A Case Study in Contemporary Criticism. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0312007612. 
• Sherry, Norman (1980-06-30). Conrad's Western World. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521298083. 

External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Heart of Darkness

• Heart of Darkness at Project Gutenberg
• Heart of Darkness, available as a printer-ready PDF from Ria Press.
• Downloadable audio book of Heart of Darkness by LoudLit.org
• 'Heart of Darkness' and late-Victorian fascination with the primitive and the double - novel by Joseph Conrad

From Wikiquote

Heart of Darkness (1902) is a novel by Joseph Conrad. The story and its themes were loosely adapted for the film Apocalypse Now (1979).

Part I

• Hunters for gold 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.

• 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."

• When a truckle bed with a sick man (some invalid agent from up-country) was put in there, he exhibited a gentle annoyance. "The groans of this sick person," he said, " Distract my attention, and without that it is extremely difficult to guard against clerical errors in this climate."

• To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe. who paid the expenses of the noble enterprise i don't know; but the uncle of our manager was the leader of that lot.

• 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.

• 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 Destiny.

• 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. . .

• It's queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there had never been anything like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset.

• He was obeyed, yet he inspired neither love nor fear, nor even respect. He inspired uneasiness. That was it! Uneasiness. Not a definite mistrust — just uneasiness — nothing more. You have no idea how effective such a... a... faculty can be. He had no genius for organizing, for initiative, or for order even. That was evident in such things as the deplorable state of the station. He had no learning, and no intelligence. His position had come to him — why? Perhaps because he was never ill . . . He had served three terms of three years out there . . . Because triumphant health in the general rout of constitutions is a kind of power in itself.

• He originated nothing, he could keep the routine going — that's all. But he was great. He was great by this little thing that it was impossible to tell what could control such a man. He never gave that secret away.

• When annoyed at meal-times by the constant quarrels of the white men about precedence, he ordered an immense round table to be made, for which a special house had to be built. This was the station's mess-room. Where he sat was the first place — the rest were nowhere. One felt this to be his unalterable conviction. He was neither civil nor uncivil. He was quiet.

• You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies — which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world — what I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do. Temperament, I suppose

• He was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name any more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream — making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams.

• It is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence — that which makes its truth, its meaning — its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream — alone. . . .
  • "Marlow" ~ The final sentence here is used by Beth Orton as a song lyric in Live as You Dream on her (Trailer Park album). It is also quoted in the screenplay for "Alien".

• Beyond the fence the forest stood up spectrally in the moonlight, and through that dim stir, through the faint sounds of that lamentable courtyard, the silence of the land went home to one’s very heart — its mystery, its greatness, the amazing reality of its concealed life.

• I don't like work—no man does—but I like what is in work—the chance to find yourself. Your own reality—for yourself, not for others—what no other man can ever know.

Part II

• In a few days the Eldorado Expedition went into the patient wilderness, that closed upon it as the sea closes over a diver. Long afterwards the news came that all the donkeys were dead. I know nothing as to the fate of the less valuable animals. They, no doubt, like the rest of us, found what they deserved. I did not inquire.

• Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of overshadowed distances.

• Anything, anything can be done in this country. that's what i say; no body here, you understand, here, can endanger your position, and why? You stand the climate - you out last them all. the real danger is in Europe.

• We could not understand because we were too far and could not remember, because we were travelling in the night of first ages, of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign — and no memories.

• The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there — there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were, — No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it — this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled, and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity — like yours — the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uprour. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to youself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you — you so remote from the night of first ages — could comprehend. And why not? The mind of man is capable of anything — because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valour, rage — who can tell? — but truth — truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudder — the man knows, and can look on without a wink. But he must at least be as much of a man as these on the shore. He must meet that truth with his own true stuff — with his own inborn strength. Principles? Principles won't do. Acquisitions, clothes, pretty rags — rags that would fly off at the first good shake. No; you want a deliberate belief.

• It occurred to me that my speech or my silence, indeed any action of mine, would be a mere futility.

• No fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust simply does not exist where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs, and what you may call principles, they are less than chaff in a breeze.

Part III

• I think the knowledge came to him at last — only at the very last. But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude — and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating.

• Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of somber pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror — of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision, — he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath — 'The horror! The horror!'

• Mistah Kurtz — he dead.
  • Quoted as the subtitle of The Hollow Men by T. S. Eliot

• I went no more near the remarkable man who had pronounced a judgment upon the adventures of his soul on this earth. The voice was gone. What else had been there? But I am of course aware that next day the pilgrims buried something in a muddy hole.

• I did not go to join Kurtz there and then. I did not. I remained to dream the nightmare out to the end, and to show my loyalty to Kurtz once more. Destiny. My destiny! Droll thing life is — that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself — that comes too late — a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable grayness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamor, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid skepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary. If such is the form of ultimate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be. I was within a hair's-breadth of the last opportunity for pronouncement, and I found with humiliation that probably I would have nothing to say. This is the reason why I affirm that Kurtz was a remarkable man. He had something to say. He said it. Since I had peeped over the edge myself, I understand better the meaning of his stare, that could not see the flame of the candle, but was wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness. He had summed up — he had judged. 'The horror!' He was a remarkable man. After all, this was the expression of some sort of belief; it had candor, it had conviction, it had a vibrating note of revolt in its whisper, it had the appalling face of a glimpsed truth — the strange commingling of desire and hate.

• It is his extremity that I seem to have lived through. True, he had made that last stride, he had stepped over the edge, while I had been permitted to draw back my hesitating foot. And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible. Perhaps! I like to think my summing-up would not have been a word of careless contempt. Better his cry — much better. It was an affirmation, a moral victory paid for by innumerable defeats, by abominable terrors, by abominable satisfactions. But it was a victory!

• 'His last word — to live with,' she insisted. 'Don't you understand I loved him — I loved him — I loved him!'
  I pulled myself together and spoke slowly.
  'The last word he pronounced was — your name.'
  I heard a light sigh and then my heart stood still, stopped dead short by an exulting and terrible cry, by the cry of inconceivable triumph and of unspeakable pain. 'I knew it — I was sure!' . . . She knew. She was sure. I heard her weeping; she had hidden her face in her hands. It seemed to me that the house would collapse before I could escape, that the heavens would fall upon my head. But nothing happened. The heavens do not fall for such a trifle. Would they have fallen, I wonder, if I had rendered Kurtz that justice which was his due? Hadn't he said he wanted only justice? But I couldn't. I could not tell her. It would have been too dark — too dark altogether.

• "We have lost the first of the ebb," said the Director suddenly. I raised my head. The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky — seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.

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Heart of Darkness

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Heart of Darkness

• Joseph Conrad
• Apocalypse Now
• Heart of Darkness quotes analyzed; also themes, characters, plot, literary devices

From Wikisource

Table of Contents

• Section I
• Section II
• Section III

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1923. The author died in 1924, so this work is also in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 80 years or less. This work may also be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.