Heart of Darkness - Wikipedia. Heart of Darkness (1. Polish- British novelist Joseph Conrad, about a voyage up the Congo River into the Congo Free State, in the heart of Africa, by the story's narrator Charles Marlow.[1] Marlow tells his story to friends aboard a boat anchored on the River Thames, London, England. This setting provides the frame for Marlow's story of his obsession with the ivory trader Kurtz, which enables Conrad to create a parallel between London and Africa as places of darkness.[2]Central to Conrad's work is the idea that there is little difference between so- called civilised people and those described as savages; Heart of Darkness raises questions about imperialism and racism.[3]Originally issued as a three- part serial story in Blackwood's Magazine to celebrate the thousandth edition of the magazine,[4]Heart of Darkness has been widely re- published and translated into many languages. In 1. 99. 8, the Modern Library ranked Heart of Darkness sixty- seventh on their list of the hundred best novels in English of the twentieth century.[5]Composition and publication[edit]In 1. Conrad was appointed by a Belgian trading company to serve on one of its steamers.

Heart of Darkness (1899) is a novella by Polish-British novelist Joseph Conrad, about a voyage up the Congo River into the Congo Free State, in the heart of Africa.

While sailing up the Congo river from one station to another, the captain became ill and Conrad assumed command, guiding the ship to the trading company's innermost station. The story's main narrator, Charles Marlow, is based upon the author himself.[6]When Conrad began to write the novella, eight years after returning from Africa, he drew inspiration from his travel journals.[6] He described Heart of Darkness as "a wild story" of a journalist who becomes manager of a station in the (African) interior and makes himself worshipped by a tribe of savages. Thus described, the subject seems comic, but it isn't."[7] The tale was first published as a three- part serial, February, March and April 1. Blackwood's Magazine (February 1.

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Then later, in 1. Heart of Darkness was included in the book Youth: a Narrative, and Two Other Stories (published on 1. Watch War Comes To America Online Freeform.

November 1. 90. 2, by William Blackwood). The volume consisted of Youth: a Narrative, Heart of Darkness and The End of the Tether in that order. Watch Short Circuit 2 Online Metacritic. For future editions of the book, in 1.

Conrad wrote an "Author's Note" where he, after denying any "unity of artistic purpose" underlying the collection, discusses each of the three stories, and makes light commentary on the character Marlow—the narrator of the tales within the first two stories. He also mentions how Youth marks the first appearance of Marlow.

On 3. 1 May 1. 90. William Blackwood, Conrad remarked; "I call your own kind self to witness [..] the last pages of Heart of Darkness where the interview of the man and the girl locks in—as it were—the whole 3. Centre of Africa."[8]There have been many proposed sources for the character of the antagonist, Kurtz.

Georges- Antoine Klein, an agent who became ill and later died aboard Conrad's steamer, has been identified by scholars and literary critics as one basis for Kurtz. The principal figures involved in the disastrous "rear column" of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition have also been identified as likely sources, including column leader Edmund Musgrave Barttelot, slave trader Tippu Tip and the expedition's overall leader, Welsh explorer Henry Morton Stanley.[9][1. Adam Hochschild, in King Leopold's Ghost, believes that the Belgian soldier Léon Rom is the most important influence on the character.[1. Plot summary[edit]Aboard the Nellie, anchored in the River Thames near Gravesend, England, Charles Marlow tells his fellow sailors about the events that led to his appointment as captain of a river steamboat for an ivory trading company. As a child, Marlow had been fascinated by "the blank spaces" on maps, particularly by the biggest, which by the time he had grown up was no longer blank but turned into "a place of darkness" (Conrad 1. Yet there remained a big river, "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" (Conrad 1. The image of this river on the map fascinated Marlow "as a snake would a bird" (Conrad 1.

Feeling as though "instead of going to the centre of a continent I were about to set off for the centre of the earth", Marlow takes passage on a French steamer bound for the African coast and then into the interior (Conrad 1. After more than thirty days the ship anchors off the seat of the government near the mouth of the big river.

Marlow, still some two hundred miles to go, now takes passage on a little sea- going steamer captained by a Swede. He departs some thirty miles up the river where his Company's station is. Work on the railway is going on, involving removal of rocks with explosives.

Marlow enters a narrow ravine to stroll in the shade under the trees, and finds himself in "the gloomy circle of some Inferno": the place is full of diseased Africans who worked on the railroad and now await their deaths, their sickened bodies already as thin as air (Conrad 2. Marlow witnesses the scene "horror- struck" (Conrad 2.

Marlow has to wait for ten days in the Company's Outer Station, where he sleeps in a hut. At this station, which strikes Marlow as a scene of devastation, he meets the Company's impeccably dressed chief accountant who tells him of a Mr. Kurtz, who is in charge of a very important trading- post, and a widely respected, first- class agent, a "'very remarkable person'" who "'Sends in as much ivory as all the others put together'" (Conrad 2. The agent predicts that Kurtz will go very far: "'He will be a somebody in the Administration before long. They, above—the Council in Europe, you know—mean him to be'" (Conrad 2. Old Belgian river station on the Congo River, 1.

Marlow departs with a caravan of sixty men to travel on foot some two hundred miles into the wilderness to the Central Station, where the steamboat that he is to captain is based. On the fifteenth day of his march, he arrives at the station, which has some twenty employees, and is shocked to learn from a fellow European that his steamboat had been wrecked in a mysterious accident two days earlier.

He meets the general manager, who informs him that he could wait no longer for Marlow to arrive, because the up- river stations had to be relieved, and rumours had one important station in jeopardy because its chief, the exceptional Mr. Kurtz, was ill. "Hang Kurtz", Marlow thinks, irritated (Conrad 3.

He fishes his boat out of the river and is occupied with its repair for some months, during which a sudden fire destroys a grass shed full of materials used to trade with the natives. While one of the natives is tortured for allegedly causing the fire, Marlow is invited in the room of the station's brick- maker, a man who spent a year waiting for material to make bricks. Marlow gets the impression the man wants to pump him, and is curious to know what kind of information he is after. Hanging on the wall is "a small sketch in oils, on a panel, representing a woman draped and blindfolded carrying a lighted torch" (Conrad 3. Marlow is fascinated with the sinister effect of the torchlight upon the woman's face, and is informed that Mr. Kurtz made the painting in the station a year ago. The brick- maker calls Kurtz "'a prodigy'" and "'an emissary of pity, and science, and progress'", and feels Kurtz represents the "'higher intelligence, wide sympathies, a singleness of purpose'" needed for the cause Europe entrusts the Company with (Conrad 3.

The man predicts Kurtz will rise in the hierarchy within two years and then makes the connection to Marlow: "'The same people who sent him specially also recommended you'" (Conrad 3. Marlow is frustrated by the months it takes to perform the necessary repairs, made all the slower by the lack of proper tools and replacement parts at the station. During this time, he learns that Kurtz is far from admired, but more or less resented (mostly by the manager). Watch About Last Night Torent Free here.