
Heart of Darkness
'Heart of Darkness' Summary
Aboard the Nellie, anchored in the River Thames near Gravesend, Charles Marlow tells his fellow sailors how he became 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". 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". The image of this river on the map fascinated Marlow "as a snake would a bird". 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. After more than thirty days the ship anchors off the seat of government near the mouth of the big river. Marlow, with 200 mi (320 km) to go yet, takes passage on a little sea-going steamer captained by a Swede. He departs some 30 mi (50 km) 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 lie sick and gaunt, awaiting death. Marlow witnesses the scene "horror-struck".
Marlow must wait for ten days in the company's Outer Station. 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". 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".
Book Details
Authors

Joseph Conrad
Poland, England
Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, was a Polish-British writer regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language. Though he did not speak English flu...
Books by Joseph ConradDownload eBooks
Listen/Download Audiobook
Related books

The Blue Behemoth by Leigh Brackett
The novel is set in a distant future, in which humanity has colonized the stars and formed a vast interstellar empire. The story follows the adventure...

Onkel Toms Hütte by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Onkel Toms Hütte ist ein bewegender Roman, der die brutale Realität der Sklaverei in den Vereinigten Staaten des 19. Jahrhunderts darstellt. Er folgt...

Debits and Credits by Rudyard Kipling
Debits and Credits is a collection of short stories, poems, and play fragments published by Rudyard Kipling in 1926. Many of the stories are set durin...

Black No More by George Schuyler
Black No More is a satirical novel that follows the story of Max Disher, an African American man who undergoes a medical procedure to change his race...

Rezanov by Gertrude Atherton
Rezanov is a historical novel based on the life of Nikolai Rezanov, a Russian diplomat and explorer who played a key role in the colonization of Alask...

Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf
The Voyage Out is the first novel by Virginia Woolf, published in 1915 by Duckworth; and published in the U.S. in 1920 by Doran. One of Woolf's wittie...

Invitation to a Journey by Charles Baudelaire
Baudelaire's "L'Invitation au Voyage" is a poem that transports the reader to a world of exotic beauty and serene wonder. The poem, written in French,...

Watch and Wait; The Young Fugitives by Oliver Optic
Set during the pre-Civil War era, 'Watch and Wait' tells the story of three young fugitives from slavery who seek refuge in the North. The narrative f...

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas by Jules Verne
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas: A World Tour Underwater is a classic science fiction adventure novel by French writer Jules Verne. The novel...

Marrow of Tradition by Charles Waddell Chesnutt
Set against the backdrop of the 1898 Wilmington, North Carolina massacre, The Marrow of Tradition is a powerful and unflinching exploration of the dee...
Reviews for Heart of Darkness
No reviews posted or approved, yet...