Heart of DarknessJoseph Conrad, 1902

Joseph Conrad,

1857 – 1924

• Born in Poland (Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski) to an impoverished noble family; father was a playwright and literary translator

• Orphaned at age 11 in Krakow; began a career as a seaman at age 16• Did not master English until he was in his twenties • Led an adventurous life, inspiring the content of many of his books

– His experiences as a young man included gunrunning, political conspiracy, voyages on various continents, shipwrecks, exotic diseases, disastrous love affairs, and duels.

• In 1886, acquired British citizenship, and changed his name to Joseph Conrad• In 1889, became captain of a Congo steamboat; witnessed atrocities in Central Africa

that inspired Heart of Darkness and Conrad’s general view of human nature• Considered “a master prose stylist who brought a distinctly non-English tragic

sensibility into English literature,” and an early modernist

Conrad’s prose: literary impressionism• Conrad stated in the preface of one of

his novels that he wished, "by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel... before all, to make you see. That — and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm — all you demand — and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask.“

He is frequently called a “prose poet,” owing to the subjectivity or “literary impressionism” of his prose.

His subject matter earned him the reputation of “a romantic teller of exotic tales” – this frustrated him throughout his career. He is also known for his antiheroic protagonists.

What makes Heart of Darkness a modernist text?

Conrad refuses to hand a neatly packaged meaning or truth to his readers. To him, and many other modernist authors, the ambiguity, confusion, and madness of human experience is far more fascinating and authentic than the more digestible ideas of some of the literary movements that preceded theirs. He seeks to communicate the lush complexity of perception in its most genuine – and thus, most unrefined and muddled – form. The multiplicity of ideas and possible interpretations is a major feature of this text, and different schools of literary criticism have made widely divergent assertions regarding its meaning. However, it is widely accepted that Conrad sought to impart to his readers the experience of “heart of darkness,” without necessarily shedding the light of reason upon it.

Modernist writers are often fascinated by dark psychology, and the idea that human civilization is founded up on man’s original primitive and savage condition. These motifs, as well as the frequent use of ambiguity and irony, are modernist inclinations that all inform Heart of Darkness.

Africa in the late 19th / early 20th centuryBetween 1886 and 1914 (the “New Imperialism” period), the “Scramble for Africa” led European powers to divide up the entire continent, exploiting the natural resources and inhabitants of their colonies to offset the recession that was sweeping the European economy. Although some African groups attempted to resist, the Industrial Revolution had provided Europeans with superior technology (machine guns, for instance). This exploitation entailed atrocious treatment of African natives.

Heart of DarknessThe novel traces the journey and changing impressions of Charles Marlow, an Englishman who comes to the Belgian-controlled Congo wilderness as an ivory trader. In reality, his more pressing assignment is to extract Kurtz, a rogue ivory trader employed by the same company, who has installed himself as a sort of demigod among African natives, deep in the Congo jungle. The subject of the novel, ostensibly, is the dark side of the European colonization of Africa. The narrative is structured as a story within a story, relayed in 3 chapters.

Three levels of darkness:1. The literal darkness of the Congo wilderness

Three levels of darkness:

2. The darkness of the Europeans’ treatment of the natives

Three levels of darkness:3. The horrifying darkness within every human being, enabling him or her to commit acts of unspeakable evil

“Apocalypse Now” – 1979 Francis Ford Coppola’s epic film transposesConrad’s Heart of Darkness from Africa to Vietnam during the Vietnam (or, as it’s knownin Vietnam, American) War. Captain BenjaminWillard (aka Marlow, played by Martin Sheen)

is sent deep into the wilderness on the Vietnam-Cambodia border to extract the rogue Colonel Kurtz (played by Marlon Brando), who is presumed to be insane. The film is based loosely on the novella, but preserves several of its central themes.

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