Heart of Darkness
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| Heart of Darkness | |
| Author | Joseph Conrad |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Frame story, Novella |
| Publisher | Blackwood's Magazine |
| Publication date | 1899 |
| Media type | Print (Serial) |
| OCLC | 16100396 |
Heart of Darkness is a novella written by Polish-born writer Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski). 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 and part of the Western canon.
This highly symbolic story is actually a story within a story, or frame narrative. It follows Marlow as he recounts, from dusk through to late night, his adventure into the Congo to a group of men aboard a ship anchored in the Thames Estuary.
The story details an incident when Marlow, an Englishman, took a foreign assignment as a ferry-boat captain, employed by a Belgian trading company, on what readers may assume is the Congo River, in the Congo Free State, a private colony of King Leopold II; the country is never specifically named. Marlow is employed to transport ivory downriver; however, his more pressing assignment is to return Kurtz to civilization in a cover up. Kurtz has a reputation throughout the region.
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[edit] Background
In writing the novella, Conrad drew inspiration from his own experience in the Congo: eight and a half years before writing the book, he had served as the captain of a Congo steamer. However he became ill and returned to Europe. 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.
The story-within-a-story device that Conrad chose for Heart of Darkness — one in which an unnamed narrator recounts Marlow's recounting of his journey — has many literary precedents. Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein used a similar device, but the best examples of the framed narrative include Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, The Arabian Nights and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
[edit] Motifs and themes
- 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!"
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. Moral issues are not clear-cut; that which ought to be (in various senses) on the side of "light" is in fact mired in darkness, and vice versa.
Africa was known as "The Dark Continent" in the Victorian Era with all the negative attributes of darkness attributed to Africans by the English. 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 infamous in Africa for horrific violence and yet he was honoured by a knighthood. However, an agent Conrad himself encountered when travelling in the Congo, named Georges-Antoine Klein (Klein means 'small' in German, as Kurtz is 'short') could have possibly served as an actual model for the Kurtz that appears in Heart of Darkness. Klein died aboard Conrad's steamer and was interred along the Congo, much like Kurtz in the novel.[1]. 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.[2]
The motif of "darkness" from the title recurs throughout the book. It is used to reflect the unknown, the concept of the "darkness of barbarism" places Mr. Kurtz, the ambiguous anti-hero of the story, at the dark heart of the twentieth century.
To emphasize the theme of darkness within all of mankind, 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 at the time (where Conrad wrote and where a large part of his audience lived), was itself a "dark" place in Roman times. The theme of darkness lurking beneath the surface of even "civilized" persons is further explored through the character of Kurtz and through Marlow's passing sense of understanding with the Africans.
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 symbolic levels of the book expand on all of these in terms of a struggle between good and evil (light and darkness), not so much between people as within every major character's soul.
In the novel, Conrad uses the river to show Marlow progressing further into the "Heart of Darkness". When Marlow first arrives at the station, the ship that he must use for his journey has been sabotaged by the manager and requires rivets in order to be fixed. The journey is tedious and exposes Marlow to the inner spirit of mankind as one moves further away from society
Throughout the novel Conrad dramatizes a tension in Marlow between the restraint of civilization and the savagery of barbarism. The darkness and amorality which Kurtz exemplifies is argued to be the reality of the human condition, upon which illusory moral structures are draped by civilization. Marlow's confrontation with Kurtz presents him with a 'choice of nightmares' - to commit himself to the savagery of the human condition, or to the lie and veneer of civilized restraint. Though Marlow 'cannot abide a lie' and subsequently cannot perceive civilization as anything but a veneer hiding the savage reality of the human condition, he is also horrified by the darkness of Kurtz he sees in his own heart. After emerging from this experience, his Buddha-like pose aboard the Nellie symbolizes a suspension between this choice of nightmares.
[edit] Historical context
The novel is largely autobiographical, based upon 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 an actual location called Matadi, a location two-hundred miles up river from the mouth of the Congo. The Central Station was a location called Kinshasa, and both these locations marked a stretch of river impassable by steamboat, upon which Marlow takes a "two-hundred mile tramp." [3]
The Company was in reality the Anglo-Belgium India-Rubber Company formed by King Leopold II of Belgium charged with running the country of the Congo Free State in 1885. The Congo Free State was voted into existence by the Congress of Berlin, which Conrad refers to sarcastically in his novella as "the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs."[3]
Leopold II declared the Congo Free State his personal property in 1892, legally permitting the Belgians to take what rubber they wished from the area without having to trade with the African natives. [3] This caused a rise in atrocities perpetrated by the Belgian traders.
The Congo Free State was taken out of the personal property of the king and made a regular colony of Belgium, called Belgian Congo, in 1908, after the extent of atrocities committed there became generally known in the West, partially through Conrad's novel.
[edit] Controversy
In a post-colonial reading, the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe famously criticized the Heart of Darkness in his 1975 lecture An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", saying the novel 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?"[4] - to Cedric Watts' A Bloody Racist: About Achebe's View of Conrad (1983),[5] which sets out to refute Achebe's critique. Other critiques include Hugh Curtler's Achebe on Conrad: Racism and Greatness in Heart of Darkness (1997).[6]
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 moral 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." [7]
Heart of Darkness is also criticized for its characterization 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 own fantasy world from "shattering before the first sunset."
[edit] Adaptations
The most famous adaptation of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 movie Apocalypse Now, which translates the context of the narrative from the Congo into Vietnam.
[edit] In the arts
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- 1925 - T. S. Eliot quoted the line, "Mistah Kurtz, he dead," along with the folk saying, "A penny for the old Guy," at the beginning of his poem, "The Hollow Men."
- 1938 - Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater on the Air adapted Heart of Darkness for radio.
- 1940s - Lux Radio Theater, with Brian Aherne as Marlow.
- 1943 - Orson Welles did a half-hour adaptation for the radio show This is My Best.
- 1958 - Playhouse 90 episode# 3.7, aired November 6 - American television version of Heart of Darkness starring Roddy McDowall, Eartha Kitt, Richard Haydn, Inga Swenson, and Boris Karloff as Kurtz.
- 1959 - Things Fall Apart - A novel by Chinua Achebe that is often seen as a response to Heart of Darkness. The novel attempts to give readers a sense of African culture from Achebe's point of view, rather than the one that Conrad gives in Heart of Darkness.
- 1970 - Robert Silverberg's novel Downward to the Earth is in part a re-telling of Heart of Darkness, and uses the name of Kurtz.
- 1979 - John Milius based his script for Apocalypse Now on the novel and moved the plot to Vietnam. The film was directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
- 1989 - J.F. Lawton based his film Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death (also known as Piranha Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death) on Conrad's book. Kurtz, now a feminist played by Adrienne Barbeau, has taken to the jungle's amazonian inhabitants, rather than continuing to write books that nobody reads and promoting them on TV talk shows. Mimicking the original, her dying words are "The horror! The horror... of Letterman!"
- 1992 - Sven Lindqvist's 'Exterminate All the Brutes', an odyssey into the Heart of Darkness, European colonialism and the following genocide.
- 1993 - Nicolas Roeg filmed Heart of Darkness for television with Tim Roth as Marlow and John Malkovich as Kurtz.
- 1993 - In the novel Headhunter by Canadian author Timothy Findley, a schizophrenic spiritualist accidentally sets Kurtz free from page 92 of Heart of Darkness, and is forced to find a Marlow to defeat him. The novel recasts Kurtz and Marlow as psychiatrists in an apocalyptic version of Toronto.
- 1995 - German metal band Grave Digger in 1995 released an album Heart of Darkness containing track also titled "Heart of Darkness," lyrics of which are based on the novel and the film "Apocalypse Now".
- 1996 - Alex Garland's book The Beach heavily references the Heart Of Darkness.[clarify]
- 1998 - Star Trek: Insurrection took plot inspiration from Heart of Darkness.
- 1998 - the video game Heart of Darkness borrowed the title from the novel and was loosely based on the story.
- 2000 - "His last step. My hesitating. Excerpt from Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness" ('Sein letzter Schritt. Mein Zögern'), Art of Thomas Offhaus inspired by Heart of Darkness.[clarify]
- 2005 - Peter Jackson's King Kong has many references to Heart of Darkness, such as a scene where Jimmy holds a copy of the book and says "It’s not an adventure story, is it?" As King Kong itself is a story of the cruelties of men, the film suggests that Conrad meant to explore human cruelty towards others as much as he meant to explore the Belgian Congo—and thus also the film is more than an adventure story but also explores the human will to exploit others. [1]
- 2005 - The First Casualty, a novel by Ben Elton, follows the same storyline where a British police detective investigates a crime in the midst of the First World War, and gradually becomes painfully acquainted with the horrors of war. He is given the false name of Christopher Marlowe (cf Charlie Marlow), and he makes references to the Belgian colonisation of the Congo.
- The 2005 video game, Star Wars: Battlefront II, features a level entitled Heart of Darkness. The 501st Legion (Clone Troopers) is called in to find a lost legion on Felucia, and battle the Confederacy of Independent Systems (CIS) with the help of Aayla Secura, their hero. An introduction to the level includes narration from the novella.
- 2007 - Heart of Darkness is a chamber opera version of the novella by the British composer Tarik O'Regan in collaboration with the artist Tom Phillips RA,[8] which is jointly in development in London with Royal Opera House OperaGenesis and in New York with American Opera Projects.
- 2007 - Publication of book by Tim Butcher: Blood River - A Journey To Africa's Broken Heart, ISBN 0-701-17981-3, the account of the author's 2004 journey along the same stretch of Congo river used by Conrad as the setting for Heart of Darkness. The journey had been too dangerous to complete for decades. Subsequently, Tim Butcher wrote the introduction to a new edition of Heart of Darkness published in September 2007 by Vintage Classics ISBN 0-099-51154-1
- 2008 - Trencherman - a novel by South African author Eben Venter that uses Heart of Darkness as a strong intertext[clarify] in a story about an imagined South Africa where interacial fear reigns the day.
- 2008 - The video game Ninja Gaiden II's ninth level is called "Heart of Darkness" and is set in a dense South American river setting.
[edit] References
- ^ Sherry, Norman. "Conrad's Western World". Cambridge University Press. 1971.
- ^ Moore, Gene M. "Heart of Darkness&Other Stories". Wordsworth Classics. 1999.
- ^ a b c "Historical Context: Heart of Darkness." EXPLORING Novels, Online Edition. Gale, 2003. Discovering Collection. Subscription required
- ^ "Chinua Achebe: The Failure interview"
- ^ Watts, Cedric. "A Bloody Racist: About Achebe's View of Conrad." The Yearbook of English Studies, vol. 13 (January 1983), 196-209.
- ^ Curtler, Hugh. "Achebe on Conrad: Racism and Greatness in Heart of Darkness." Conradiana, vol. 29 issue 1 (March 1997), 30-40.
- ^ King Leopold's Ghost. Hochschild, Adam. Mariner Books. New York, 1999. Page 143.
- ^ American Opera Projects: Heart of Darkness,
[edit] External links
- Blackwood's Endinburgh Magazine, Vol 165, William Blackwood & Sons: Edinburgh, 1899, a digitized copy from the Internet Archive containing the original publication of Heart of Darkness in three parts: Part I, pp 193-220; Part II, pp 479-502; Part III, pp 634-657.
- Conrad, J. Youth, A Narrative, and Two Other Stories, William Blackwood & Sons: Edinburgh, 1902, a digitized copy from the Internet Archive containing the first publication of Heart of Darkness in book form.
- Heart of Darkness, available at Project Gutenberg.
- Heart of Darkness, available as a printer-ready PDF from Ria Press.
- Literary Critiques (from both sides) of Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
- Discussion of Heart of Darkness on BBC Radio 4 In Our Time series, 15 February 2007.
- Audio book recording with accompanying text of Heart of Darkness from LoudLit.org.
- Heart of Darkness, a free audiobook version from LibriVox.
- Heart of Darkness at American Literature.
- Heart of Darkness, at PublicLiterature.org
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