Heart of Darkness Flashcards
Key Author Information
Joseph Conrad did not begin to learn English until he was twenty-one years old. He was born Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski on December 3, 1857, in the Polish Ukraine. When Conrad was quite young, his father was exiled to Siberia on suspicion of plotting against the Russian government. After the death of the boy’s mother, Conrad’s father sent him to his mother’s brother in Kraków to be educated, and Conrad never again saw his father. He traveled to Marseilles when he was seventeen and spent the next twenty years as a sailor. He signed on to an English ship in 1878, and eight years later he became a British subject. In 1889, he began his first novel, Almayer’s Folly, and began actively searching for a way to fulfill his boyhood dream of traveling to the Congo. He took command of a steamship in the Belgian Congo in 1890, and his experiences in the Congo came to provide the outline for Heart of Darkness.
Publication Info
1989
Historical Context
Heart of Darkness was one of the first literary texts to provide a critical view of European imperial activities
Plot Summary
A man goes down a river in Africa in search for some one but meets many challenges on the way.
Setting
Congo River in Africa
Key images
the picture of the women
Key symbols
The “Whited Sepulchre”
The Women
The River
Motifs
Observation and Eavesdropping
Interiors and Exteriors
Darkness
Themes
- The Hypocrisy of Imperialism.
- Madness as a Result of Imperialism.
- The Absurdity of Evil
Marlow
The main character that goes down the river in search for Kurtz
Kurtz
Kurtz represents a normal—if ambitious—man who realizes that to thrive in the Interior, he has to act like a god, someone who can lead these “primitive” people to the proverbial light and civilization.
The manager
The manager is a mediocre Company employee who lives and works at the Central Station. The manager is jealous of Kurtz’s success, but other than that he’s a total blank—which is the point. He babbles a lot, but about nothing meaningful.
THe brickmaker
The brickmaker is another rather useless worker in the crew at Central Station, even though you’d think that, with a name like “brickmaker,” he’d actually be up to something useful.
Harlequin
A Russian man who helps Kurtz and is considered his “disciple.” He dresses in colorful patched clothing, which earns him his nickname the Harlequin.
The Intended
The Intended is Kurtz’s fiancée who stays in Belgium .
