Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad : A detailed summary

 “We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness.”

Heart of Darkness in fact is simply the act of storytelling aboard a ship on the river Thames around the turn of the twentieth century. An unnamed narrator, along with four other men, is aboard the anchored Nellie (sailing boat) waiting for the tide to turn. They exchange sea stories to pass the time. One of these men is Charlie Marlow, whose narration itself is the primary source of Heart of Darkness. Before Marlow begins his tale, however, the unnamed narrator muses to himself on a history of exploration and conquest which also originated on the Thames, the waterway connecting London to the sea. The narrator mentions Sir Francis Drake and his ship the Golden Hind, which travelled around the globe at the end of the sixteenth century, as well as Sir John Franklin, whose expedition to North America disappeared in the Arctic Ocean in the middle of the nineteenth century.

As the sun is setting on the Nellie, Marlow also begins to speak of London’s history and of naval expeditions. He, however, imagines an earlier point in history: he sketches the story of a hypothetical Roman seaman sent north from the Mediterranean to the barely known British Isles. This is Marlow’s prelude to his narration of his own journey up the Congo river, and he then begins an account of how he himself once secured a job as the captain of a river steamer in the Belgian colony in Africa. From here on the bulk of the novella is Marlow’s narration of his journey into the Congo.

Through an aunt in Brussels, Belgium’s capital, Marlow manages to get an interview with a trading company which operates a system of ivory trading posts in the Belgian Congo (formerly Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). After a very brief discussion with a Company official in Brussels and a very strange physical examination by a Company doctor, Marlow is hired to sail a steamer between trading posts on the Congo River. He is then sent on a French ship down the African coast to the mouth of the Congo.

From the mouth of the Congo Marlow takes a short trip upriver on a steamer. This ship leaves him at the Company’s Lower Station. Marlow finds the station to be a vision of hell - it is a “wanton smash up” with loads of rusting ancient wreckage everywhere, a cliff nearby being demolished with dynamite for no apparent reason, and many starving and dying Africans 

enslaved and laboring under the armed guard of the Company’s white employees. Marlow meets the Company’s chief accountant, who mentions a Mr. Kurtz manager of the Inner Station for the first time and describes him as a “very remarkable person” who sends an enormous amount of ivory out of the interior. Marlow must wait at the Lower Station for ten days before setting out two hundred miles overland in a caravan to where his steamer is waiting up the river at the Central Station. After fifteen days the caravan arrives at the Central Station, where Marlow first sees the ship which he is to command. It is sunk in the river. Marlow meets the manager of the Central Station, with whom he discusses the sunken ship. It will, they anticipate, take several months to repair. Over the course of the next several weeks Marlow notices that the rivets (metal bolt) he keeps requesting for the repair never arrive from the Lower Station, and when he overhears the manager speaking with several other Company officials he begins to suspect that his requests are being intercepted; that is, that the manager does not want the ship to get repaired for some reason.

Chapter II

Overhearing a conversation between the manager and his uncle, Marlow learns some information which begins to make some sense of the delays in his travel. Kurtz, chief of the Inner Station, has been in the interior alone for more than a year. He has sent no communication other than a steady and tremendous flow of ivory down to the Central Station. The manager fears that Kurtz is too strong competition for him professionally, and is not particularly interested in seeing him return.

Marlow’s steamer, however, finally gets fixed and he and his party start heading up river to retrieve Kurtz and whatever ivory is at the Inner Station. On board are Marlow, the manager, several employees of the Company, and a crew of approximately twenty cannibals. The river is treacherous and the vegetation thick and almost impenetrable throughout the journey. At a place nearly fifty miles downstream from the Inner Station they come across an abandoned hut with a sign telling them to approach cautiously. Inside the hut Marlow discovers a tattered copy of a navigation manual in which undecipherable notes are written in the margins.

 Nearing the Station in a heavy fog, the ship is attacked from the shore by arrows, and the passengers “pilgrims,” Marlow calls them - fire into the jungle with their rifles. Marlow ends the attack by blowing the steam whistle and scaring off the unseen attackers, but not before his helmsman is killed by a spear. Marlow imagines that he will not get to meet the mysterious Kurtz, that perhaps he has been killed by the natives.

When they finally reach at the Inner Station they are beckoned by an odd Russian man who is a sort of disciple of Kurtz’s. He turns out also to have been the owner of the hut and navigation manual Marlow found downstream. He speaks feverishly to Marlow about Kurtz’s greatness.

Chapter III 

The Russian explains to Marlow that the Africans attacked the ship because they were afraid it was coming to take Kurtz away from them. It appears that they worship Kurtz, and the Inner Station is a terrifying monument to Kurtz’s power. The full extent of Kurtz’s authority at the Inner Station is now revealed to Marlow. There are heads of “rebels” on stakes surrounding Kurtz’s hut and Marlow speaks of Kurtz presiding over “unspeakable” rituals. When Kurtz is carried out to meet the ship, by this time he is very frail with illness. He commands the crowd to allow him to be taken aboard. As they wait out the night on board the steamer the people of the Inner Station build fires and pound drums in vigil.

Late that night Marlow wakes up to find Kurtz gone, so he goes ashore to find him. When he tracks him down, Kurtz is crawling through the brush, trying to return to the Station, to the fires, to “his people,” and to his “immense plans.” Marlow persuades him to return to the ship. When the ship leaves the next day with the ailing Kurtz on board the crowd gathers at the shore and wails in desperate sadness at his disappearance. Marlow blows the steam whistle and disperses the crowd.

On the return trip to the Central Station Kurtz’s health worsens. He half coherently reflects on his “soul’s adventure,” as Marlow describes it, and his famous final words are: “The horror! The horror!” He dies and is buried somewhere downriver on the muddy shore.

When Marlow returns to Belgium he goes to see Kurtz’s fiancée, his “Intended.” She speaks with him about Kurtz’s greatness, his genius, his ability to speak eloquently, and of his great plans for civilizing Africa. Rather than explain the truth of Kurtz’s life in Africa, Marlow decides not to disillusion her. He returns some of Kurtz’s things to her, some letters and a pamphlet he had written and tells her that Kurtz’s last word was her name. Marlow’s story ends and the scene returns to the anchored Nellie where the unnamed narrator and the other sailors are sitting silently as the tide is turning.