The Heart of Darkness Summary and Analysis

Part 1

Summary

The Narrator describes the scene from the deck of a ship named Nellie as it rests at anchor at the mouth of the River Thames, near London. The five men on board the ship—the Director of Companies, the Lawyer, the Accountant, the Narrator, and Marlow, old friends from their seafaring days—settle down to await the changing of the tide. They stare down the mouth of the river into the Atlantic Ocean, a view that stretches like "the beginning of an interminable waterway."

Analysis

The opening establishes a dark tone. Water is often a symbol of the unconscious, so the "interminable waterway" connecting civilized England to the rest of the world implies that England's civilization is just a veneer over the dark heart all men share. That the characters in the ship are known by their jobs and not their names hints at the hollowness of civilization: their selves have been swallowed by their roles.

In silence they watch the sunset, and the Narrator remembers the fabled ships and men of English history who set sail from the Thames on voyages of trade or conquest, carrying with them "The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empire."
The Narrator's thoughts about conquest and colonialism are conventional and romantic: that great men go out with great dreams and build great empires to the greater glory of the world.

Suddenly Marlow interrupts the silence. "And this also," Marlow says, "has been one of the dark places of the earth." He imagines England as it must have appeared to the first Romans sent to conquer it: a savage, mysterious place that both appalled and attracted them, that made them feel powerless and filled them with hate.
But Marlow takes an opposite view: he sees England itself as once one of the savage places, and imagines how that savagery warped its conquerors. The implication is that hidden behind its civilization England has a "dark" heart.

Marlow observes that none of the men on the boat would feel just like those Romans, because the men on the boat have a "devotion to efficiency," while the Romans wanted simply to conquer.
Marlow believes that a devotion to efficiency, a devotion to work, protects a man from being corrupted by powerlessness and hate.

Yet Marlow adds that conquest is never pretty and usually involves the powerful taking land from those who look different and are less powerful. Conquest, Marlow says, is redeemed only by the ideas behind them, ideas that are so beautiful men bow down before them.

Analysis
The practice of conquest and colonialism is always ruthless. But the noble idea motivating conquest, such as civilizing the savages, can be so beautiful it hides the ruthlessness even from the conquerors.

Marlow then reminds the other men that he once served as captain of a freshwater riverboat, and begins to tell his story. As a young boy, he had a passion for maps and unknown places. As he grew older many of those places become known, and many he visited himself. Yet Africa still fascinated him, especially its mighty river, the Congo. After years of ocean voyages in which he had "always went by [his] own road and on [his] own legs," Marlow asks his aunt to use her influence help him get a job as a steamship operator for the Company, a continental European trading concern in Africa.

Analysis Marlow makes it clear he doesn't usually ask people for favors, instead going by "his own road and on his own legs" because of his belief in the honesty and importance of work. He is not comfortable relying on others to do his work for him, and sees it as a possibly dangerous and definitely shameful thing to do.

The Company hires him immediately: it has an open position because one of its captains, a Dane named Fresleven, had recently been killed. After some time in the jungle, the normally mild-mannered Fresleven had started hitting the native chief of a village with a cane over a disagreement regarding two black hens, and was accidentally killed by the chief's son. The natives, in fear, immediately abandoned their village.

Analysis The absurd story of Fresleven's death foreshadows Marlow's absurd experience in the jungle, where colonialist white men go insane and clash with the exploited natives, producing violence and more absurdity.

Marlow travels to the unnamed European city where the Company has its headquarters. He describes the city as a "whited sepulcher."

Analysis A sepulcher is a tomb, and hides in its heart either emptiness or death.

At the Company's office, Marlow is let into a reception area presided over by two women, one fat, one slim, both of whom constantly knit black wool. There, Marlow examines a map of Africa filled in by various colors representing the European countries that colonized those areas. He briefly meets the head of the Company (a "pale plumpness in a frock coat"), then is directed to a doctor. While measuring Marlow's head, the doctor comments that in Africa "the changes happen inside" and asks Marlow if his family has a history of insanity.

Analysis More foreshadowing of what Marlow will soon experience in colonial Africa. The women in black seem to symbolize fate or death, the head of the Company's "plumpness" covered by a "frock coat" implies greed masked by civility, and the doctor explicitly says that Africa drives Europeans crazy.

Marlow has a farewell chat with his aunt, who sees her nephew as an "emissary of light" off to educate the African natives out of their "horrid ways." Marlow points out to his aunt that the company is run for profit, not missionary work, and expresses amazement to his friends on the boat how out of touch women are with the truth.

Analysis Earlier Marlow said that the beautiful idea behind colonization masks the ruthless practice of colonialism. Well, his aunt clearly buys the idea, and in doing so establishes women as symbols of civilization's inability to see its hollow corruption.

Marlow boards the steamer that will take him to the mouth of the Congo with a sense of foreboding. To Marlow on the steamer, the forested coast of Africa looks like an impenetrable enigma, inviting and scorning him at the same time. He occasionally sees canoes paddled by native Africans, and once sees a French ship firing its guns into the dense forest at invisible "enemies."

Analysis Marlow goes to Africa because as a boy he had a passion for unknown places. He wanted to know the unknown. But Africa resists being known, and makes colonialists do ridiculous, hollow things like shoot at forests.

At the mouth of the Congo, Marlow gets passage for thirty miles from a small steamer piloted by a Swede. The Swede mocks the "government chaps" at the shore as men who will do anything for money, and wonders what happens to such men when they get further into the continent.

Analysis The pilot, a man who works, condemns the colonialists who care not about work, but about money. The pilot's question about what happens to such people in the jungle is more foreshadowing.

At last they reach the Company's Outer Station, a chaotic and disorganized place. Machinery rusts everywhere, black laborers blast away at a cliff face for no reason. Marlow comments to the men on the Nellie that he had long known the "lusty devils" of violence and greed that drive men, but in Africa encountered "a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly."

Analysis
Note Marlow's horror at the inefficiency of the station and the rusting of machinery. The "lusty devils" are the desires that move men to act badly, but without deception. The "pretending" devils move men to fake their noble intentions for greedy ends.



Marlow then stumbles upon what he calls the Grove of Death, a grove among the trees that is filled with weak and dying native laborers, who are living out their last moments in the shade of the ancient trees.

Analysis
Marlow sees the death of the natives with the same horror as the rusting machinery. It's a tragedy to him, but not a human tragedy.


At the station, the Chief Accountant impresses Marlow with his good grooming. One day the Chief Accountant mentions that further up the river Marlow will probably meet Mr. Kurtz, a station head who sends in as much ivory as all the others put together and who "will be a somebody in the [Company] Administration before long." He asks Marlow to tell Kurtz that all is satisfactory, saying he doesn't want to send a letter for fear that rivals at the Central Station will intercept it.

Analysis The Chief Accountants comments both introduce Kurtz as a remarkably talented fellow and also convey the backbiting and politics going on under the surface in the Company. Marlow admires the Chief Accountant's grooming because such hygienic habits involve disciplined work, especially in the midst of the chaos of Outer Station.

Just then a dying "agent' from up country" is brought into the Chief Accountants quarters for lack of other space, which gently annoys the accountant. When, a while later, there is a "tumult" of noise as a caravan of pilgrims and natives comes into the station, the Chief Accountant comments, "When one has got to make correct entries, one comes to hate these savages—hate them to death."

Analysis Yet beneath the Chief Accountant's civilized exterior, he's filled with the sense of "powerlessness and hate" that Marlow earlier described infecting the Roman conquerors of England.

A few days later Marlow joins a caravan headed the two hundred miles upriver to Central Station. After a fifteen-day trek through the jungle during which the only other white man fell ill and many of the native porters deserted rather than carry the sick man, Marlow reaches the Station.

Analysis The absurd inefficiency and waste of the colonial effort just keeps growing…

At the station, Marlow is greeted by the first man he sees with news that the ship he was supposed to pilot has sunk. Apparently, the General Manager had suddenly decided to try to reach Kurtz at the Inner Station with an inexperienced pilot at the helm of the steamship. The steamship promptly sank.

Analysis …and growing… until it's clear that the colonial effort isn't about building anything, and isn't motivated by a central civilized idea. It's motivated by greed, which is bound to produce inefficiency and waste.

Marlow, on the Nellie, says that though he can't be sure, he suspects that it's possible the General Manager wanted the steamship to sink.

Analysis Marlow's guess foreshadows the General Manager's negative feelings about Kurtz.

Marlow is immediately taken to see this General Manager, who is thoroughly unremarkable in intelligence, leadership, and unskilled at even maintaining order. Marlow believes the General Manager holds his position through two traits: he inspires vague uneasiness in others, and unlike any other Europeans he's resistant to all the tropical diseases.

Analysis The General Manager is the embodiment of the "pretending" devils Marlow mentioned earlier. His main trait is that he doesn't die! He's defined by his lack of identity. In other words, he's hollow.

The General Manager explains why he took the steamship onto the river before Marlow, its pilot, arrived: Kurtz, the Company's best agent, is sick. The General Manager takes special interest when Marlow mentions he heard Kurtz's name mentioned on the coast. The General Manager estimates that it will take three months to repair the ship, and turns out to be almost exactly right.

Analysis The General Manager's interest that Marlow had earlier heard of Kurtz implies the Manager's concern at Kurtz influence and power in the Company. The Manager's perfect guess about the time needed to fix the ship implies he did purposely sink it.

Marlow sets to work fixing the ship and watches the absurd happenings of Central Station, where the various company agents (employees) do no work, stroll about aimlessly, and dream of ivory and wealth. Marlow describes the place as "unreal."

Analysis Men who do no work strike Marlow as "unreal" and without substance. Work provides a reality one can cling to.

One night a shed bursts into flame. As Marlow approaches he sees a laborer being beaten for setting the blaze and overhears the General Manager talking with another man about Kurtz, saying they should try to "take advantage of this unfortunate accident." The General Manager departs, and Marlow ends up in a conversation with the other man, a young "agent" whose responsibility it is to make bricks (which he never does) and whom the other agents think is the General Manager's spy.

Analysis The General Manager's concern for Kurtz is obviously faked. He has to try to save the sick Kurtz because it would look bad if he didn't, but as long as he has an excuse (the sunken steamship) to avoid helping Kurtz, he'll take it. The Brickmaker has a job he never does: the essence of hollowness, hypocrisy, and inefficiency.

Marlow follows the Brickmaker back to his quarters, which are much nicer than any but the General Manager's. As they talk, Marlow realizes the Brickmaker is trying to get information from him because Marlow's Aunt's contacts in the Company are the same people who sent Kurtz to Africa. The Brickmaker bitterly says that Marlow and Kurtz are both "of the new gang—the gang of virtue" meant to bring proper morals and European enlightenment to the colonial activities in Africa.

Analysis The revelation that Kurtz is backed by the same people who are close to Marlow's Aunt indicate that Kurtz isn't like the other agents. Rather than hide his greed behind false civility, Kurtz seems actually to be a man profoundly dedicated to ethics and morality. Marlow begins to see Kurtz as an antidote to the evils and hollowness of civilization.

The Brickmaker, whom Marlow now calls a "papier-mâché Mephistopheles," continues to speak about Kurtz, and asks Marlow not to give Kurtz a wrong impression of him. Marlow realizes that both the General Manager and the Brickmaker see Kurtz as a threat to their dreams of advancement.

Analysis Mephistopheles is a devil. Papier-mâché is a craft that produces hollow structures. A "papier-mâché Mephistopheles" is therefore a hollow devil, and a heck of an insult.

Though he hates lies because they have a "taint of death" and telling them is like "biting something rotten," Marlow pretends to have as much influence in Europe as the Brickmaker thinks he has in order to get the Brickmaker to speed up the arrival of the rivets needed to fix the steamship. Marlow has an idea that the faster the steamship is fixed the better it will be for Kurtz.

Analysis By doing the thing he hates most in the world—lying—in order to faster fix the steamboat and get to Kurtz, Marlow shows a sudden sense of allegiance to the moral Kurtz. Marlow's lie also foreshadows a lie he will tell later to Kurtz's Intended.

Suddenly, Marlow breaks off telling his story in order to try to explain to the men sitting on the ship in the Thames how hard it is to get across his experiences, though he is comforted by the fact that his fellows on the ship, men who see and know him, can at least "see more than I could then." The Narrator observes that it was now so dark they couldn't see Marlow at all.

Analysis Marlow despairs about the inability for one man to explain himself to another. The novel emphasizes this point ironically: when Marlow takes comfort that at least the men on the Nellie know and see him, the fact is that the men actually can't see him at all..

Marlow resumes his story. When the Brickmaker leaves, Marlow boards his broken steamship, which he has come to love after putting in so much hard work to rebuild it. Marlow says of work: "I don't like work… but I like what is in the work—the chance to find yourself. Your own reality." Marlow tells his foreman they'll soon have rivets. The two of them do a little dance of joy.

Analysis Here Marlow explicitly describes why he values work. Note that the "reality" and "chance to find yourself" that work provides directly address Marlow's discomfort with the lack of truth in the world and his growing sense of the hollowness of civilization.

But weeks pass and the rivets don't come. Instead, a group of "pilgrims" calling itself the Eldorado Exploring Expedition arrives, led by the General Manager's uncle. They are all greedy, cowardly, and without any sort of foresight or understanding of work.

Analysis It's no coincidence the Eldorado Expedition is named after a mythical city made of gold. In Marlow's eyes, the pilgrims themselves are unreal, just hollow vessels for their greed.

Without rivets, Marlow can't do any work either. He has lots of time to think, and begins to wonder about Kurtz's morals, and about how Kurtz would act if he did become general manager.

Analysis What he's heard of Kurtz makes Marlow ponder if perhaps civilization isn't hollow, if perhaps there is some truth, if maybe colonialism can match the beautiful idea behind it.

Part 2

Summary

Some time later, as Marlow rests on his steamship, he overhears the General Manager talking with his Uncle about Kurtz. They are annoyed that Kurtz has so much influence in the Company and sends back so much ivory. The General Manager also mentions a trader who lives near Kurtz and is apparently stealing Company profits. The uncle advises the General Manager to take advantage of the fact that there's no authority around and just hang the trader.

They next discuss the rumors that Kurtz is sick. Kurtz was supposed to return to the Central Station along with his latest batch of ivory, but apparently came halfway down the river and then turned back. The General Manager angrily mentions Kurtz's conviction that the stations should be focused as much on humanizing and civilizing the savages as on trade. The General Manager's uncle replies that the General Manager should trust the jungle, implying that tropical disease will eventually kill Kurtz.

A few days later the General Manager's uncle and his Eldorado Expedition head into the jungle. Marlow later heard that all their donkeys died, but never heard what happened to the "less valuable animals"—the men.

After three months of work, Marlow finishes repairing the ship. He immediately sets off upriver with the General Manager, a few pilgrims, and thirty cannibals as crew. Marlow prefers the cannibals, who don't actually eat each other and of whom he says, "They were men I could work with."

The trip is long and difficult. Marlow describes the jungle as a "thing monstrous and free" and the natives as beings "who howled and leapt and made horrid faces." Yet Marlow feels some connection to the "terrible frankness" of the natives, knowing that he has some of that primitiveness in his own heart. He is thankful that his work keeping the ship afloat occupies his attention most of the time, and hides the "inner truth."

Still, Marlow tells the other men on the Nellie, he often has a sense of the "mysterious stillness" watching him at his "monkey tricks, just as it watches you fellows performing on your respective tight-ropes for—what is it? half a crown a tumble?" One of the men on the Nellie warns Marlow to "try to be civil." Marlow responds, "I beg your pardon. I forgot the heartache that makes up the rest of the price." Then he continues with his story.

Fifty miles from Kurtz's headquarters at Inner Station, the ship comes upon a hut with a stack of firewood outside. They stop to collect the firewood, and discover a note that says "Wood for you. Hurry up. Approach cautiously." It is signed illegibly, but with a name too long to be "Kurtz." The General Manager concludes the hut must belong to the trader he wants to hang. Inside the hut, Marlow discovers a technical book on sailing that seems to have code written on it. He is astonished, and calls the book "unmistakably real."

Eight miles from the Inner Station, the General Manager orders Marlow to anchor the ship in the middle of the river for the night. Marlow wants to continue on to meet Kurtz, but knows that stopping is the safer thing to do.

The morning reveals a thick white blinding fog enveloping the ship. A roar of screaming natives breaks the silence, then cuts off. Frightened pilgrims hold their rifles at the ready, but can't see anything. The cannibals want to catch and eat the men on the riverbank. Marlow realizes the cannibals must be incredibly hungry, and marvels at their restraint in not turning on the white men on the ship. The General Manager authorizes Marlow to take all risks in going upstream, knowing full well that Marlow will refuse to take any. After two hours, the fog lifts and the steamship continue upstream.

A little over a mile from Inner Station, a tiny island in the middle of the river forces Marlow to choose the western or eastern fork of the river. He chooses the western, which turns out to be quite narrow. Just as Marlow spots snags ahead that could rip the bottom out of the boat, arrows shoot toward the steamship from the jungle. Marlow orders his helmsman, a tribesman from the coast, to steer straight.

The pilgrims open fire into the bush, putting out smoke that blocks Marlow's vision.

A shotgun blasts just behind Marlow: the helmsman has dropped the wheel and started shooting out the window. Marlow jumps to take the wheel and avoid the snag ahead. The helmsman falls back from the window, a spear in his side. Blood fills the pilothouse, soaking Marlow's shoes. Marlow pulls the ship's steam whistle, which terrifies the attacking natives and drives them off. A pilgrim wearing "pink pyjamas" comes with a message from the General Manager and is aghast to see the dead helmsman.

Marlow realizes Kurtz is probably dead and feels an intense disappointment at the thought. Marlow then tells the pilgrim to steer and flings his bloody shoes overboard.

Suddenly, Marlow once again cuts short his story in order to address the men who are on the Nellie in the Thames. He tells them they couldn't hope to understand his despair at thinking he would never get to meet Kurtz, since they live in civilization with "a butcher round one corner, a policeman round another."

After a long silence, Marlow says that Kurtz wasn't dead, and launches into a series of thoughts about him. Marlow says Kurtz saw everything, including his Intended (his fiancé) as a personal possession. Marlow explains that Kurtz, in the solitude of the jungle, transformed from a man of European enlightenment to a man who presided over "unspeakable rites" and accepted sacrifices made in his honor. Marlow recalls a magnificent, if impractical, treatise that Kurtz wrote called On the Suppression of Savage Customs in which Kurtz argues that white men, as veritable gods next to the natives, have the responsibility to help them. Later, though, across this treatise calling for idealism and altruism, Kurtz scrawled "Exterminate all the brutes."

Marlow returns to the dead helmsman, saying that Kurtz was a remarkable man, but wasn't worth the lives they lost in trying to find him. Marlow mourns his helmsman deeply. The man had "done something, he had steered."

Everyone on board assumes the Inner Station has been overrun and Kurtz killed. The pilgrims are happy, though, that they probably killed so many savages with their rifles. Marlow, however, is certain all the pilgrims shot too high, and killed no one.

When they arrive at Inner Station, Marlow and the other men on the ship are amazed to discover it in perfect shape. They are met onshore by a white man wearing clothes covered in colorful patches. Marlow thinks the man looks like a harlequin (a clown or jester). The man knows that the steamship has been attacked, but says, "it's all right" now. As the General Manager and pilgrims go to get Kurtz, the harlequin comes on board and speaks with Marlow. The man explains that he's a twenty-five year old Russian sailor who deserted and through a series of adventures working for various colonial powers ended up wandering through the Congo alone for two years.

When the Russian says that the hut with the stacked wood was his old house, Marlow returns the book about sailing to him. The Russian in his joy tells Marlow that the natives attacked the ship because they don't want Kurtz to leave. It's soon clear to Marlow that the Russian also has fallen under the spell of Kurtz's amazing eloquence. The Russian says about Kurtz: "This man has enlarged my mind."

Analysis

The Uncle's advice that the General Manager just hang the trader since there are no authorities around is the ultimate sign that civilization is hollow. The Uncle is saying that acting in a civilized way isn't a deeply held conviction or inherent human characteristic, but rather just an act designed to avoid punishment.

The General Manager here exposes his own disregard, and Kurtz's support, for any of the moral reasons for colonization, such as civilizing the natives given by Europeans. (Of course, the condescending idea that the natives needed to be civilized by Europeans at all would be considered racist today).

Marlow isn't just bitter: he really thinks the donkeys are more valuable. Donkeys work and aren't hollow, as opposed to the Eldorado men.

Marlow prefers the cannibals for the same reason he prefers the donkeys: they're primitive and simple, so they aren't hollow. (Though the depiction of the cannibals as simple is racist and condescending.)

By commenting on his own sense of kinship with the "primitive" natives, Marlow is implying that all men have aspects of the primitive within them. He believes that work provides escape from this "inner truth."

By saying the distinguished men on the Nellie perform "monkey tricks," Marlow is saying that primitivism also exists in the heart of civilization. When the man tells Marlow to be "civil," Heart of Darkness makes the point that civilization prefers the mask of proper behavior to the truth. This self-deception is what makes civilization hollow.

The book is "real" to Marlow in a way that nothing else is because to produce what he takes to be the code must have taken great and concentrated effort. It must have taken work. Everything else is absurd to the point of meaninglessness: "Hurry up. Approach cautiously." Those commands are mutually exclusive.

Marlow's desire to continue shows his obsession with finding Kurtz. Like other seekers in other quests, Marlow believes that Kurtz will have (or be) some sort of answer.

The white fog surrounding and blinding the steamship while natives scream outside is a marvelous symbol. The white fog hides from view the dark jungle and black natives screaming outside, just as the "whited sepulcher" of civilization blinds itself from the primitive darkness at its own heart.

The conflict between conquerors and conquered masked by the beautiful ideas motivating colonialism erupts into full view, as natives and Europeans fight to kill.

The "civilized" colonists blind themselves.

Even in the battle, the absurdity of the colonial effort is always visible: here it's in the African helmsman fighting against other Africans, and neglecting his job to do it. The disaster of colonialism is also always near the surface, as in death the ridiculous helmsman suddenly becomes a tragic figure.

With Kurtz dead, Marlow's quest for truth and a civilization that isn't hollow is likely over.

The men on the ship live in civilization, and so are blind to the meaninglessness and hollowness at its heart. The loss of Kurtz, to them, is nothing, because they have no idea what that loss entails: the possibility of meaning and wholeness.

Kurtz is alive! Awesome! Right? Wrong. Had Kurtz just died, Marlow's quest would have ended, but his hope for an answer would have lived on. But Marlow makes it clear that Kurtz didn't just live, he abandoned his morals and became a monster (as shown in his scrawl across his idealistic treatise). In other words, Marlow looked to Kurtz to provide an answer, and the answer Kurtz provided is that all men have darkness in their hearts.

Marlow mourns the helmsman as a fellow worker.

The absurdity and incompetence of the colonial agents immediately resurfaces.

Some critics have argued that the Russian serves little purpose in Heart of Darkness beyond telling Marlow what happened to Kurtz. However, the Russian's multicolored and patched harlequin jacket bears a striking resemblance to the map of Africa Marlow saw in the Company's headquarters. And the fact that he's worked for various colonial powers and survived years in the jungle alone also signals a kind of connection to and comfort with colonial Africa.

Both the Russian and the Natives seem to adore and revere Kurtz. The question, of course, is why? It's not clear yet, but Kurtz's eloquence connects to the hollowness of civilization. Eloquence is a talent for speech, but one can speak about anything, whether noble or monstrous.

Part 3

Summary

Marlow stares at the Russian in astonishment, and thinks that the Russian "surely wants nothing from the wilderness but space to breathe in" and that "if the absolutely pure, uncalculating, unpractical spirit of adventure had ever ruled a human being, it ruled this … youth."

Meanwhile, the Russian begs Marlow to take Kurtz away quickly. He tells of his first meeting with Kurtz, in which Kurtz "talked of everything" and the Russian only listened. Since then, he says he's nursed Kurtz through two illnesses, even though Kurtz had once threatened to shoot him over some ivory.

Kurtz, the Russian says, is a god to the local tribesman, who adore him. They help him as he raids the jungle and other tribes for ivory. This comes as troubling news to Marlow, who had expected that Kurtz, with his morals, would trade for ivory, not take it by force.

The Russian says that Kurtz can't be judged as other men are. He adds that Kurtz "suffered too much. He hated all this and somehow couldn't get away." Marlow, meanwhile, lifts binoculars to his eyes and looks at the building where he thinks Kurtz is lying ill. He's startled to see that what he thought were fence posts are actually spiked human heads. Marlow tells the men on the Nellie that for all Kurtz's magnificent talent, eloquence, and learning, he was hollow at the core, and the jungle filled that hollowness.

The Russian mentions that when the native chiefs came to see Kurtz they crawled up to him. This information disgusts Marlow, who comments that in contrast "uncomplicated savagery was a positive relief, being something that had the right to exist—obviously—in the sunshine."

The Russian can't understand Marlow's scorn at Kurtz's savage actions. He says that the Company abandoned Kurtz, who had such wonderful ideas.

The pilgrims come out of the house bearing Kurtz on a stretcher. Marlow describes Kurtz as looking like "an animated image of death carved out of ivory." The natives swarm forward. The Russian whispers to Marlow that if Kurtz says the word, they'll all be killed. Kurtz speaks (Marlow can't hear him from so far away), and the natives melt back into the jungle.

Along the shore of the river near the ship the natives gather. Among them, next to the ship a "savage and superb" African woman paces back and forth. The Russian's comments about her imply that she was Kurtz's mistress.

Inside the cabin, an argument erupts between Kurtz and the General Manager. Kurtz accuses the General Manager of caring less about Kurtz himself than about the ivory Kurtz has, and also says the General Manager with his "piddling notions" is interfering with Kurtz's grand plans.

The General Manager exits from the cabin. He tells Marlow that Kurtz is very ill and that Kurtz's "unsound methods" ruined the district for the company. Marlow comments that Kurtz's methods couldn't be "unsound" because he seemed to have had "no method at all." Yet Marlow is more disgusted by the General Manager's fake show of sadness at Kurtz's demise than with Kurtz's atrocities, and says that Kurtz is still a remarkable man. This loses Marlow whatever favor he'd held in the General Manager's eyes.

When Marlow is alone, the Russian approaches. He has decided to slip away, correctly sensing that he's in danger from the General Manager and his men, and seeing nothing more that he can do for Kurtz. But before departing he tells Marlow that it was Kurtz who ordered the native attack on the steamship in order to scare the General Manager away and thereby be allowed to remain at his station. The Russian gets Marlow to give him some supplies and disappears into the night.

Marlow goes to sleep, but wakes suddenly just after midnight. As he looks around he notices Kurtz has disappeared. On the bank of the river, Marlow finds a trail through the grass and realizes Kurtz must be crawling. He catches up to Kurtz just before he reaches the native camp. Marlow realizes that though he's stronger than Kurtz, all Kurtz has to do is call out and the natives will attack. Kurtz, realizing the same thing, tells him to hide. Marlow says, "You will be lost, utterly lost." Kurtz pauses, struggling with himself. Marlow watches him, and realizes that Kurtz is perfectly sane in his mind, but his soul is mad. Kurtz's soul, Marlow says, "knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear." Yet in the end Kurtz allows Marlow to support him back to the ship.

The next day the ship departs. Kurtz, in the pilothouse with Marlow, watches the natives and his mistress come to the shore. Marlow spots the pilgrims getting their rifles and pulls the steam whistle. All the natives but the woman disperse. The pilgrims open fire, blocking Marlow's vision with the smoke.

As they travel swiftly downstream, the General Manager is pleased. After all, soon Kurtz will be dead and the General Manager will be secure in his position without having to do a thing. Marlow is often left alone with Kurtz, who speaks in his magnificent voice and with his magnificent eloquence about his moral ideas, his hopes for fame in Europe, and his desire to "wring the heart" of the jungle.

The steamship soon breaks down, which doesn't surprise Marlow. But Kurtz becomes concerned he won't live to see Europe. He gives Marlow his papers, fearful that the General Manager might try to pry into them, and one day tells Marlow that he is "waiting for death." Marlow is pierced by the expression on Kurtz's face "of somber pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror—of an intense and hopeless despair." Suddenly Kurtz cries out in a voice not much more than a breath: "The horror! The horror!" A short while later, the General Manager's servant appears and informs everyone: "Mistah Kurtz—he dead."

Soon after, Marlow himself falls ill. He calls his struggle with death "the most unexciting contest you can imagine," and is embarrassed to discover that on his deathbed he could think of nothing to say. That's why he admires Kurtz. The man had something to say: "The horror!" Marlow's describes Kurtz's statement as a moral victory paid for by "abominable terrors" and "abominable satisfactions."

Marlow returns to the "sepulchral city" in Europe, where his aunt nurses him back to health but can't soothe his mind. The people of the city seem to him petty and silly.

A representative of the Company comes to get Kurtz's papers from Marlow, who offers him only On the Suppression of Savage Customs (with the scrawled "exterminate all the brutes torn off" torn off). The representative wanting more, wanting something more profitable, storms off.

Kurtz's cousin soon shows up. The cousin, a musician, tells Marlow that Kurtz was himself a great musician, then leaves with some family letters Marlow gives him.

Soon after, a journalist stops by. He says Kurtz wasn't a great writer, but was a great speaker. He could have been a great radical political leader—he could electrify a crowd. Marlow asks what party Kurtz would have belonged to. The journalist says any party: Kurtz could convince himself of anything. He takes On the Suppression of Savage Customs for publication.

At last, Marlow works up the nerve to go to see Kurtz's Intended and give her the last of his letters. When she lets Marlow into her house he notices that though it's a year after Kurtz's death, she is still dressed in mourning black. She praises Kurtz as the best of all men.

Marlow, full of pity, does not dispute her claims. Finally, the Intended asks to hear Kurtz's last words. This is the question Marlow's been dreading. He pauses, then tells her that Kurtz's last words were her name. She cries out that she knew it and begins to weep. Marlow feels only despair, knowing he failed to give Kurtz the justice he deserved. But he just couldn't get himself to tell the Intended the truth—it would have been too dark.

Marlow, on the Nellie still at anchor in the Thames, goes quiet. The Narrator looks off into the distance, and says that the Thames seems to lead to the "uttermost ends of the earth," seems to lead "into the heart of an immense darkness."

Analysis

Here's the Russian's secret. He's the only white man in colonial Africa not looking for money or power. Without the will to dominate, he seems safe from corruption.

Kurtz talked of "everything." Of course, talking of everything is a lot like talking of "nothing." Note that the color white, the color of blindness in Heart of Darkness, is the result of every color brought together into one.

Here is Marlow's first solid evidence that Kurtz has abandoned his morals. (When Marlow earlier told the men on the Nellie that Kurtz became a monster, he was flashing forward in his narrative.)

When he described the Roman conquerors in England at the beginning of Heart of Darkness, Marlow imagined them as appalled and attracted by its savagery. The same is true for Kurtz, who both "hated all this" and spiked heads to stakes. His hollow civilized core, for all its outward beauty, couldn't hold out against the jungle's "inner truth."

Here's another instance of Marlow's condescending preference for the simplicity of the "savage" natives to the corrupt and complicated civilized men.

The naïve Russian can't see past Kurtz's eloquence to the hollowness within.

Kurtz, the epitome of civilized man, has transformed himself into a god to the natives. He even looks like a god: "an image of death carved out of ivory." The lure of power and domination was too great for him too resist.

Kurtz was so transformed by the jungle he even betrayed his Intended.

Somehow Kurtz still sees himself as a man of great ideas, just as civilized Europeans continue to see colonialism as noble while it abuses the Africans and steals their wealth.

Marlow has a choice to make between the General Manager's "pretending" devil of false civility, and Kurtz's "lusty" devil of monstrous domination. He chooses Kurtz, perhaps for the same reason he prefers donkeys and savages to Europeans. In Kurtz, though there was monstrousness, there was no lie. The jungle filled Kurtz's hollowness, but not the General Manager's.

The Russian disappears into the jungle, going off alone as no other European colonist would. That European, though, would be thinking of himself as in conflict with the jungle because, as a colonist, his goal is to dominate and subdue the jungle. But the Russian has no such dreams, and so is safe and unafraid.

This is the climax of Heart of Darkness. With the words "You will be lost," Marlow forces Kurtz to battle in his own soul, to choose between his savage monstrousness and his civilized dreams of advancement and accomplishment. Kurtz ultimately chooses civilization. He chooses the impractical and idealism of his treatise "On the Suppression of Savage Customs" over his later brutish scrawl, "Exterminate all the brutes."

The pilgrim's pointless gunfire, a product of their colonialist greed and the savage desire to hurt and dominate, puts out a smoke as blinding as the white fog. Civilization continues to blind itself.

Another example of false civility: the General Manager doesn't care that Kurtz is going to die as long as he can't be blamed for it. Kurtz, meanwhile, wavers between monstrous savagery and belief in the ideals of civilization that his actions have proved hollow.

In Kurtz, an enlightened European surrounded by the brutal primitivism of the natives and the greed of the Company agents, Marlow saw the possibility of an answer to his own despair about the darkness of men's hearts on one side and the hollowness of civilization on the other. And Kurtz does provide an answer, of sorts: there is no answer, only despair, only horror.

Marlow's esteem for Kurtz's statement is part of his general respect for work. Through the corruption of his ideals, Kurtz saw the world as it was. And like the helmsman who "had done something, he had steered," Kurtz did something, he judged: the horror!

The people in the city, who have never seen the jungle, can't see the hollowness of their civilization. They can't see the horror.

The same greed visible in the Company agents is visible in the Company representative. Note how Marlow protects Kurtz's reputation.

Kurtz seems to have just reflected people back at themselves. Another indication that he was more surface than self.

The journalist's assertion that Kurtz could convince himself of anything further supports the idea of Kurtz's hollowness. He didn't care what his ideals were, as long as he was passionate about them.

Marlow's aunt established women in H of D as symbols of society's blindness to its own hollowness. Kurtz's Intended further supports this symbolism: she is completely clueless about Kurtz's true nature.

Though Marlow knows Kurtz's triumph lay in his understanding of men's pretty delusions about themselves, he can't bring himself to make Kurtz's Intended see the dark reality. And Marlow knows that if he, who sees civilization's hollowness, can't bring himself to reveal the darkness beneath, then civilization's blindness is complete.

Marlow's story, though, forces the Narrator to see civilization's dark heart. The Narrator's connection of that darkness to the Thames indicates he now realizes his former romantic ideas of colonialism were symptoms of civilization's self-delusion.