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In Conrad's haunting tale, Marlow, a seaman and wanderer, recounts his physical and psychological journey in search of the enigmatic Kurtz.
Dover Publications
July 1990
80 pages
ISBN: 0486264645
Paperback (reprint)
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Fiction
Novella by Joseph Conrad, first published in 1902 with the
story "Youth" and thereafter published separately. The
story reflects the physical and psychological shock Conrad
himself experienced in 1890, when he worked briefly in the
Belgian Congo. The narrator, Marlow, describes a journey he
took on an African river. Assigned by an ivory company to
take command of a cargo boat stranded in the interior,
Marlow makes his way through the treacherous forest,
witnessing the brutalization of the natives by white
traders and hearing tantalizing stories of a Mr. Kurtz, the
company's most successful representative. He reaches
Kurtz's compound in a remote outpost only to see a row of
human heads mounted on poles. In this alien context,
unbound by the strictures of his own culture, Kurtz has
exchanged his soul for a bloody sovereignty, but a mortal
illness is bringing his reign of terror to a close. As
Marlow transports him downriver, Kurtz delivers an arrogant
and empty explanation of his deeds as a visionary quest. To
the narrator Kurtz's dying words, "The horror! The horror!"
represent despair at the encounter with human depravity--
the heart of darkness.
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