In this blog post, we’ll take a close look at how the work’s enigmatic narrative style and the relationship between Marlow and Kurtz reveal the theme of the “darkness” within the human soul.
The Work’s Atmosphere and Narrative Style
As the title suggests, this work possesses characteristics that are not easily grasped. The author carefully arranges his sentences as if navigating a fog-shrouded river, requiring the reader to steer clear of obscure passages that act like reefs. Because of this narrative style, many readers find the text so difficult to understand that they say, “I don’t understand what it means,” even after reading a translation.
Throughout the novel, objects or personal pronouns (“it,” “he”) appear suddenly without explanation, creating puzzles that are difficult to solve even with a faithful translation. The author intentionally leaves ambiguity so that readers must gather fragments of meaning and interpret them for themselves. Consequently, the atmosphere of the story itself resembles the experience of making one’s way through a foggy jungle.
Plot: From the Thames to the Congo—Mallow’s Recollections
The story begins with a scene on the deck of the pleasure yacht “Nelly,” moored at the mouth of the River Thames, where several people are gathered. One of them, Mallow, announces that he will recount his past, and he leads into the main narrative by recalling the scenery around the River Thames during the Roman invasion of Britain.
In his youth, Marlow secured a position as captain of a steamship traveling up and down the Congo River through his aunt’s connections. At the time, the Congo was a Belgian colony, and Marlow visited the headquarters in Brussels to learn more about the duties he would be taking on. There, he learned that few people expected him to return safely to Europe, and at the same time, he heard vague rumors about a man named “Kurtz.” Kurtz is described as a man of outstanding reputation and ability who has successfully educated the natives and shipped large quantities of ivory back to headquarters.
The story of this enigmatic Kurtz piques Marlow’s curiosity. Despite hearing ominous hints from the people at headquarters, Marlow hopes to arrive in the Congo and discover the truth for himself. While sailing south along the African coast on a French ship, he witnesses the wild and unknown world seeping out from the jungle. Ruined trading posts and landscapes where the boundary between civilization and savagery blurs leave a deep impression on him.
Upon finally arriving at the Governor’s Office at the mouth of the Congo River, Marlow hears more fragmented rumors about Kurtz’s reputation and influence. Meanwhile, witnessing native laborers being worked to death under the scorching sun, he gets the impression that the shade of the jungle is their very grave. Before heading upstream in earnest, Marlow is forced to wait ten days at the central trading post.
Upon arriving at the central trading post, Marlow learns that the steamship he was to command had sunk to the riverbed a few days earlier and was now useless. The manager there is a man with exceptional survival skills but little interest in human nature or the fate of the natives; he is solely preoccupied with earning the head office’s trust so he can leave this place. The manager leaves behind an ominous remark that Kurtz’s methods are ruining the entire region.
Marlow spends several months repairing the boat. During this time, he overhears hints of a strange animosity between the manager and Kurtz. The manager believed that Kurtz had attached a separate invoice when sending ivory to headquarters, thereby cutting off the manager’s opportunity to embezzle it, and a conversation between the manager and a trader he referred to as his “uncle” hints at a conspiracy suggesting that if Kurtz were eliminated, no one would ever know. These fleeting exchanges provide crucial clues for interpreting the work.
Once repairs to the steamboat are complete, Marlow sets off upstream with the manager. After a perilous journey through shallow waters and frequent fog, just a few miles from Kurtz’s outpost, the boat comes under attack from the natives’ spears and bows. A loyal and well-trained Black helmsman is killed by a spear, and Marlow sounds the horn to avert the crisis. Upon arriving at the dock, where they are greeted by a young Russian man, Marlow learns that Kurtz is in critical condition.
The manager and the crew lay Kurtz on a stretcher and transfer him to the steamer, intending to escort him back to Europe. However, contrary to expectations, Kurtz slips away from the ship that night and flees into the jungle. Marlow sets out alone, following his trail through the forest to find Kurtz; he eventually discovers him sitting on the forest floor beneath a light and brings him back to the ship.
Kurtz, overcome with despair, comes to the realization that evil lies at the heart of all things in life. Later, while the steamship was anchored at a small island due to mechanical failure, he passed away, uttering his famous last words: “Fear! Terrible fear!” However, when Marlow traveled to Belgium to meet Kurtz’s fiancée, he did not tell her the truth. Instead, he lied to her, claiming that Kurtz had called out her name in his final moments.
The True Nature of Kurtz and the Themes of the Work
Kurtz’s true nature is not presented to the reader as a single, cohesive whole. Rather, his image is presented in fragments, like a shattered vase, and the reader must piece those fragments together. This task is no different from trying to see through the darkness of a foggy forest. It is up to the reader to grope for, surmise, and judge what lies within Kurtz: his ambition, ideals, greed, hypocrisy, stupidity, and savagery.
In the end, what Kurtz left behind is not so much a tangible entity as the memory of his eloquent and booming voice. Although he possessed the charisma that even led the natives to deify him, crawling on all fours to prostrate themselves before him, there was no one to set him straight. The absence of anyone to warn him of his mental corruption and moral decay offers a powerful critical commentary on modern society.
In short, this journey into the remote Congo is a symbolic voyage into the abyss of the human psyche, disguised as an outward colonial expedition. The central theme of the work is to delve into primal passions, superstition, and endless greed to reveal the “darkness” at the core of the human mind and soul. Including the scene where Marlow conceals the truth from Kurtz’s fiancée, the novel implies that we are all part of that “darkness” and poses a weighty question to the reader.
Joseph Conrad and an Overview of His Work
Joseph Conrad was originally Polish, but to escape Russia’s oppressive regime, he lived as a sailor, traveling on ships of various nationalities. During this time, he secured an opportunity to serve on a British merchant ship, where he mingled with the crew and read newspapers regularly, eventually becoming fluent in English and renowned for his linguistic prowess.
Beginning with his debut novel ‘Almayor’s Folly’, he went on to write ‘An Outcast of the Islands’, ‘The Nigger of the Narcissus’, ‘Tales of Unrest’, ‘Heart of Darkness’, ‘Lord Jim’, ‘The Inheritors’, ‘Typhoon’, ‘Youth’, ‘Nostromo’, ‘The Mirror of the Sea’, ‘The Secret Agent’, ‘Under Western Eyes’, ‘A Personal Record’, ‘Twixt Land and Sea’, ‘Chance’, ‘Victory’, ‘Shadow Line’, ‘The Arrow of Gold’, ‘The Rescue’, and other works, both major and minor.
Introduction to Representative Works
“The Black Man on the ‘Narcissus’,” 1897
Although this work is set against the backdrop of events at sea, it transcends the genre of a simple sea novel. The story begins with a scene the evening before a large Black man boards the ‘Narcissus’ as a crew member. The man’s name is Waite, and as soon as he boards, he begins coughing violently, revealing that he is ill. The sailors, who had gathered on deck to chat, are interrupted by his coughing, and Waite complains that they won’t let him rest even though he is dying. He seems to be awaiting his impending death as if he were a guest who had come to meet it.
The sailors working on the foredeck take pity on their colleague, who is suffering from fitful coughing, and assist him in various ways. They bring him food, and the first mate allows him to lie down and rest under the bed in his cabin. The captain also agrees to this, and no one doubts that his death is imminent. While some sailors suggest that Wait is faking his illness, most view his impending death as inevitable.
Yet, even as he is dying, Wait does not die easily. The situation becomes critical when the cargo ship, having left Bombay and rounded the Cape of Good Hope to enter the Atlantic, encounters a massive storm. While the ship listed and all the crew members rushed to the deck to battle the storm, Waite remained trapped in his cabin below deck. Just as the crew, assuming he had drowned, were about to break through the cabin wall, Waite poked his head through a hole and called for help. Eventually, they widen the hole to rescue him and tie him securely to a mast to prevent him from being swept out to sea. Even after his rescue, Waite shows little gratitude—instead complaining that they were too slow to help—and the crew treats him with a mixture of hatred and pity.
After the typhoon passes, the crew pumps out the flooded sections and cleans up, but most of the cargo and equipment has already been washed away. Talk of Waite’s death resurfaces and dominates the crew’s attention. Some sailors argue that he should be made to work again, showing signs of rebellion, but the captain persuades them that since he will die soon, he should be left to rest in peace without suffering, thereby quelling their discontent. As the ship heads north, Waite grows increasingly frail; his face becomes gaunt, and his head is nearly devoid of flesh. The crew feels the pressure of being unable to escape the “guest of death” on board, and the entire ship feels suffocatingly cramped.
However, as the island of Florens appears on the horizon, Waite’s condition seems to improve strangely. Many sailors believe in the superstition that “a dying man will hold on until he sees land where he can take his last breath,” but it is precisely at that moment that Wait draws his last breath. As the body is placed on a long plank and dragged toward the shore, the sailors holding one end freeze as if their breath had been taken away. The moment the body slips into the sea, the ship suddenly feels lighter, as if it had shed a heavy burden.
This work realistically and delicately portrays the complex emotions—good and evil, compassion and hatred—that surface in the face of death. Conrad succeeds in conveying the subtle nuances of each scene to the reader, and he himself mentioned on several occasions that this novel was the masterpiece that defined his literary identity.
“Olmayer’s Folly,” 1895
Regarded as Conrad’s debut novel, this work was well-received for its solid structure and intriguing plot development. Set against the backdrop of the mysterious landscapes of the East, the story revolves around the characters’ desires, misunderstandings, and cultural clashes.
A brief summary of the plot is as follows. Olmayer marries the adopted daughter of a Malay merchant named Lingard and inherits his father-in-law’s business. His father-in-law had a plan to mine a gold deposit and amass a vast fortune, and Olmayer, taking up that plan, dreams of accumulating immense wealth. Olmeyer has a daughter, Nina, with his wife and sends her to Singapore to receive a European-style education. However, after studying in Singapore for ten years, Nina cannot bear the treatment she receives as a mixed-race child in white society and returns home earlier than expected.
Despite his business failure, Olmeyer continues to harbor a vague dream of striking it rich by finding a gold mine, retiring, and living comfortably with his daughter in Amsterdam. Meanwhile, as rumors spread that the British were about to take control of the Malay region, Olmeier began building a magnificent mansion to welcome British officials. However, control of the region ultimately reverted to the Dutch, and construction was halted; Dutch sailors mockingly referred to the unfinished building as “Olmeier’s folly.”
Across the river lay the estate of the indigenous chieftain, Lakamba, who lived with his many wives and servants. A young man named Babalachi, who served as the chieftain’s secretary, harbored feelings for Nina, and as Olmeier turned his back on reality to search for gold and shut himself away at home, lost in daydreams, his wife began to despise him.
One day, a handsome young man sails up the river in a two-masted boat; his name is Dain Marula. After consulting with Chief Lakamba, Dain provides Olmeyer with the gunpowder he needs, and in the process, falls in love with Nina. One day, Nina witnesses her mother inside their home counting the money Dain had given as her ransom. Nina’s mother—Olmeyer’s wife—wished for her daughter to remain among the natives and harbored distrust toward white people; consequently, she arranged for her daughter and Dain to meet.
Dain promised to return, saying he would reveal the location of a hidden mine, and then departed. When he returned shortly afterward, he reported that his ship had been seized by the Dutch and that he had barely escaped with a single slave. He explains that most of his men were killed and that the Dutch will come looking for him within two or three days.
After the conversation with the young man ends, Chief La Campa declares that since he now knows the location of the gold, Olmeyer is no longer needed, and orders his secretary, Babalachi, to poison Olmeyer. This was a measure taken to prevent the secret from leaking out.
The next morning, the body of a Malay man was found floating in the river; his head was so badly crushed that his identity could not be determined, but the body was found to be wearing a Dain hand axe and a ring. Realizing that even this last hope had vanished, Olmeyer fell into deep despair. The Dutch officials who had come to capture Dain report that Dain fled on a sailing ship but, as the Dutch approached, detonated gunpowder to blow himself up, killing two Dutchmen in the process. Olmeyer promises to return Dain’s body to his family.
Meanwhile, Secretary Babalachi reports Dain’s whereabouts to Lakamba. He confesses that on the night Da-in was consulting with La Campa, Nina was waiting for him and helped hide him in a hideout upstream. He also admits that the body that had floated downstream was Da-in’s slave, and that it was Mrs. Olmeier’s idea to place the ring and axe on the corpse.
La Campa and the secretary had also devised a plan to help Da-in escape from the Dutch officials. Knowing that Dain would refuse to leave without Nina, they took advantage of a moment when Olmeyer was drinking with the officials; through a scheme devised by Mrs. Olmeyer and Babalachi, they helped Nina leave with Dain. Olmeyer led the officials to the grave of the body that had floated downstream, and upon seeing the ring and hatchet, the Dutchmen believed they belonged to Dain and were proof of his death. And so, Nina and Dain left that place.
Just before leaving, Nina wanted to see her father one last time, but her mother stopped her from entering Olmeyer’s room, where he lay passed out from drunkenness. Nina went to the clearing in the forest where Dain had been hiding, and shortly thereafter, a young slave girl woke the sleeping Olmeyer and told him where his daughter was. Overcome with fear, Olmeyer goes to Dain’s estate and pleads with his daughter to return, but Nina refuses.
Nina rejects her father’s demands, saying she cannot endure the humiliation she would face at the hands of white people; she declares that if she stays with Dain, she will become the chief’s wife and, by marrying a Malay man, live as a brave warrior. Olmeyer threatens to send a servant to the Dutch authorities to report Dain’s hiding place.
While father and daughter are arguing, Babalachi rushes in and shouts that a slave girl has already reported them to the Dutch, and that the Dutch are coming to capture Dain. Dain declares that he will stay with Nina, and the startled Babalachi leaves, abandoning the two to their peril. Olmeyer says he will never forgive his daughter, but at the same time offers to escort the two lovers to the river mouth.
Thus, in the pitch-black darkness, the two lovers—now fugitives—flee, evading the eyes of their pursuers. On the island at the river’s mouth, they wait for a canoe to take them to the boat that La Campa has hidden there. After the lovers have departed, Olmeyer covers the footprints Nina left behind with dirt to erase all traces and returns to his home upstream.
However, his estate was empty; his wife had taken the money given to her by Da-in and, along with his other concubines, had fled to La Campa’s estate to seek protection. Enraged, Olmeyer used a key to his unused office to enter, piled all the furniture in the center, set it on fire, threw the key into the river, and then sat on the porch watching the commotion as his office burned.
He spent the rest of his life in “Olmayer’s Folly.” To forget his daughter Nina, he eventually turned to opium, and when he died, his eyes held only the expression of a man who had succeeded in forgetting his daughter. That was his only success.
Nostromo: A Whirlwind of Silver and Power
Like ‘In the Heart of Darkness’, this work is a masterfully crafted epic in the adventure genre. It is characterized by a narrative technique where the story often begins in the middle of an event, gradually revealing information that piques the reader’s curiosity through frequent flashbacks and fleeting hints of what is to come.
The setting is a country called the Republic of Costa Guana, which is in the throes of a civil war. When the rebel forces led by Montero seize control of the eastern part of the country, news of this reaches Sulaco, the central city of the west, and the leaders of the western region begin to devise a defense plan. The country’s territory was divided into eastern and western halves by a mountain range.
The greatest stake in Sulaco was the silver mine located in the nearby mountainous region. The general manager of the mine was Charles Gould, a British native who was educated in England. He inherited the position from his father and had successfully developed the mine to extract silver. Every six months, silver ingots are transported from the mine to the customs office; however, intelligence indicates that during this transport period, rebels led by General Sotilo have launched an attack to seize the silver ingots and the city of Sulaco.
Gould loads the silver ingots onto wagons, descends the mountain, and upon reaching the port of Sulaco, transfers them to a barge. The man guiding this barge is Gianbattista, known in Sulaco as Nostromo. He is regarded as a diligent and trustworthy individual. Nostromo’s colleague is a man named Decud, an editor of a local newspaper from Paris who was brought here by his fiancée, Antonia Abellanos.
Decoud had previously publicly denounced the rebel revolutionary Montero, incurring his wrath, and he also harbored plans to secede the Sulaco region and establish the Occidental Republic. One night, as Nostromo and Decoud set sail, the ship commanded by rebel General Sotilo entered the harbor without its lights on and collided with their rowboat.
Nostromo fled to the nearby uninhabited island of Great Isabel to hide the silver ingots. Leaving Decoud behind on the island, he rowed the skiff to the center of the harbor, pulled the plug from the drain at the bottom of the ship to sink it, and then swam ashore. Upon discovering that the silver ingots had vanished, those in control of customs conducted a thorough search of the harbor.
The next day, the Montero rebels capture the city of Sulaco. The rebel leader considers General Sotilo incompetent for failing to seize the silver. The Europeans and upper-class natives who remained in the harbor saw Nostromo return and took it for granted that the silver ingots had vanished from the harbor. The people ask Nostromo to deliver an urgent message to Barrios, the government forces’ leader in the eastern mountains.
Nostromo manages, with great difficulty, to deliver the message, and as a result, government forces dispatch warships by sea to advance and retake Sulaco. Returning to the harbor, Nostromo discovers that the small boat that had taken him and Decud to Great Isabel is tied to his own rowboat, so he dives down and swims to it.
There, he discovers that Decud has vanished, taking four silver ingots with him, and upon seeing bloodstains in the boat, he realizes that Decud has committed suicide. Feeling lonely, Decud had tied the four silver ingots to his body, boarded the boat, and gone out to sea, where he shot himself; the weight of the ingots had dragged him down into the depths. Nostromo could not tell General Manager Gould where the silver ingots were, and eventually, rumors began to circulate that Nostromo himself had stolen them.
Despite these rumors, Nostromo made no attempt to set the record straight. He resolved to gradually accumulate wealth by selling off the hidden silver ingots one by one. In gratitude for his service to the country, the people presented Nostromo with a ship, and he used it to carry out his plan to sell the silver ingots, sometimes disappearing for months at a time.
One day, upon returning to Great Isabel Island, Nostromo was overcome with dread when he saw that a lighthouse was being built on the island. He sensed that once the lighthouse was built, his secret trips to retrieve the silver ingots might be exposed. Nostromo recommended the elderly Giorgio Viola as the lighthouse keeper, partly because he was interested in Viola’s daughter, Linda, and partly because he calculated that if the Viola family lived on the island, no one would find it strange that he visited so frequently.
Nostromo Plot Summary
Linda had a younger sister named Giselle, and a drifter named Ramirez was head over heels in love with her. Old Man Viola, the lighthouse keeper, forbade his second daughter from accepting the drifter’s advances and refused to allow Ramirez to come and go on the island.
Nostromo proposes to Linda. Only immediately after proposing does he belatedly realize that the person he truly loves is her younger sister, Giselle. Afterward, Nostromo and Giselle meet in secret, reaffirm their passion for one another, and confess their love. Linda gradually begins to suspect the two of them.
Giselle begs Nostromo to take her from the island to the mainland. However, he immediately confesses that he cannot do so and reveals that he has a critical matter to attend to—the issue involving the silver ingot. He tells her he cannot take her away until he has converted the silver ingot into cash.
The old lighthouse keeper hates the drifter Ramirez so intensely that he loads his rifle with live ammunition and begins his nightly patrol. One night, as Nostromo approaches Giselle’s window, the old lighthouse keeper fires his gun at him. When her father tells her that he shot Ramirez, Linda rushes out, but Giselle reaches Nostromo before her sister does.
Nostromo is wounded and transported to a hospital on the mainland, accompanied by Giselle. At the hospital, Nostromo insists to the kind Mrs. Gould, the manager’s wife, that he alone knows the hiding place of the silver ingot and that Giselle is innocent. However, Mrs. Gould refuses to listen to him, as she does not want the ingot’s location to become public knowledge, knowing that it has caused so much tragedy.
Nostromo refuses the care of Dr. Monigam, declines to reveal the location of the silver ingot, and ultimately dies. Dr. Monigam takes a police galley to Great Isabel Island to inform Linda of his death. Linda is deeply shocked and whispers that she alone loved Nostromo and will never forget him.
The doctor remarks that while Nostromo lived his life with dignity and pride, it was Linda’s love that was his greatest victory. Subsequently, the city of Sulak becomes the Occidental Republic, and the silver mine flourishes under Gould’s leadership. The population grows, and the new nation thrives. Although Nostromo, its original visionary and hero, has died, life in the new nation remains prosperous and continues to flourish.
“Through Western Eyes”—The Story of Razumov
While Conrad’s novels are primarily set at sea, with the East, Africa, and South America serving as backdrops, “Through Western Eyes” presents a different perspective by being set in Europe—specifically St. Petersburg, Russia, and Geneva, Switzerland. This work is set against the backdrop of the period preceding the Russian Revolution.
Razumov, a student at the University of St. Petersburg, was taciturn and did not get along well with his peers, yet he was respected by other students. His taciturnity stemmed from a habit of deep reflection, and his trustworthy demeanor earned him a good reputation. Devoted to his studies, he was indifferent to how others judged him; his dream was to become a top student. Consequently, he had no interest in revolutionary activities and differed in temperament from his friend, Vitor Haldin.
Razumov’s mother had already passed away, and his father—a man known as Count K—did not care for Razumov directly. Since his father, who had fathered him out of an extramarital affair, only sent money for his tuition indirectly, Razumov channeled the affection he would have given his family toward his homeland, Russia.
One snowy morning, a political terrorist stabs and kills a prominent high-ranking government official before fleeing the scene. Shortly thereafter, Vitor Haldin visits Razumov’s residence, confesses that he is the killer, and asks for help, explaining that he is being pursued by the police and must escape the city.
Razumov agonizes over the situation, realizing that if this were to come to light, his own future would be ruined. He sets out to find his sleigh driver, but the driver is found passed out from drunkenness, and Razumov concludes that he cannot help Haldin. After much deliberation, he breaks with unwritten rules and goes to his father, Count K, to request protection. Count K contacts the authorities, and Haldin is arrested and executed.
Razumov is interrogated by General T and Counselor Mikulin and subsequently released, but the counselors’ keen eyes identify him as a figure the government could put to good use. Meanwhile, in Geneva, Haldin’s family, who had been anxiously awaiting news of him, are plunged into deep sorrow upon learning of his execution. Their hope had been to unravel the mystery surrounding their brother’s fate.
Rumors begin to spread that Razumov is a young Russian man in Geneva—a revolutionary comrade who had been with her brother and managed to escape. Razumov finds himself among the exiled revolutionaries and is treated as a hero by the group, which includes Peter Ivanovich, the legendary Madame de Es, and Nikita, who gives off a somewhat ominous impression.
As Razumov falls in love with Haldin’s sister, Natalie, the heroic role he has taken on becomes increasingly burdensome. Strained by the tension of his double life, he falls ill, and through a letter he sends to Natalie, she learns the truth about the relationship between Razumov and Haldin. Subsequently, Razumov impulsively confesses that he is a government spy, and as a result, is brutally beaten by Nikita.
The beating leaves him deaf; he then falls in front of a tram, breaking his leg and severely injuring his back, but is taken to a hospital with the help of a passerby. However, his will to live is strong, and thanks to the devoted care of a motherly figure within the revolutionary group, he shows signs of recovery and is escorted back to his homeland, Russia.
In southern Russia, he lives in a two-room shack with his kind friend Terla. Ironically, several members of the revolutionary group visit him and express regret for the cruel reprisals they had previously inflicted on him. They visit Razumov’s shack at regular intervals, finding inspiration in his ideas and moral principles.
A Brief Reflection on Conrad’s Works
Just as the scene of Kurtz’s death in ‘Heart of Darkness’ leaves a lasting impression, the death scenes in his other works—the deaths of Waite, Olmayer, and Nostromo—each provoke deep reflection. Just as Kurtz’s final scream echoes in the reader’s ears for a long time, the fates of Wait, Olmayer, and Nostromo also touch the reader’s heart in their own distinct ways.
