Plot Overview Heart of Darkness centers around Marlow, an introspective sailor, and his journey up the Congo River to meet Kurtz, reputed to be an idealistic man of great abilities. Marlow takes a job as a riverboat captain with the Company, a Belgian concern organized to trade in the Congo. As he travels to Africa and then up the Congo, Marlow encounters widespread inefficiency and brutality in the Company's stations. The native inhabitants of the region ... is harder to identify than colonial violence or open racism. While Heart of Darkness offers a powerful condemnation of the hypocritical...

• Word Count: 3088
• Approx Pages: 12
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... 's highest values, and the pilgrims are terrible workers. In contrast to the idiotic pilgrims, the cannibals are portrayed with dignity. They grow increasingly hungry on board because the Manager refuses to stop to trade for food on shore. Marlow tries to imagine why they don't eat him and the pilgrims, and the only answer he can offer is the restraint he values ... assume that before his trip in Africa, back in London, he would have been horrified by the mere mention of cannibalism, and now he respects these cannibals more than his fellow Europeans. As they venture deeper into the heart...

• Word Count: 4081
• Approx Pages: 16
• Grade Level: High School

... the center of a map of Africa and said, "When I grow up I shall go there."" (Adler, 134). In 1889, Conrad did just that. He obtained command of a steamboat on the Congo River after going to Brussels then spent four months in the Congo. That was the most "traumatic experience of his life- and was the inspiration for one of his greatest short stories, Heart of Darkness. (Conrad) In that same ... Catholic Church in Canterbury. Heart of Darkness, Conrad's most controversial novel, is set in the Belgium Congo in the late 1800's. On May 29, 1885, King Leopold proclaimed himself as the "sovere...

• Word Count: 947
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... the Congo River during the height of the ivory trade, whereas in the film the setting is the war torn Vietnam jungle down the Nung River, while ruthless and barbaric fighting is going on there. In Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Marlow, the narrator journeys up the Congo River into the heart of the African jungle, to his ultimate destination of visiting Kurtz, who has gone insane from his experiences in the jungle. Africa in the ... late 1890's was a place of immense darkness ... ...

• Word Count: 1027
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School