Doc Yoder's Notes
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (first published in Blackwood's Magazine 1899; revised for book publication 1902)

Page numbers are keyed to the Norton Anthology to English Literature Vol. 2, 8th edition, edited by Stephen Greenblatt, et al. (2006).

Based on Conrad's own experience in the Congo in 1890
How the novella differs from the experience (from Paul O'Prey's intro):

1. Marlow is sceptical from the start (ex. his suspicions at his visit to the Home Office in Brussels).
2. Marlow has a much significant and functional role in the story.
3. Conrad exaggerates the isolation and primitiveness of the Congo by predating the story to before 1890, so that what had been large settlements are only trading posts, and what had been a busy river is almost unknown.
4. Conrad has Marlow give the journey a mythical quality and makes it parallel Marlow's spiritual-emotional development.

The Narrative

Part 1: Intro -- waiting for the tide: Who is Marlow? (1892): not typical/not representative; the critical view of empire -- efficiency -- "conquest of the earth" is not pretty, but what redeems it is the "idea" (1894) Marlow's story:

• getting the job: sepulchral city, central office [the guards, the big man, the doctor], his aunt
• the trip to the outer station; the man-of-war (1898-1900)
• the outer station: the "flabby" devil; the accountant; first mention of Kurtz; (1900-1903)
• walking to the central station; Marlow feels himself "becoming scientific interesting" (1903-1904)
• the Central station: "no external checks" (1905); Marlow's boat has sunk because they tried to leave without a proper captain ­ first sign of trouble upriver; management suspicions about Marlow; more on Kurtz; Marlow is getting sick, and comes to understand that the manager thinks he is on some kind of secret mission; Marlow hates lying, but becomes a pretence himself by letting the manager imagine he has influence (1909); Marlow's becoming a pretence leads to a certain representational anxiety about the story and about representing Kurtz; at this point the narrator backs out to the frame; Marlow has become only a voice in the dark (1909-1910); the arrival of the Eldorado Exploring Expedition; cf. Marlow's curiosity about how Kurtz, a man with "moral ideas" would fare

Part 2:

• the conversation between the Central Station mgr and his uncle; Marlow says, "I seemed to see Kurtz for the first time" (1913)
• Going upriver (1914-)
• progress upriver gradually becomes progress "toward Kurtz" (1915)
• "When you have to attend to the . . . mere incidents of the surface, the reality -- the reality, I tell you -- fades" (1915).
• "There was surface truth enough to save a wiser man" (1916).
• 50 miles from the Inner Station: the abandoned hut and the woodpile; signs of white men: "rude table," "heap of rubbish," "a book" (1917); "The essentials of this affair lay deep under the surface, beyond my reach, and beyond my power of meddling" (1918)
• 8 miles from the Inner Station: a savage uproar at night; in the morning, in the white fog, the world is "nowhere" (1919); meditation of the restraint of cannibals (1920); in the fog: "Were we to let go our hold on the bottom, we would be absolutely in the air -- in space" (1921).
• 1.5 miles from the Inner Station: the attack / attempt at repulse (1921-22); death of the helmsman brackets a meditation on "what if Kurtz is dead" (1922-1927), including the need to keep women "out of it," rumors of natives worshipping Kurtz, and Kurtz's report -- "at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying, like a flash of lightning in a serene sky: 'Exterminate all the brutes!'" (1927)
• Arriving at the Inner Station, welcomed by the Russian harlequin

Part 3:

• The Russian's story and account of Kurtz (1930-32)
• The heads on the posts (1932)
• Marlow's first view of Kurtz (1934)
• Marlow realizes that someone has been writing to Kurtz about him (1934)
• The tribal woman (1935)
• A "choice of nightmares" (1936)
• Departure of the Russian (1937)
• Marlow confronts Kurtz trying to escape (1938-39)
• Marlow is pretty sick; Kurtz dies; Marlow himself almost dies (1941-42)
• Back in Brussels the scavengers come for Kurtz"s papers(1942-44)
• Marlow visits Kurtz"s Intended (1945-47)

Out to the Frame:

Once Marlow begins the story proper (1894), the narrative emerges to the frame 4 times:

• Marlow's representational anxiety brings the story back out to the frame; Marlow has become only a voice in the dark, but who is the narrator who guides the reader's response to Marlow's story? (1909-1910)
• After Marlow's remark about how attention to surfaces makes reality disappear, he insults his companions, and one responds, proving to the narrator that at least one other person is awake (1915)
• Marlow claims his voice, and asks who is grunting (1916)
• When Marlow discards his bloody shoes, he is overcome by his own story, and pauses to ask for tobacco (1925; 2 brief instances)

Frame narrator gets the final paragraph (1947)

Other Matters

On Eloquence:

• Marlow claims a right to his own voice -- "mine is the speech that cannot be silenced" (1916)
• at the prospect of Kurtz's absence (death), Marlow tries to define him, to identify his "presence" (1924) -- it is "his ability to talk"; Marlow imagines him not as doing, but as "discoursing"
• in the power of his voice, Kurtz shares a kinship with Wordsworth's Leech-gather and Coleridge' Ancient Mariner
• his eloquence is part of his Satanic character
• on the eloquence of Kurtz's pamphlet (1927); includes the report of the worship of Kurtz and the temptation of "practically unbounded" power for good; the long passage on Kurtz and eloquence (1924-27) is really only a momentary interlude when Marlow sees the dead helmsman at his feet and thinks that Kurtz may also be dead
• even the Russian / harlequin knows that Kurtz's power is in his voice (1929)
• Kurtz's discourse had taken the harlequin out of time and made him see things (1930)
• the skulls on the posts testify to something lacking behind Kurtz's rhetoric; they also testify to the limits of Kurtz's discourse in that he had to resort to force and fear rather emotional transport
• Kurtz's final burst of sincerity goes beyond all eloquence (1939)
• in comparing himself to Kurtz, Marlow finds that when facing death, he would have nothing to say, unlike Kurtz, who saw and who judged (1942)
• Marlow lies to Kurtz's Intended -- he rejects the darkness w/ a lie; cf. the need to protect the women and their "beautiful world" (1925)

On Restraint, or the Lack thereof:

• Manager at the Central Station is "great by this little thing that it was impossible to tell what could control such a man . . . Perhaps there was nothing within him. Such a suspicion made one pause -- for out there there were no external checks" (1905).
• on the restraint of cannibals, what accounts for it, "superstition, disgust, patience, fear -- or some kind of primitive honour?"(1920)
• in the white fog, "Were we to let go our hold of the bottom, we would be absolutely in the air -- in space. We wouldn't be able to tell where we were going to -- whether up or down stream, or across" (1921).
• beyond all social restraint: "utter solitude without a policeman -- by way of silence -- utter silence, where no warning voice of a kind neighbor can be heard whispering of public opinion" (1926). cf. Gossip and social confinement in Jane Austen's Persuasion; also how is this silence related to voice (Kurtz's and Marlowe's) and to Kurtz's eloquence -- is Kurtz trying to fill the silence with his own voice? what does the silence signify?
• "'By the simple of exercise of our will we can exert a power for good practically unbounded.' . . . "at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying, like a flash of lightning in a serene sky: 'Exterminate all the brutes!'" (1927)
• when Marlowe confronts Kurtz, "The terror of the position was . . . in this, that I had to deal with a being to whom I could not appeal in the name of anything high or low. I had, even like the niggers, to invoke him -- himself -- his own exalted and incredible degradation. There was nothing either above or below him, and I knew it. He had kicked himself loose of the earth. . . . I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself" (1939).

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