Setting Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness primarily takes place in the late nineteenth century in the Belgian-
controlled Congo Free State. At that time, Europe controlled immense empires around
the world, meaning places like the Congo were subject to horrific violence in the
service of stripping away and exporting massive amounts of natural resources. In the
case of the Belgian Congo, traders forced Africans into slavery to support the extraction
of ivory for a quickly expanding global market. Marlow’s journey into the Congolese
interior progressively exposes the violence and greed of fellow representatives of the
Company, the Belgian enterprise Marlow works for. However, even though European
empires were at their peak, many Europeans remained in the dark about the colonies
and what happened there. Marlow indicates as much early in the novella:

Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps...At that time there were many
blank spaces on the earth and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map
(but they all look that) I would put my finger on it and say: When I grow up I will go
there.
Though framed by his childhood excitement at the possibility of exploration, Marlow’s
discussion of the “blank spaces” on the map demonstrates how, to those at home in
Europe, the colonies appeared to be places of obscurity and darkness.

Most of the action happens in Africa, but Heart of Darkness begins and ends in a boat on
the River Thames, just outside of London. In the novella’s second paragraph, the narrator
describes a dark, ominous cloud that hangs over London: “The air was dark . . . [and]
seemed condensed into a mournful gloom brooding motionless over the biggest, and the
greatest town on earth.” There is clear irony here, with the insistence on London’s
greatness, paired with the “mournful gloom” that has condensed above it. The meaning of
the narrator’s irony becomes clearer by the novella’s concluding sentence, which returns
to the brooding darkness over the city: “The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds,
and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre
under an overcast sky—seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.” By
opening and closing the novella in this way, Conrad suggests that Africa may not be the
real heart of darkness after all. Perhaps London—and, by extension, all of Europe’s great
towns—are the real centers of darkness.
Key Facts about Heart of Darkness

 Full Title: Heart of Darkness

 When Published: 1899
 Literary Period: Victorianism/Modernism
 Genre: Colonial literature; Quest literature
 Setting: The Narrator tells the story from a ship at the mouth of the Thames River
near London, England around 1899. Marlow's story-within-the-story is set in an
 unnamed European city (probably Brussels) and in the Belgian Congo in Africa
sometime in the early to mid 1890s, during the colonial era.
 Climax: The confrontation between Marlow and Kurtz in the jungle
 Antagonist: Kurtz
 Point of View: First person (both Marlow and the Unnamed Narrator use first
person)

Extra Credit for Heart of Darkness

Heart of the Apocalypse. Heart of Darkness is the source for the movie Apocalypse
Now. The movie uses the primary plot and themes of Heart of Darkness, and shifts the
story from Africa to Vietnam to explore the hypocrisy, inanity, and emptiness of the
American war effort there.