Review Of Heart Of Darkness By Joseph Conrad

Review of Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

The main characters in the book are Marlow a young man who decides that it would be exiting to travel into Africa hunting ivory and does so by taking the place of a dead steamboat captain. Kurtz a famous man among the ivory seekers who has lived and hunted on the continent for a while and has exploited the savages becoming a little crazy. The Russian fool a man who is known by his clothes with many colorful patches making him look like a clown and he works with Kurtz who proves to be poor company for him. Finally the Intended she is Kurtz's bride to be who at the end of the book still thinks that Kurtz was the great man that she remembered him to be and Marlow doesn't have the heart to tell her otherwise.

Marlow sits at the Thames River in the evening with several other people and begins telling the story about how he entered into the "Dark Continent" out of nowhere. No one wants to listen but he continues telling the story anyway. Marlow expressed a desire to go to Africa to his Aunt who got him a position as a captain of a steamboat of an ivory company. The previous captain Freslaven died in a scuffle with the natives and Marlow took his place. Several days later Marlow travels to Africa and gets to the first station where he meets the accountant who is keeping track of the funds in Kurtz's company. The man is interesting to Marlow since he's been on the continent for three years and he stills wears nice clothing and keeps himself clean. Marlow feels that the blacks are being over worked by the whites at meaningless tasks. Marlow continues down the river on his steamboat with a crew of several whites and about 20 to 30 blacks. As he travels down the Congo River, he comes across this shack where he picks up wood, and a note telling him to travel carefully. He continues down the river and becomes surrounded by savages in the fog. Marlow is frightened but the savages don't do anything until the fog breaks. The savages begin to attack and Marlow's men fire back. The arrows of the savages have little effect on Marlow's men or his boat and the guns of the crew men have little effect on the savages since they fire too high. Only Marlow's helmsman dies. Marlow blows the whistle and mysteriously, all the savages retreat in fear. Shortly after, Marlow reaches the inner station, where he is greeted by the Russian Fool who seems to survive in the heart of the continent by being oblivious to the world around him. Kurtz is very ill and needs to be taken back to England, but he does not want