English Literature

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad Plot Summary

Heart of Darkness Summary

This article deals with the Heart of Darkness Summary. The Heart of Darkness is a novel by Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad in 1899. This novel is a story within a story. The Heart of Darkness Summary story starts with the group of passengers traveling on a boat on River Thames. One of the passengers Charlie Marlow narrates a story to one of his seafarer about his experience on a journey on River Congo in Africa. He got an opportunity to work with a trading company in Africa. He there experiences the brutal working conditions of Africans by the company. On his journey, Marlow meets Kurtz who was an ivory trader. Marlow heard rumors that Kurtz is mad but the people use to worship him like God.

heart of darkness summary

The Heart of Darkness summary in brief

This article focuses on the Heart of Darkness summary in a simple and understandable manner. It gives the idea of Heart of Darkness summary in brief. The Heart of Darkness summary centers around Marlow a sailor, and his journey on the river Congo in Africa. He meets Kurtz, who is an idealistic man of nice skills. Marlow takes employment as a riverboat captain with a Belgian company. As he travels to the continent, Marlow experiences widespread brutality and inability within the Company’s stations. The native inhabitants of the region are forced into the Company’s service, and that they suffer a lot from overwork and bad behavior of the company‘s agents.

The barbarism and filth of the company are very disheartening for him. Marlow arrives at the Central Station whose manager is a noxious and biased character. He finds that his steamer is a slump and spends many months to get to repair. The manager and his favorite brick maker assume Kurtz as a threat to their position. Kurtz is unwell which is creating the delays in repairing the ship and making it costly.

Marlow eventually gets the spare parts of the ship. He repairs the ship and along with the manager, agents and few crews of cannibals start his troublesome journey on the river. The dense jungle and the cruel silence make everyone on boat little creepy. The occasional glimpse of a native village or the sound of drums is turning the people on board into a maniac.

Marlow and his crew reach a hut with stacked wood for fuel with a note that the wood is for them. However, it also says that they should approach cautiously. Shortly once the steamer has taken on the wood they are surrounded by a dense fog.

Once the fog clears, an unseen band of natives attack the ship. They are throwing fire arrows from the dense forest. The African seafarer is killed before Marlow frightens the natives away with the ship’s whistle. Shortly after Marlow and his companions reach Kurtz’s Inner Station, he assures them that everything is okay and informs them that he is the one who left the wood in the hut for them.

The Russian trader claims that Kurtz has enlarged his mind and his power of judgment is increased. Apparently, Kurtz has established himself as a god with the natives and has gone on brutal raids to nearby territory in search of ivory. The pilgrims bring Kurtz out of the station-house on a stretcher, and a large number of native warriors pours out of the forest and surrounds them. Kurtz speaks to them, and suddenly natives disappear into the woods.

The manager brings Kurtz who is not well on the steamer. A pretty native girl, apparently Kurtz’s mistress, seems on the shore and stares out at the ship. The Russian told Marlow that Kurtz had ordered the attack on the steamer so that he can carry on his plans.

Kurtz disappears at night, and Marlow goes to search for him. He finds him crawling toward the native camp. Marlow stops him and convinces him to come back to the ship. However, Kurtz’s health is failing fast.

Marlow listens to Kurtz when he was piloting the ship. Kurtz gives Marlow a packet of private documents, with a pamphlet on civilizing the savages that end with a written message that says get rid of the inhuman. Kurtz dies and he uttered the horror.

Marlow falls sick soon after that and he barely survives. Eventually, he returns to Europe and goes to meet Kurtz’s girlfriend. She remains in mourning since Kurtz’s death. She asks Marlow about his last words at the time of his death. Marlow did not want to bring himself to shatter her illusions with reality so he says it was her name.

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3 responses to “My Greatest Olympic Prize Summary”

  1. Tanjil says:

    The wonderful summary thank you for this.

  2. Niharika negi says:

    They did not belong to the family of gorden cook and you also didn’t write the spelling correct it’s James cook 😶😑

  3. hmMmm says:

    What’s funny is that Miss Fairchild said the line- “Money isn’t everything. But people always misunderstand things and remain stupid-” when she herself misunderstood the situation.

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