Things to Consider:

• Comparison to Kipling's "The Man Who Would Be King"
  
• Racism and Imperialism
• Achebe's "An Image of Africa" 
• "Conrad was a bloody racist" (9).
• "I am talking about a book that parades in the most vulgar fashion prejudices and insults from which a section of mankind has suffered untold agonies and atrocities in the past and continues to do so in many ways and many places today.  I am talking about a story in which the very humanity of black people is called in question.  It seems to me totally inconceivable that great art or even good art could possibly reside in such unwholesome surroundings" (11).
• Frame Narratives and Points of View
• Appearance vs. Reality
• Role of Women
  

• Explain Conrad's use of intermediate narrators in Lord Jim  and Heart of Darkness.
• What modern narrative strategies does Conrad employ in his writings?

1051:

• In what ways is Heart of Darkness autobiographical? Explain.
  

• How, according to Marlow, has England "been one of the dark places of the earth" (1055)?  How does this discussion function as an introduction to Marlow's discussion of the Congo?

• Explain:  "Your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others" (1056).

• Explain the significance of the uncoiled snake image.

• Explain the significance of the discussion of the building of the railway.  How does it compare with the firing of the French ship on 1062 or the description of the hole later on this page?

• Who is Kurtz?

• Explain:  "The wilderness without a sound took him into its bosom again" (1069).

• Why can't Marlow get rivets to fix his steamboat?

Other Discussion Questions:
1051:

• How, according to the editors, does Conrad's pessimism compare with Hardy's?

1053:

• Who is the narrator?  Should he introduce himself? Explain.

1054

• What, according to the narrator, is "the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth" (1054)? Why?

• How is Marlow unlike the other seamen?
• Explain:  "There is nothing mysterious to a seamen unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny" (1055).

• What is the "fascination of the abomination" (1056)?

1057:

• What are the green, red, and white "flames" gliding on the river?

1058:

• Explain what has happened to Fresleven.

1059:

• Why is the trading company's office so gloomy?

• Why does the Company doctor measure Marlow's head?

1061:

• Explain Marlow's suggestion that women are "out of touch with truth" (1060). (See also 1088. Perhaps an interesting comparison can also be made to Jack's comments in The Importance of Being Earnest 964.)
• Why is the voice of the surf "like the speech of a brother" (1061)?

1062:

• Why is the French man-of-war shelling the coast?
• Explain:  "It was like a weary pilgrimage amongst hints for nightmares" (1062).

1063:

• In what ways is Marlow's description of the Africans on this page racist?  Explain. (See Achebe's discussion for his perspective).
• What is the "deathlike indifference of unhappy savages" (1063).

• Describe the Company's chief accountant.

1066:

• Explain Marlow's analogy involving Deal and Gravesend.

• Explain:  "I felt I was becoming scientifically interesting" (1067). (Compare with the Company doctor's statements on 1060).
• Describe the Manager.

• Explain:  "Out there there were no external checks" (1068).

• Summarize the discussion of the brick making.

• Explain what Marlow says about the horse and the halter.
• Describe Kurtz's painting of the blindfolded woman.
• What is "the new gang--the gang of virtue" (1070-71)?
  

• What is the "immensity" looking at Marlow and the brick maker?

• Explain:  "He was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name any more than you do" (1072).
• Explain the Narrator's interruption of his discussion of Marlowe's story.
  

• Why does Marlowe think he will now get the rivets?  Explain his exchange with the foreman.
• What is the Eldorado Exploring Expedition?

• Explain:  "The prehistoric man was cussing us, praying to us, welcoming us—who could tell? We were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings" (1078).
• Explain:  "That was the worst of it—this suspicion of their not being inhuman" (1079).
• Explain the comparison of the fireman with a dog on his hind legs.
  

• Explain:  "Sticks, little sticks, were flying about" (1085).

• Explain:  "I had never imagined him as doing, you know, but as discoursing. . . .  The man presented himself as a voice" (1087).

• Why has Marlow's boat been attacked? (See also 1099).

• Explain:  "What would be the next definition I was to hear?  There had been enemies [1062], criminals [1063], workers—and these were rebels" (1096).

1097:

• Describe the significance of the woman.

• To what is Kurtz referring when he says, "The horror! The horror!" (1104)?

• Why does Marlow lie about Kurtz's final words? (See Marlowe's comments about women on 1061 and 1088.)
  

• Why does Conrad have Marlow hear only bits and pieces of the conversation between the manager and his uncle? What is their attitude toward Kurtz?

• Explain the uncle's "black display of confidence" (1076).

1077:

• Explain:  "Going up the river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world" (1077).
• Explain:  "There were moments when one's past came back to one" (1077).
• Explain:  "When you have to attend to . . . the mere incidents of the surface, the reality . . . fades.  The inner truth is hidden—luckily, luckily" (1077).

1079:

• Why does the earth seem unearthly?
• Explain:  "For good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced" (1079).

1080:

• Explain the significance of the book Marlow finds.

1081:

• Explain:  "What did it matter what any one knew or ignored?" (1081).
• What is the "white shutter" that falls around the boat?

• Why, according to Marlow, have the "cannibals" not yet eaten them?

• Explain:  "Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence—but more generally takes the form of apathy" (1084).
• Explain:  "What we afterwards alluded to as an attack was really an attempt at repulse" (1084).

• Why, in the buildup to his description of the "attack," does Marlow focus so much on the details of the boat? How does this section relate to the narrator's claims about storytellers and "what their audience would best like to hear" (1057)?

• Explain:  "They—the women I mean—are out of it—should be out of it" (1088). (See also 1061.)
• Explain:  "Everything belonged to him—but that was a trifle. The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own" (1088).
• Explain the references to butchers and policemen.

1089-90:

• Describe Kurtz's "pamphlet."

• Describe the helmsman's "funeral." How does it compare with Kurtz's on 1104?

• Explain:  "You don't talk to that man—you listen to him" (1092).

1093:

• Explain:  "His need was to exist" (1093).

• Explain the significance of the shrunken heads.

• Explain Kurtz's words:  "Save me!—Save the ivory you mean" (1098).

• Why is Marlow terrified to discover Kurtz is gone from the boat?

• Explain: "He had kicked himself loose of the earth. . . . Confound the man! he had kicked the very earth to pieces" (1102).
• Explain:  "His intelligence was perfectly clear—concentrated, it is true, upon himself with horrible intensity, yet clear" (1102).

1103:

• Describe the comparison of Kurtz's life and the current.

• Why does Marlow refuse to give up Kurtz's documents?

• Why does the room seem to get darker as Marlow talks to Kurtz's Intended?
• Why does Marlow wonder whether he protected the correct batch of papers?

1109:

• Why does Marlow recall the other woman when the Intended stretches out her arms to the window?