di Miriam Angelini - Istituto Orazio Flacco di Castellaneta

1. Joseph Conrad

2. Joseph
Conrad’s life

3. •Teodor Jozef Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski
was born in 1857 in Poland
•His father Apollo was arrested by Imperial
Russian Autorities for helping organise the
January uprising. Then his family and Joseph
were exiled in Russia. Soon both his parents
died.
•He was grown up by his uncle that made him
love the sea. His uncle allowed him to travel
at the age of 16 to Marseille avoiding the
enlistment in tsarist army.
•Conrad begun his career as a seaman, first in
french ships then in english ones. There he
could learn english, his third language.
•In 1890 he recived a commission as a
steamboat’s captain directed to Congo
•His career as a seaman and his journeys were
very important because they were subject of
the majority of his works such as: The Nigger
of Narcissus, Youth, Lord Jim, Nostromo,
The Heart of Darkness and The Shadow Line.
•He died in 1924 in Ukraine. He was buried in
Canterbury cemetery under his original polish

4. Heart of
Darkness
Plot

5. Charlie Marlow, a
mariner, is on the
ship called Nellie
with four friends
and he his talking
about a travel he
did many years
before for a belgian
company in Congo.
Marlow’s task is to
carry ivory from the
continent to the coast
and then it will be sent
in Europe.

6. When Marlow arrives to the
Company station he hears for the
first time Kurtz’s name.
Kurtz is a
company agent
who is more
efficent than
others in ivory
supplying. He’s
lost from a long
while and he
becomes an idol

7. Marlow is a steamboat captain and his
goal is to bring Kurtz back to his
motherland because he’s sick. Marlow
meets Kurts in the forest and he finds
out that he makes horrible rites.
Marlow asks him explanations but he
dies whispering the words:

8. The
Protagonists

9. Marlow
Marlow as well as Conrad had always
wished to visit Africa since he was a child,
both visited Congo on a steamboat and
they both were shocked by brutalities of
colonialism.
Marlow is tough, honest, capable man,
modest and he makes this travel as a
mythical journey in search of the self. His
temper allowed him not to tragress his
limits.
Moreover he’s against imperialism and
in his internal dialogue he realises that
Africans aren’t beasts but they are as
human as Europeans are. He criticizes
the Company and in general european
idea of colonization because they
exploit natives for economic gain and
they don’t educate this people in order
to improve their social condition.

10. KurtzKurtz is a very important character of the work. It
is possible to say that Conrad draws inpiration from
Georges Antoine Klein to create the character of
Kurtz, during his travel in Africa in 1890. Kurtz is
always mentioned in the novella even before Marlow
meets him, this charismatic character fascinates
not only Marlow but also the reader. He’s described
as a man superior than others. Kurtz is a Company
agent who leaves from Europe to Congo with noble
intentions, in fact he wants really know this country,
civilize it and lead it to progress. Unfortunately his
heart of darkness brings him to ambition and to the
desire to plunder ivory; Kurtz can do these things
because natives don’t rebel against him, they treat
him as a Godness, he can do of them what he wants.
The contact with wild african nature reveals
monstrous passions and brutal instincts hidden in his
unconsciousness.
Kurtz is also attracted by absolute power, he’s the symbol of western modern
man who, unlike Marlow, goes beyond all limits if there aren’t any rules that
prevent his freedom. His last words: the horror the horror can be refer to
explotation, to inexplicable rites and in general to the dark side of European
colonialism. At the end of the story through psycological analysis it is possible

11. Historical
background to
the novel

12. The Heart of Darkness is set during Belgian
colonialism in Congo of King Leopold II of
Belgium, remembered as the Congo Free
State’s personal owner. This was a private
project undertaken by the King to extract
ivory from his personal colony. Under his
reign Congo was subjected to a terror regime
including atrocities such as mass killings and
mutilations. His brutal colonialism was done in
name of philanthropy and anti-slavery. His
politics reduced Africans primitive
barbarism, their sanguinary customs and the
King “civilized” them through work.
This belgian colonialism
was considered one of the
most terrible in a period
of growing doubts about
imperialist politics. Joseph
Conrad revealed in his
novel this system ofpolitical and economic dominance. In really it is
possible to considerer that instead of bringing
light in darkness, the civilizing mission shows the
darkness which is in the innerside

14. Joseph Conrad uses the frame story, a story within a
story, even minor characters tell their own stories and
state their impressions about Kurtz. First there’s the
frame provided by the invisible narrator who intruces
Marlow, then the novel is characterized by shifts
backwards and forwards in Marlow’s tale. In the Heart of
Darkness and in other works Marlow is the first-person
narrator. Moreover Conrad breaks the normal time
sequence and uses time shifts to create the illusion of
life being lived by a large number of people at the same
time.
As concerning the set the author prefers
The ship, Congo river and jungle because these
isolated violent and mysterious places bring out
problems and inner conflicts of characters.
This romance is also full of
symbols:brack and white,
darck and light.
Finally Conrad doesn’t
want to amuse his
readers neither teach
them moral lessons.
His task is to explore the meaning of the human
situation and to record the complexity if life as he

16. The director Francis Ford Coppola made the
movie Apocalypse Now drawing inspiration from
Heart of Darkness. This famous movie is very
similar to Joseph Conrad’s novel as concerning
the two protagonists’ temper and some sets. On
the other hand there are some differences, for
example in Heart of Darkness one of the
protagonist is called Marlow but Coppola had
changed his name in Benjamin L. Willard.
Moreover Kurtz will died because of the illness
but in the movie he will be murdered by the
colonel Willard. Even the historical background
is different in fact the movie is set during the
Vietnam war.
Movie sountrack is The
End by The Doors
 The famous Ride of
Valkyries by Richard
Wagner in the scene of
helicopter attack of a
Vietnamese village

17. Some
curiosities
Heart of darkness is very famous all over the world. Some tv-
series and movies have this book as source of inspiration, they
do quotes. There is even a comic “Mind bomb ”! Its creator
took inspiration from Kurtz for one of his comic’s character.
Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons, made an
episode with clear references to this novel.
http://www.wtso.net/movie/134-The_Simpsons_1717_Kiss_Kiss_Bang_Bangalore.html