Conrad, Traveling Upriver

When Joseph Conrad published Heart of Darkness in 1899, he helped break the story of atrocities perpetrated in the Congo at the behest of Europeans. Fourteen years earlier, in 1885, the Belgian King Leopold II persuaded the other European powers to cede the region to him as a personal possession, on the assurance that his principal aim was humanitarian: suppressing the slave trade and civilizing the natives. Whereas other European colonies were the possessions of nations, the Congo Free State was held privately by Leopold, at least until international outcry led to its annexation by Belgium in 1908. During that quarter-century interim, Leopold’s agents extracted minerals, rubber and ivory from the Congo River basin through force: imposing production quotas on local tribes and killing and mutilating those who failed to meet them.

Conrad witnessed some of this firsthand in 1890, when he worked for a Belgian trading company. His 1899 novella did not break the story, however; word had already begun to leak out, thanks to stories told by natives to British, American and Swedish missionaries working in the region. These missionaries eventually played a key role in the 1904 Casement Report, the result of an investigation conducted by a British diplomat. By 1910, the Belgian Congo had became a cause célèbre, in part due to a book-length exposé by Arthur Conan Doyle.

Conrad’s novella did not make nearly so big a splash in 1899 as Doyle’s 1909 book. For one thing, Conrad was just getting his start as a writer, whereas Doyle was the famous creator of Sherlock Holmes. But we might also point to Conrad’s penchant for ambiguity and understatement, qualities which make him a challenging writer, but which in the long run helped establish his novella as a great work of literature.

Reading: Heart of Darkness, Chs. 1 and 2 (Norton pp 899-940). To orient you a bit, the narrative is structured as a tale told by a veteran sailor, Marlow, to an audience of friends out for a pleasure cruise aboard a small, two-masted sailboat. When the story opens, they’re on the Thames east of London, down where the river meets the sea.

Writing: Respond to ONE of the following prompts. Keep your response short, posting as a reply under the appropriate heading in the comments section:

1. Rather than beginning in Africa, the story opens on “the sea-reach of the Thames,” then goes on to introduce Marlow spinning the tale of his experiences in Africa. Pointing to a specific quote or detail from the opening pages, say something about the thematic function of this frame structure.
2. Conrad characterizes Africa quite memorably. Quote a brief but striking phrase, then comment on the implications.
3. Conrad characterizes the “Company” memorably as well. Quote a brief but striking phrase, then comment on the implications.
4. Conrad is equally evocative near the start of the story, in his descriptions of the Thames estuary and of the Belgian capital. Quote a brief but striking phrase, then comment on the implications.