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Heart of Darkness
To some extent, Marlow’s journey through the dark heart of the Congo is a voyage of self-discovery. Many people only truly find themselves abroad in unfamiliar surroundings, and Marlow is...
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Heart of Darkness
As the helmsman steers Marlow's boat toward Kurtz's Inner Station, the crew is attacked by natives on the riverbank. Marlow recounts how a spear "caught [the helmsman] in the side just below...
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Heart of Darkness
Marlow is found in some of Conrad's other works, and he seems to be a man's man. The cynism that he portrays is in response to life events that have perhaps marked him in some permanent way....
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Heart of Darkness
Just a few pointers to get you started. It is very important to compare the black mistress to the Intended of Kurtz. Both of course have relations with Kurtz, but the Black Mistress, in the way...
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Heart of Darkness
In Heart of Darkness, Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) draws from his own experience in Africa; he once piloted a Belgian steamboat on a trading mission that took him through...
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Heart of Darkness
The company is Marlow's employer, of course, but also represents the power of European colonialism in Africa. The company's business is to extract as much ivory from the jungle as possible; it is...
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Heart of Darkness
There are a number of external conflicts in Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. A primary one is the conflict between the traders from The Company and the people in the Congo. The Congolese people...
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Heart of Darkness
This is a really interesting question—this particular quotation from the story has been much discussed and held up as an example of a particularly "Conradian" style of writing. The critic F.R....
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Heart of Darkness
Kurtz is the symbol of colonialism in this novel. As Marlowe states: All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz. Colonialism involves the appropriation of another group of people and their...
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Heart of Darkness
When writing a response to the first part of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, you might want to try answering a few different questions first: Where is the story set? Who are the characters so...
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Heart of Darkness
In Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness, the character Marlow recounts his transformational experience in the African jungle, discovering, to his shock, that he and his companions have more in...
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Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness has a title with a double meaning. The title refers to the Congo, or the interior of Africa. Also, the title refers to the primitive nature present within...
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Heart of Darkness
There are indeed two narrators in Heart of Darkness. First of all, there is the narrator of the frame story which introduces us to Marlow. This is told by a sailor aboard Marlow's ship, the Nellie,...
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Heart of Darkness
C.P. Sarvan's response to Achebe's criticisms consists basically of the assertion that we cannot identify Conrad's point of view strictly with that of his narrator. Marlow, in other words, may be a...
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Heart of Darkness
Traditionally, the color black was associated with all that was dark, evil, and mysterious, whereas white represented all that was clean, pure, and holy. White Europeans took these preconceptions...
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Heart of Darkness
Written by Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness is a novella written in 1899. The story begins with the central character, seaman Charles Marlow, working on a ship called the Nellie which sits on the...
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Heart of Darkness
Marlow is a man who appears to have been so stunned by the Kurtz episode that it has come to dominate his own personality. He recounts the story almost as if he doesn't fully believe it himself....
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Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness centers on the traumatic experience of Charles Marlow, an English seaman, down the coast of Africa. While in Congo, Marlow witnesses the horrors brought about by the British...
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Heart of Darkness
"The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires." Marlow, the protagonist of Conard's 1899 book Heart of Darkness, travels to Africa and is confronted with the ravages of...
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Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness, written by Polish-British author Joseph Conrad, is set in Africa—to be specific, in the Congo Free State, which is under the control of European imperialist forces in the novel....
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Heart of Darkness
The character of Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness looms large over the entirety of the story, even though he is not met by Marlow until the third and final section. Instead,...
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Heart of Darkness
Polish-English writer Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899) is one of the most symbolic books in the Western canon. It practically drips with symbolism, one of the reasons why it it still widely...
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Heart of Darkness
Conrad's story is told in a layered, story-within-a-story manner. Marlow, to be clear, is not the narrator; Marlow is one of a number of company officers aboard the Director's yacht (the Nellie)....
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Heart of Darkness
When Marlow goes to visit Kurtz's fiancée, she asks what Kurtz's last words were. As we know, his last words were "'The horror! The horror!" However, Marlow tells her his last words were her name:...
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Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness is frame narrative, meaning Marlowe's tale is embedded in a larger story or frame. This frame is a very small one—a few paragraphs at the beginning of the novel and one at the...
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Heart of Darkness
There are only three female characters in Heart of Darkness of any note: Marlow's aunt, Kurtz's mistress/concubine, and Kurtz's fiance. It would not be unfair to describe the role of all as...
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Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, first published in 1899, is among the most widely read and discussed of great books. A quick glance at the critical literature shows readings of the book from...
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Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness is Joseph Conrad’s masterpiece, which is ostensibly about a trip through the Belgian Congo to retrieve a man named Kurtz, who has essentially declared himself a god to the...
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Heart of Darkness
The two-fold journey that takes place in Heart of Darkness is one of physical as well as psychological location. Marlow’s trip down the Congo on the yawl Nellie to find Kurtz represents the...
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Heart of Darkness
The image of Africa in Heart of Darkness is generally a negative one. Even in the beginning, before the protagonist Marlow has begun his journey, we are given a contrasting description of Africa....
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Heart of Darkness
Perhaps the most intimately explored theme in Heart of Darkness is the relationship between the colonizer and colonized, as well as the cross contamination of culture that occurs when there is such...
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Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness begins on a boat outside of London. The chief protagonist is Marlow, who works for an ivory trading company. The setting shifts to the African Congo, which had...
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Heart of Darkness
It's clear from what Marlow discovers about Kurtz that he was a bit of a control freak. Whether it was his fiancée, the indigenous people with whom he came into contact, or even the features of the...
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Heart of Darkness
As Marlow is traveling upriver to see Kurtz, he is very uncomfortable in his surroundings. They are foreign to him, even though they probably feel quite natural to the native population. He has 20...
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Heart of Darkness
I would agree that Conrad in Heart of Darkness is misogynistic, but only up to a certain point. Misogyny is the marginalization or disparagement of women in some way. Certainly, the world of trade...
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Heart of Darkness
It is safe to say that Conrad was horrified by what he witnessed in Congo. While Heart of Darkness has been criticized by Chinua Achebe as racist because Conrad depicts the Congolese as subhuman or...
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Heart of Darkness
It's queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there has never been anything like it, and never can be. It's too beautiful altogether, and if they were to...
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Heart of Darkness
There is a definite sense in which Marlow changes dramatically as a result of his experiences with Kurtz and what he learns and witnesses. In one sense, Marlow, by the end of the story, seems to...
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Heart of Darkness
This foray might be rather expansive because different people will see different aspects of Darwinian thought in Conrad's Heart of Darkness. One particular quote that can be seen that might have...
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Heart of Darkness
In Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Marlow's character sees the natives as a race of people who are being exploited by the white race. When King Leopold II of Belgium established a colony in the...
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Heart of Darkness
Corporate imperialism and commercial colonization are the twin forces that stand behind all the action of the novel. It is in the interest of business that Marlow and Kurtz both come to the Congo....
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Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness (1899 and 1902) remains his best-known work, and a classic in the genre. It has been adapted to film twice and is loosely based on a true story in Conrad's...
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Heart of Darkness
This is a great question, Keira. The literary device that Conrad uses is called a "frame narrative," which is a fancy way of describing a story within a story. Try thinking about the concept of the...
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Heart of Darkness
The shifts in narrative are because this is a story within a story, sometimes called a "frame" story because the primary story "frames" the secondary story. As Heart of Darkness begins, Marlow is...
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Heart of Darkness
I am sure you will get several ideas on this one, but one central question that comes to mind for me as I consider the themes of good, evil, truth and morality is, "Can man change?" More...
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Heart of Darkness
The river symbolizes the journey that, in this novel, mankind takes on his way to the dark side – to his heart of darkness. The Congo allows Europeans to journey to the center of Africa without...
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Heart of Darkness
Marlow's experience in the jungle was of a man used to Western civilization placed suddenly out of his comfort zone, into a world where the instinct is more important and morality is a shifting,...
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Heart of Darkness
In Heart of Darkness, female characters play a stereotypical role and appear quite infrequently. Only a few women appear at all, and they serve as elements of contrast for Marlow. The Black...
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Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is based upon Conrad's own experience as a steamboat captain in the area once known as the Congo. Conrad commanded his ship for a short time when he became ill and...
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Heart of Darkness
In Heart of Darkness, the titular "darkness" represents various parts of reality, human nature, and the corruption of decency when faced with insurmountable obstacles. Marlow uses it regularly both...
