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Heart of Darkness

by Joseph Conrad

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What occurs at the conclusion of Heart of Darkness?

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At the end of Heart of Darkness, Marlow visits Kurtz's "Intended" (fiancée) and lies to her that Kurtz's last word was her name. The story then returns to the frame narrative, and with the final lines, the narrator emphasizes the novel's theme of darkness.

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At the end of Heart of Darkness, Marlow has returned from Africa a bitter, cynical man. He goes to see the woman Kurtz called his "Intended" (that is, his fiancée, the woman he intended to marry) and finds that, although it is over a year since Kurtz's death, she is still deep in mourning. She speaks of Kurtz with reverence, saying that it was impossible for anyone who knew him not to love and admire him. From Marlow, she seeks details of his last hours and his death, and Marlow thinks of Kurtz's dying words, "The horror! The horror!" He lets slip that he was with Kurtz at the end and heard the last words he said. Kurtz's Intended begs to know what this was.

"His last word—to live with," she insisted. "Don’t you understand I loved him—I loved him—I loved him!"

I pulled myself together and spoke slowly.

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I pulled myself together and spoke slowly.

"The last word he pronounced was—your name."

The woman starts to weep, and Marlow feels as though the house will fall on his head for telling such a lie. He then wonders what would have happened if he had told the truth, but decides that this would have been "too dark—too dark altogether." This is the end of Marlow's story, and the story returns to the frame narrative for a final brief paragraph, with the narrator Marlow's appearance to that of a Buddha statue, echoing a comparison at the beginning of the novella. The narrator also emphasizes the motif of darkness in the last sentence.

Nobody moved for a time. “We have lost the first of the ebb,” said the Director suddenly. I raised my head. The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky—seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.

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What is the climax of Heart of Darkness?

I am inclined to agree with you, as are most literary scholars who have studied the work. The climax begins to build when Marlow finds Kurtz. The tension builds a slow panic within the reader at the moment we see Kurtz' home adorned with impaled heads. It is revealed that Kurtz has manipulated the natives into idolizing him as some sort of god, even though now he has begun to fall ill.

It seems to Marlow that Kurtz soul is being taken over by the jungle, corrupted by the heart of darkness. When Kurtz dies, his final words are "The Horror! The Horror!" Perhaps in his final moments, Kurtz became consciously aware of the influence the Congo had over him, and felt remorse for his actions.

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I think you are correct. The climax comes when Kurtz dies---leaving the mystery to what he means by "the horror, the horror." Kurtz had "stepped over the edge" while Marlow has stepped back from the madness that consumed Kurtz. The rest of the story is simply the resolution of Marlow's search and culmination in allowing Kurtz's intended to remain unaware of Kurtz's insanity.

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What does "heart of darkness" symbolize in Heart of Darkness?

The "heart of darkness" has both a specific and a universal meaning in the novella. It refers particularly to the horror, cruelty, and greed that Marlow experiences in the Congo. In this iteration, it focuses on Kurtz, who crystallizes and symbolizes all the horrors of the European actions in Africa.

Marlow notes that as the boat he captains on the Congo gets closer to Kurtz, it gets closer to the heart of darkness:

[we] crawled towards Kurtz ... We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness.

The darkness is, on one level, the oppressive geography of Africa: its dark jungles, its miasmas, its claustrophobia, its fogs. It is a landscape of horror as seen through Marlow's eyes. But the true heart of this darkness is the penetration into this continent of people like Kurtz, whose pursuit of profit at all costs and setting themselves up as godlike figures exemplifies all that is wrong with European imperialism. Kurtz's soul sickness is Europe's.

The frame story that surrounds Marlow's tale of his time in Africa underscores that this heart of darkness is more, however, than simply the singular experience Marlow had in Africa. The cruelties of European imperialism, of conquest, of the strong suppressing the weak, are universal. As Marlow states, what the English do in Africa or around the globe now is no different from what the Romans did to the ancient British. Humanity has a heart of darkness. The novel ends with this image of the sea route from the Thames to the Atlantic:

The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky—seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.

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