Joseph Conrad emerged at the turn of the 20th Century as a distinct practitioner and the pioneer of the experimental modern novel. The tradition of telling a story relatively straightforward way by an omniscient narrator had made the genre popular and easily accessible. Conrad employs a narrative technique, which involves narration within narration. We have an unidentified narrator talking about an urbane seasoned English sailor of the merchant marine, Marlow recalls his profoundly disturbing experience in the Congo as a young Captain in the service of a Belgian Trading Company. He is Conrad's chief fascinating narrative voice in this novel and his other stories also.
Marlow recalls his experience to his listeners on the cruising yawl Nellie in the evening on Thames estuary in London. They are amateur yacht-men comprising the director of Companies, the Lawyer and the Accountant, all of whom may be identified as Pillars of Capitalism. The narration of the events is kept in relatively chronological sequence. Marlow finds a job with the help of his aunt with a trading company whose head office is located in one of the European cities i.e., in Brussels.
He travels to the Dark Continent to command a company's steamer in the place of Fresleven, a Dane, who was murdered by the native Africans. His job is to take the company officials from Central Station to the Inner Station to bring back Kurtz, the Chief of the Inner Station who is said to gravely ill. It takes some weeks for Marrlow to get the steamer repaired during that time he understands that Kurtz came from Europe as an Apostle of Progress and became the most successful agent in procuring maximum quantity of superior ivory. Hence he was tipped for promotion by the headquarters in Europe. He is naturally envied and resented by the manager of the Central Station. Marlow understands on his way from the coast to central station that the programme of civilizing Africa has been a farce. The trade has been virtually a euphemism for plunder.
During the travel on the winding snake-like, hedged on both sides by virgin forests, so thick and dark from where come sounds incomprehensible. Marlow, who was already demoralized is mystified and menaced. To his horror he witnesses the cruel treatment of the natives by the white Europeans often using the Negroes themselves as their supervisors, besides the purposeless destruction of the landscape. Ivory becomes to symbolize the arrant materialism of the white imperialists masquerading as promoters of philanthropy and enlightenment. Marlow is thoroughly disgusted and disillusioned with his whole race.While nearing the Inner Station there is a sudden attack from the savages concealed in the thick vegetation on the shore. His black helmsman is killed. And then meeting with a Russian freelance trader in the Inner Station he learns from him that he was taken care of Kurtz during his illness.
Marlow recalls his experience to his listeners on the cruising yawl Nellie in the evening on Thames estuary in London. They are amateur yacht-men comprising the director of Companies, the Lawyer and the Accountant, all of whom may be identified as Pillars of Capitalism. The narration of the events is kept in relatively chronological sequence. Marlow finds a job with the help of his aunt with a trading company whose head office is located in one of the European cities i.e., in Brussels.
He travels to the Dark Continent to command a company's steamer in the place of Fresleven, a Dane, who was murdered by the native Africans. His job is to take the company officials from Central Station to the Inner Station to bring back Kurtz, the Chief of the Inner Station who is said to gravely ill. It takes some weeks for Marrlow to get the steamer repaired during that time he understands that Kurtz came from Europe as an Apostle of Progress and became the most successful agent in procuring maximum quantity of superior ivory. Hence he was tipped for promotion by the headquarters in Europe. He is naturally envied and resented by the manager of the Central Station. Marlow understands on his way from the coast to central station that the programme of civilizing Africa has been a farce. The trade has been virtually a euphemism for plunder.
During the travel on the winding snake-like, hedged on both sides by virgin forests, so thick and dark from where come sounds incomprehensible. Marlow, who was already demoralized is mystified and menaced. To his horror he witnesses the cruel treatment of the natives by the white Europeans often using the Negroes themselves as their supervisors, besides the purposeless destruction of the landscape. Ivory becomes to symbolize the arrant materialism of the white imperialists masquerading as promoters of philanthropy and enlightenment. Marlow is thoroughly disgusted and disillusioned with his whole race.While nearing the Inner Station there is a sudden attack from the savages concealed in the thick vegetation on the shore. His black helmsman is killed. And then meeting with a Russian freelance trader in the Inner Station he learns from him that he was taken care of Kurtz during his illness.
The attack on the steamer had been made at the instance of Kurtz because Kurtz did not want to be taken home. Kurtz has been virtually ruling over the savage cannibal tribes as their chief. Kurtz has also partaken of their rites and rituals which perhaps (include) eating human flesh. To his moral shock Marlow also learns that this demigod authority that Kurtz has wielded also expressed itself often in ruthless raids on villages and hamlets for plundering their ivory. Ivory euphemistically called fossil because the natives conceal it in earth for the fear of being looted. But it cannot be escaped by the savage onslaught of Kurtz and his bloodthirsty subjects.
Marlow not only meets Kurtz who is near to death but also sees that native woman who has been his mistress in the recess of the jungle. She and her tribesmen are against Kurtz being taken away to his home country. But Marlow manages to bring him on board, after an appalling experience of watching Kurtz crawl in his feeble state towards the jungle, responding to the call of the drums and ritual dance. Kurtz dies on the way, whispering The horror! The horror! Marlow himself falls ill on his return to the headquarters. There he meets the girl whom Kurtz intended to marry. She has an idealized image of her lover as an Emissary of Progress and is in deep grief.
It is almost a year and more since Kurtz passed away and Marlow cannot get over his revulsion at and disenchantment with the doctrines of civilization. However he feels compelled to held back the truth about Kurtz from his lover - that he was an apostle of appetite, he was gone native, that he was the arch-priest of the devil rapacity. He was in one sense no better than a criminal. Marlow lies to the raptly listening young lady that the last words the Kurtz uttered her own name. The story comes to the present with Marlow and listeners lost in sombre silence and anonymous narrator confesses to a feeling of being led"in to the heart of an immense darkness".
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