Heart of Darkness is a short novel written by the Polish-born English writer Joseph Conrad. The narrative first appeared in serial form in a Scottish magazine in 1899. It was published in book form in 1902.
Conrad based “Heart of Darkness” on his 1890 voyage up the Congo River in Africa. The intense psychological tale reflects Conrad’s observation of abuses by white Europeans in the Congo Free State, a personal colony of King Leopold II of Belgium. The area now makes up the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
“Heart of Darkness” is narrated by Marlow, who recounts an experience he had while operating a river steamer for a trading company in Africa. Marlow hears stories about a white man named Kurtz who is a powerful ivory trader in the jungle. Marlow makes the difficult steamboat journey through the jungle to meet Kurtz. Along the way, Marlow is deeply disturbed by the cruelties that European traders inflict on the Africans.
Marlow eventually locates Kurtz in a remote jungle outpost. There, Kurtz has become an all-powerful and maddened chief who rules over local Africans like a semidivine king. When Marlow finds him, Kurtz is suffering from a fatal disease. Marlow attempts to transport him to where he can receive medical treatment, but Kurtz dies. His final words are “The horror! The horror!”, referring, among other things, to the human capacity for evil—that is, “the heart of darkness.”
“Heart of Darkness” was adapted into a motion picture titled Apocalypse Now (1979), directed by the American director, producer, and writer Francis Ford Coppola. For the movie, Coppola relocated the story to Vietnam during the Vietnam War (1957-1975).
