Things to Consider:

• Comparison to Darwin
• Racism and Imperialism
• Achebe's "An Image of Africa" 
• "Conrad was a bloody racist" (2207).
• "I am talking about a book that parades in the most vulgar fashion prejudices and insults from which a section of mankind has suffered untold agonies and atrocities in the past and continues to do so in many ways and many places today.  I am talking about a story in which the very humanity of black people is called in question.  It seems to me totally inconceivable that great art or even good art could possibly reside in such unwholesome surroundings" (2209).
• Frame Narratives and Points of View
• Appearance vs. Reality
• Role of Women (2148, 2174, 2183-84, 2193-95)
• Interesting Lecture on the Novel 

• Explain:  "He sets a lone individual into confrontation with the complexities of the modern world" (2136).

• Explain:  "The powers of sight are directly related to the powers of insight, or self-knowledge" (2137).
• Explain the discussion of yarns and the cracked nut (see also 2142).
• Explain:  "The reader must participate in the gradual, and partial, process of accumulated meaning" (2137).
• Explain:  "Heart of Darkness condenses in its pages an epic range of theme and experience, both the social themes of empire and cultural clash, and the personal theme of the hero's quest for self-discovery" (2137).
• If "Klein" means "little," what does "kurtz" mean, if anything? (See 2183).
• Explain:  "The location is left unnamed in part because Conrad wishes to show that the heart of darkness can shift on its axis" (2137).

• What is "the darkness that lies at the heart of an England that claims to be civilizing those whom it is merely conquering" (2138)?

• Who is the narrator?  Should he introduce himself? Explain. (see also discussion of style on 2117).
• What, according to the narrator, is "the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth" (2141)? Why?

• Explain:  "There is nothing mysterious to a seamen unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny" (2142).

• How, according to Marlow, has England "been one of the dark places of the earth" (2143)?  How does this discussion function as an introduction to Marlow's discussion of the Congo?
• What is the "fascination of the abomination" (2143)?
• Explain:  "Your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others" (2143).
• What are the green, red, and white "flames" gliding on the river?

• Explain the significance of the coiled snake image.

• Explain what has happened to Fresleven.

• Why is the trading company's office so gloomy?

• Why does the Company doctor measure Marlow's head?

• Explain Marlow's suggestion that women are "out of touch with truth" (2148) (Perhaps an interesting comparison can be made to Jack's comments in The Importance of Being Earnest 2015).
• Why is the voice of the surf "like the voice of a brother" (2148)?

• Why is the French man-of-war shelling the coast?
• Explain:  "It was like a weary pilgrimage amongst hints for nightmares" (2149).

• Explain the significance of the discussion of the building of the railway.  How does it compare with the firing of the French ship on 2149 or the description of the hole on 2151.
• Are Marlow's description of the Africans on this page racist?  Explain. (See Achebe's discussion on 2206).
• What is the "deathlike indifference of unhappy savages" (2150).

• Describe the Company's chief accountant.
• Who is Kurtz?

• Explain Marlow's analogy involving Deal and Gravesend.

• Explain:  "I felt I was becoming scientifically interesting" (2154). (Compare with the Company doctor's statements on 2147).
• Describe the Manager.

• Explain:  "Out there there were no external checks" (2155).

• Explain:  "The wilderness without a sound took him into its bosom again" (2156).
• Explain the discussion of the brick making (see also 2149, 2150, 2151).

• Explain what Marlow says about the horse and the halter.
• Describe Kurtz's painting of the blindfolded woman.

• What is the "Immensity" looking at Marlow and the brick maker?

• Explain:  "He was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name any more than you do" (2159).

• Why can't Marlow get rivets to fix his steamboat?

• Why does he think he will now get the rivets?  Explain his exchange with the foreman.
• What is the Eldorado Exploring Expedition?

• Why does Conrad have Marlow hear only bits and pieces of the conversation between the manager and his uncle? What is their attitude toward Kurtz?

• Explain the uncle's "black display of confidence" (2163).

• Explain:  "Going up the river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world" (2164).
• Explain:  "There were moments when one's past came back to one" (2164).
• Explain:  "When you have to attend to . . . the mere incidents of the surface, the reality . . . fades.  The inner truth is hidden—luckily, luckily" (2164). (Perhaps compare with "The careful observation of outward form is the truest path toward an ironic authenticity and self-fulfillment" (2003)).

• Explain:  "The prehistoric man was cussing us, praying to us, welcoming us—who could tell? We were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings" (2165).
• Why does the earth seem unearthly?
• Explain:  "That was the worst of it—this suspicion of their not being inhuman" (2165) (See also Achebe 2204-5).

• Explain:  "For good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced" (2166).
• Explain the comparison of the fireman with a dog on his hind legs.  How does this discussion compare with Darwin's discussion of Jemmy Button in The Voyage of the Beagle, esp. 1350-51? (See also Achebe 2205).

• Explain:  "What did it matter what any one knew or ignored?" (2167).

• What is the "white shutter" that falls around the boat?

• Why, according to Marlow, have the "cannibals" not yet eaten them?

• Explain:  "Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence—but more generally takes the form of apathy" (2171).
• Explain:  "What we afterwards alluded to as an attack was really an attempt at repulse" (2171).
• Why, in the buildup to his description of the "attack," does Marlow focus so much on the details of the boat? How does this section relate to the narrator's claims about storytellers and "what their audience would best like to hear" (2144)?

• Explain:  "Sticks, little sticks, were flying about" (2172).

• Explain:  "I had never imagined him as doing, you know, but as discoursing. . . .  The man presented himself as a voice" (2174).
• Explain:  "They—the women I mean—are out of it—should be out of it" (2174)

• Explain the references to butchers and policemen.

• Explain:  "Everything belonged to him—but that was a trifle. The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own" (2175).

• Describe Kurtz's "pamphlet."

• Describe the helmsman's "funeral." How does it compare with Kurtz's on 2190?

• Explain:  "You don't talk to that man—you listen to him" (2178).

• Why has Marlow's boat been attacked? (See also 2185).

• Explain:  "His need was to exist" (2179).

• Explain the significance of the shrunken heads.

• Explain:  "What would be the next definition I was to hear?  There had been enemies [2149], criminals [2150], workers—and these were rebels" (2182).

• Describe the significance of the woman.

• Explain Kurtz's words:  "Save me!—Save the ivory you mean" (2184).

• Why is Marlow terrified to discover Kurtz is gone from the ship?

• Explain: "He had kicked himself loose of the earth. . . . Confound the man! he had kicked the very earth to pieces" (2187).

• Explain:  "His intelligence was perfectly clear—concentrated, it is true, upon himself with horrible intensity, yet clear" (2188).
• Why does Kurtz return to the boat?

• Describe the comparison of Kurtz's life and the boat.

• To what is Kurtz referring when he says, "The horror! The horror!" (2190)?

• Why does Marlow refuse to give up Kurtz's documents?

• Why does the room get darker as Marlow talks to Kurtz's Intended?

• Why does Marlow recall the other woman when the Intended stretches out her arms to the window?  (See also Achebe 2205).
• Why does Marlow lie about Kurtz's final words?