Heart of Darkness and Selected Short Fic - Joseph Conrad [136]
—from A Book of Prefaces (1917)
CHINUA ACHEBE
Heart of Darkness projects the image of Africa as “the other world,” the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization, a place where man’s vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant bestiality.
—from The Massachusetts Review (Winter 1977)
Questions
1. What (or where) is the heart of darkness?
2. We are told that “all Europe went into the making of Kurtz,” that he is a writer, a journalist, a painter, and a musician, as well as an explorer and colonialist. What does Conrad want to convey by making Kurtz a universal genius on the cutting edge of European civilization?
3. There are numerous doubles in Heart of Darkness: Marlow and Kurtz, the Congo and the Thames are obvious ones. Can you name others? What do these doubles—what does the very process of all this doubling—do? How does the doubling affect the reader and create meaning?
4. The cannibals, the “savages,” we are told, have incomprehensible “restraint” in the face of inconceivable temptation, whereas it is precisely “restraint” that the “civilized” Europeans lack. Can you explain this paradox?
FOR FURTHER READING
Other Selected Works of Fiction by Joseph Conrad
Almayer’s Folly (1895)
An Outcast of the Islands (1896)
The Nigger of the “Narcissus” (1897)
Tales of Unrest (1898)
Lord Jim (1900)
The Inheritors, with Ford Madox Ford (1901)
Youth: A Narrative; and Two Other Stories (1902)
Romance, with Ford Madox Ford (1903)
Typhoon and Other Stories (1903)
Nostromo (1904)
The Secret Agent (1907)
Under Westem Eyes (1911)
‘Twixt Land and Sea (1912)
Chance (1914)
Victory (1915)
The Shadow-Line (1917)
The Rescue (1920)
Biographies
Baines, Jocelyn. Joseph Conrad: A Critical Biography. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960. Although largely superseded by Karl’s and Najder’s biographies, this was the standard account of Conrad’s life for many years and is still useful.
Conrad, Joseph. The Mirror of the Sea (New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1906) and A Personal Record (New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1912). Memoirs of Conrad’s that are unreliable yet full of fascinating material, the latter volume especially.
Karl, Frederick R. Joseph Conrad: The Three Lives-A Biography. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1979. An extraordinarily (and sometimes overwhelmingly) detailed account of Conrad’s life.
Najder, Zdzislaw. Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle. Translated from the Polish by Halina Carroll-Najder. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1983. The best of the Conrad biographies, especially on his Polish background.
Sherry, Norman. Conrad and His World. London: Thames and Hudson, 1972. A good introduction to the life and literary career of Conrad for the general reader.
Critical Studies
Achebe, Chinua. Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays. New York: Anchor Books, 1990. Contains “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness,” the most influential essay ever published on Conrad’s novella.
Berthoud, Jacques. Joseph Conrad: The Major Phase. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978. An account of Conrad’s fiction from The Nigger of the “Narcissus” to Under Western Eyes.
Brantlinger, Patrick. Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830-1914. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988. The chapter on Heart of Darkness intelligently contextualizes Conrad’s novella in the history of imperialism.
Fleishman, Avrom. Conrad’s Politics: Community and Anarchy in the Fiction of Joseph Conrad. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967. Analyzes Conrad’s political ideas and their expression in his fiction.
GoGwilt, Christopher. The Invention of the West: Joseph Conrad and the Double-Mapping of Europe and Empire. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995. Heavily informed by critical and postcolonial theory, this is a fine study although a difficult go for the general reader.