Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness By Joseph Conrad Introduction Compiled by Margaret Herndon W.T. Woodson High School

Early Life • JózefTeodor Conrad Korzeniowskiwas born on 3 December 1857 in the Russian occupied city of Berdyczów, Ukraine. His parents were members of the Polish nobility and lived in the Ukraine under Tsarist autocracy. In 1861 Joseph’s nationalist father, who was an outspoken supporter of the serfs and critic of Poland’s oppressors, was arrested along with his wife for being involved with the Polish National Committee’s anti-Russian activities.

Early Life Continued • They and four-year old Joseph were exiled to the province of Vologda in Northern Russia. The living conditions and harsh climate took their toll on Joseph’s parents: they both contracted tuberculosis, Evelina dying of it in 1865, Apollo in 1869. He was celebrated at his death by the Poles in patriotic honour.

11 year-old orphan • Shaken from their deaths and also suffering from various health problems that would plague him for the rest of his life, at the age of twelve Joseph became the ward of his maternal uncle TadeuszBobrowski (d.1894), a landowner who lived in Cracow, Poland. He would be a great support to Joseph morally and financially for many years to come.

Education • As well as speaking Polish, Joseph had been taught French by his governess Mlle. Durand and received some schooling from his father. Now his uncle hired a student from Cracow University to continue his education, tutoring him in Latin, Greek, geography, and mathematics.

The Roots of HOD • He was involved with gunrunning and smuggling for a time, and in the off hours incurred a number of gambling debts. When he could not repay them he attempted to commit suicide by shooting himself in the chest. He survived and his uncle paid off his debts but he lost his position with the French merchants so joined the English ship ‘Mavis’ in 1878. • Two years later he passed his third mate’s exam and in 1886 earned his Master’s certificate in the British Merchant Service and became a British Citizen. It was at this time that he changed his name to Joseph Conrad.

Travelled to the Belgian Congo • The harsh conditions of travelling to the Congo Free State and working on a paddle-steamer aggravated Conrad’s already at-times fragile health. He suffered gout and had periods of depression for many years. He returned to England weakened and suffering from fever and was hospitalized. While his sense of humor and irony was intact, the Congo had also caused a profound effect on his emotional health.

Map from 1918

Writing Career • Having now retired from the sea he settled in Kent County, England. Almayer’s Folly (1895) was published to mixed reviews though mostly positive. • In March of 1896 he married Jessie Emmeline George (1873-1936) with whom he would have two sons, Borys (b.1898) and John (b.1906). • Now that Conrad was retired and earnestly writing, he had numerous works first serialized in such publications as Blackwood’s, Munsey’s and Harper’s. Other works published around this time include An Outcast of the Islands (1896), The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ (1897), Tales of Unrest (1898), Lord Jim (1900), collaborations with Ford Madox Ford The Inheritors (1901) and Romance (1903), Youth (1902), The End of the Tether (1902), Typhoon (1903), Nostromo (1904), The Mirror of the Sea (1906, semi-autobiographical), The Secret Agent (1907), A Set of Six (1908), and Under Western Eyes (1911).

Conrad with his son Borys This is a picture of a yawl-

River Steam Boat

Although he was now receiving a pension Conrad suffered financial difficulties for a number of years; it was with the immediate commercial success of Chance (1914) that was a turning point for him.

Death and Honors • On 3 August 1924 Joseph Conrad died at home of a heart attack. Although a skeptic much of his life he was given a Roman Catholic service at St. Thomas’s and now rests with his wife Jessie in the Westgate Court Avenue public cemetery in Canterbury, England. His name is carved into the massive rough-hewn grave stone as was given at his birth, Joseph Teodor Conrad Korzeniowski. The epitaph carved below, also the epigraph for The Rover is from Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queen and reads: Sleep After Toyle, Port After Stormie Seas, Ease After Warre,Death After Life Does Greatly Please

Heart of Darkness Before its 1902 publication, it was serialized in three installments in Blackwood’s Magazine. Tells the story of a narrator named Charlie Marlow and his journey to the Belgian Congo. His mission is to find an ivory trader named Kurtz and bring him back to “civilization”. Charlie Marlow tells the story to a group of men who are on the Thames River.

Elements of the Novella • The narrative structure is a “frame story” or a story within a story. • It contains the motifs of~ a. spiritual-moral darkness/lightness b. interior vs exterior c. the duality of human nature d. corporate greed in the cloak of morality

Archetypal modern novel because it contains these elements: • Realism(Marlow describes horrible images dispassionately) • Psychological elements (who is crazy?) • Mythical elements (Kurtz as a god) • Political themes (the politics of Kurtz and what it says about European expansion • Symbolism(light and dark, London and the Congo, Marlow and Kurtz, ignorant vs imperial)

Monument to Joseph Conrad Anchor-shaped and shaped like the prow of a ship. Conrad monument in Gdynia, on Poland's Baltic Seacoast. ("Nothing is so seductive, so disillusioning or so enthralling as life on the sea"). Grave stone in Canterbury City Cemetery, Kent, England

Web resources • http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/leopold.html • http://www.literaturepage.com/read/heart-of-darkness.html • Consider this quote from the king: "Our only program, I am anxious to repeat, is the work of moral and material regeneration, and we must do this among a population whose degeneration in its inherited conditions it is difficult to measure. The many horrors and atrocities which disgrace humanity give way little by little before our intervention.” King Leopold II

Heart of Darkness