Heart of Darkness

Sailor Charles Marlow recounts to his friends his time as a Steamer captain for an ivory trading company in the African interior. After a harrowing trip via steamboat up the Congo River to visit Mr Kurtz at the company’s Station, Marlow finds Kurtz gravely ill. The return journey invites reader consideration of philosophical questions on colonial and imperial exploitation, the corruption of man, and the ‘darkness’ of the human heart as a cause of evil; ‘civilization’ is fragile, and perhaps only a veneer.