Heart_Of_Darkness

Heart Of Darkness Heart of Darkness opens on a boat called "Nellie." Marlow and his shipmates, including the narrator whose descriptions of the scene fill the few breaks in Marlow's stories, loll on the deck waiting for the tides of the Thames River to change. To entertain his compatriots, Marlow begins to talk about his philosophies on colonization, his personal history, and his voyage up the Congo River into the heart of Africa. Like many storytellers, Marlow speaks in a stream of consciousness, skipping forward and backward in time without warning. The reader is left to infer from symbolism the specifics of Marlow's narrative. Marlow abhors colonization. He believes that when Europeans colonize other countries to exploit rather than to civilize, white men commit robbery and murder on "a great scale." His urgent feelings regarding colonization trigger Marlow to remember his trip into Africa. However, before he begins that specific story he tells his audience about his fascination with maps and "empty spaces." Since he was a child, Marlow dreamed of venturing into the dark places on maps. He gets a great chance, he explains, when his aunt helps him secure a position working for a European-based marlow, kurtz, marlow's, kurtz', heart, station, jungle, darkness, river, men, man, white, steamboat, manager, heart, africa, ivory, about, first, one, journey, both, while, story, russian, however, helmsman, cannibals, begins, been, time, scene, natives, himself, conrad, congo