CliffsNotes on Conrad's Heart of Darkness & The Secret Sharer

Cliff Notes

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• eBook ISBN: 9780544181953
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Study Aids
• Subtopic: Study Guides

Part 1

Summary

Heart of Darkness begins on board the Nellie, a small ship moored on the Thames River in London. After describing the river and its slow-moving traffic, the unnamed narrator offers short descriptions of London’s history to his companions who, with him, lazily lounge on the deck, waiting for the tide to turn. With him are the Director of Companies (their Captain), a lawyer, an accountant, and Marlow, the novel’s protagonist. As the sun sets, the four men become contemplative and brooding; eventually, Marlow breaks the spell of silence by beginning his tale about his voyage to the Congo.

The other men remain silent while Marlow collects his ideas, after which he begins the story proper. The remainder of the novel becomes (with a few exceptions) the narrator’s report of what Marlow tells him and the others on board the Nellie. Conrad’s novel is thus a frame tale, or story-within-a-story.

As a boy, Marlow was fascinated by maps and yearned to become a seaman or explorer who could visit the most remote parts of the earth. As a young man, Marlow spent approximately six years sailing in the Pacific before returning to London—where he then saw, in a shop window, a map of Africa and the Congo River. Recalling the news of a Continental trading Company operating in the Congo, Marlow became determined to pilot a steamboat to find adventure in Africa. He asked his aunt, who knew the wife of a Company official to assist him in getting a job as a pilot; she happily complied.

Marlow hurried across the English Channel to sign his contracts at the Company’s headquarters in Brussels. Passing through an office with two women who are knitting, Marlow spoke with the Company’s director for less than a minute; after being dismissed, he was asked to sign a number of papers in which he promised not to divulge any trade secrets. Marlow finally reached the mouth of the Congo. Finding passage on a little sea-bound steamer to take him where his steamboat awaited him, Marlow spoke with its Swedish captain about the Company and the effects of the jungle on Europeans. The Swede then told Marlow a short yet ominous story about a man he took upriver who hanged himself on the road. Shocked, Marlow asked why, only to be told that perhaps the “sun” or the “country” were too much for him. Eventually, they reached the Company’s Outer Station, which amounted to three wooden buildings on the side of a rocky slope. Out of this station was shipped the Company’s most important and lucrative commodity: ivory.

Marlow spent the next ten days waiting for the caravan to conduct him to the Central Station (and his steamboat), during which time he saw more of the Accountant. On some days, Marlow would sit in his office, trying to avoid the giant “stabbing” flies. When a stretcher with a sick European was put in the office temporarily, the Accountant became annoyed with his groans, complaining that they distracted him and increased the chances for clerical errors. Noting Marlow’s ultimate destination in the interior region of the Congo, the Accountant hinted that Marlow would “no doubt meet Mr. Kurtz,” a Company agent in charge of an incredibly lucrative ivory-post deep in the interior. The Accountant described Kurtz as a “first class agent” and “remarkable person” whose station brought in more ivory than all the other stations combined. He asked Marlow to tell Kurtz that everything at the Outer Station was satisfactory and then hinted that Kurtz was being groomed for a high position in the Company’s Administration.

The day after this conversation, Marlow left the Outer Station with a caravan of sixty men for a two hundred-mile “tramp” to the Central Station. (The men were native porters who carried the equipment, food and water.) Marlow saw innumerable paths cut through the jungle and a number of abandoned villages along the way. He saw a drunken White man, who claimed to be looking after the “upkeep” of a road, and the body of a native who was shot in the head. Marlow’s one White companion was an overweight man who kept fainting due to the heat. Eventually, he had to be carried in a hammock, and when the hammock skinned his nose and was dropped by the natives, he demanded that Marlow do something to punish them. Marlow did nothing except press onward until they reached the Central Station, where an “excitable chap” informed him that his steamboat was at the bottom of the river; two days earlier, the bottom of the boat had been torn off when some “volunteer skipper” piloted it upriver to have it ready for Marlow’s arrival.

Marlow was therefore forced to spend time at the Central Station. As he did with the Outer Station, he relates to his audience on the Nellie his impressions of the place. Marlow met a Brickmaker (although Marlow did not see a brick anywhere) who pressed him for information about the Company’s activities in Europe. When Marlow confessed to knowing nothing about the secret intrigues of the Company, the Brickmaker assumed he was lying and became annoyed.

At this point, Marlow breaks off his narrative, explaining to the men on the Nellie that he finds it difficult to convey the dream-like quality of his African experiences.

Marlow resumes his tale by continuing the description of his talk with the Brickmaker, who complained to Marlow that he could never find the necessary materials needed to make any bricks. Marlow told of how he needed rivets to repair his steamboat, but none arrived in any of the caravans.

After his conversation with the Brickmaker, Marlow told his mechanic (a boilermaker) that their rivets would be arriving shortly. (Marlow assumed that because the Brickmaker was eager to please him because he assumed Marlow had important friends, he would get him the necessary rivets.) Like the Brickmaker, the mechanic assumed that Marlow had great influence in Europe. However, the rivets did not arrive—instead, a number of white men riding donkeys (and followed by a number of natives) burst into the Central Station. Marlow learned that these men called themselves the Eldorado Exploring Expedition and that they had arrived in search of treasure. The Manager’s uncle was the leader of the Expedition, and Marlow saw him and his nephew conspiring on many occasions. At times, Marlow would hear Kurtz’s name mentioned and become mildly curious, but he felt a strong desire to repair his steamship and begin his job as a pilot.

Commentary

Heart of Darkness is best known as the story of Marlow’s journey to Africa, which, in part, it is. However, the novel is also the story of a man on board a London ship who listens to Marlow’s story as well. This “story-within-a-story” form is called a frame tale. (The significance of the framing device is discussed in the Critical Essays section.)

Exploring man’s inhumanity toward other men and raising some troubling questions about the impulse toward imperialism, Heart of Darkness is also an adventure story where (such as many others) the young hero embarks on a journey, and in the process, learns about himself. Marlow begins his narrative as a rough-and-ready young man searching for adventure. Unlike those of Europe, the maps of Africa still contained some “blank spaces” that Marlow yearned to explore; his likening the Congo River to a snake suggests the mesmeric powers of Africa. However, the serpent is also a well-known symbol of evil and temptation, harkening back to the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament. Thus, Conrad’s comparing the river to a snake also suggests the danger Marlow will find in Africa and the temptations to which Kurtz succumbs when he sets himself up as a god to the natives. Despite the uncertainty of what lay there, Marlow had to go.

However, before Marlow even sets foot on the African shore, Conrad begins to alert the reader to the terrible power of the African jungle. Marlow learns that a piloting position has become open because a chief’s son has killed one of the Company’s pilots over two black hens. Fresleven, the dead pilot, was thought by all to be “the kindliest, gentlest creature that ever walked on two legs,” but Conrad hints that something caused him to shed his self-control (as a snake sheds its skin) and attack the chief of a village. (This something, being the effects of “the jungle” on uninitiated Europeans, becomes more and more pronounced to Marlow and the reader as the novel progresses.) Marlow eventually sees Fresleven’s remains on the ground with grass growing up through the bones. The image suggests that Africa itself has won a battle against Fresleven and all he represents. The earth reclaimed him as its own, and Nature has triumphed over civilization. This is the first lesson Marlow learns about the futility of the Company’s agents’ attempts to remain “civilized” in the jungle, which releases instinctual and primitive drives within them that they did not ever think they possessed.

When Marlow visits Brussels to get his appointment, he describes the city as a “whited sepulcher”—a Biblical phrase referring to a hypocrite or person who employs a façade of goodness to mask his or her true malignancy. The Company, like its headquarters, is a similar “whited sepulcher,” proclaiming its duty to bring “civilization” and “light” to Africa in the name of Christian charity, but really raping the land and its people in the name of profit and the lust for power. Marlow’s aunt, who talks to him about “weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways” serves as an example of how deeply the Company’s propaganda has been ingrained into the minds of Europeans. Uncomfortable with his aunt’s ideas, Marlow suggests that the Company is simply “run for profit”; before he sees how these profits are acquired, he is blissfully unaware of the Company’s depravity. Marlow dwells in the realm of wishful thinking, wanting to believe that the Company has no imperialistic impulses and is simply an economic enterprise, much like the ones to which he is accustomed as a European.

The first glimpse Marlow and the reader have of the Company’s headquarters hints at the organization’s sinister, evil, and conspiratorial atmosphere. First, Marlow “slipped through one of the cracks” to enter the building, implying that the Company is figuratively “closed” in terms of what it allows the public to learn about its operations.

Second, the two women knitting black wool suggest the Fates of Greek mythology; like these goddesses, the Company is “knitting” the destiny of the Africans, represented by the black wool. The Company, therefore, plays God with the lives of the Africans, deciding who in the Congo will live or die.

Third, Marlow is led into a dimly lit office—the lighting reflects the “shady” and ambiguous morals of the Company. He only speaks with the Company’s President for forty-five seconds, suggesting that the Company views Marlow—and people like him—as expendable.

Fourth, Marlow is asked to sign “some document” that ostensibly contracts him to not reveal “any trade secrets,” but figuratively suggests the selling of his soul to the Devil. (As the Manager of the Central Station will later remark about Africa, “Men who come out here should have no entrails.”) As the Devil seeks human souls to overthrow eventually God in Heaven, the Company is metaphorically seeking to acquire the souls of as many Europeans as possible to make greater profits.

Fifth, when Marlow is examined by the Company’s Doctor, he learns that many Europeans who venture to Africa become mad: When the Doctor begins measuring Marlow’s skull, the reader infers Conrad’s point that European “science” and “technology” (even with a science as ludicrous as phrenology) are no match for the power of the jungle. When “civilized” Europeans go to Africa, the restraints placed upon them by European society begin to vanish, resulting in the kind of behavior previously seen in Fresleven. Later in the novel, when his anger begins to grow after finding all of his gear damaged by the porters, Marlow ironically remarks, “I felt I was becoming scientifically interesting.”

Also worth noting is the abundance of white and dark images in these opening pages of Marlow’s narrative. The Congo is described as a “white patch” on a map, Fresleven was killed in a scuffle over two black hens, Brussels is a “whited sepulcher,” the two women knit black wool and the old one wears a “starched white affair,” the President’s secretary has white hair, and the Doctor has black ink-stains on his sleeves. Many critics have commented (sometimes inconclusively) on Conrad’s use of white and black imagery; generally, one should note how the combination of white and black images suggests several of the novel’s ideas:

The Company claims to be a means by which (as Marlow’s aunt calls them), “emissaries of light” can bring civilization to the “darkness” of Africa, which is done by denoting Brussels as white and the Congo as white.

The white men in the novel (particularly Marlow and Kurtz) will be greatly influenced by their experiences with the Africans.

Although the Company professes to be a force of “white” moral righteousness, it is actually “spotted” with “black” spots of sin and inhumanity, and the corpses of the Black natives that are found throughout the Congo.

In short, the Company may appear to be “white” and pure, but it is actually quite the opposite, as denoted by the accountant and his white shirt.

Some critics, have claimed that Conrad’s use of “darkness” to represent evil suggests the racist assumptions of the novel; others argue that the “white” characters in the book are actually more “black” than the natives they slaughter and that Conrad’s imagery stresses the hypocrisy of the Company and its “white” employees. Regardless of this critical dispute, a reader should note that Conrad toys with white and black imagery throughout the course of the novel, and of course, in its very title.

Marlow feels like “an imposter” when he leaves the Company’s headquarters, because he has joined the ranks of an outfit whose assumptions about Africa and European activity there sharply contrast with his own. Marlow has no impe...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• How to Use This Book
• LIFE AND BACKGROUND OF THE AUTHOR
• Personal Background
• INTRODUCTION TO THE NOVEL
• Introduction
• List of Characters
• Character Map
• The Congo in 1900
• CRITICAL COMMENTARIES
• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• CHARACTER ANALYSES
• Marlow
• Kurtz
• The Manager
• The Accountant
• The Harlequin
• The Intended
• Kurtz’s Native Mistress
• Fresleven
• CRITICAL ESSAYS
• Conrad’s Use of the Frame Tale
• Apocalypse Now
• CLIFFSNOTES REVIEW
• Q & A
• Identify the Quote
• Essay Questions
• Practice Projects
• INTRODUCTION TO THE STORY
• Introduction
• A Brief Synopsis
• List of Characters
• Character Map
• CRITICAL COMMENTARIES
• Part 1
• Part 2
• CHARACTER ANALYSES
• The Captain
• Leggatt
• The Skipper of the Sephora
• The Second Mate
• The Chief Mate
• CRITICAL ESSAYS
• “The Secret Sharer” as Allegory
• “The Secret Sharer” and Heart of Darkness: A Comparative Analysis
• CLIFFSNOTES REVIEW
• Q & A
• Identify the Quote
• Essay Questions
• Practice Projects
• CLIFFNOTES RESOURCE CENTER
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