Heart of Darkness Q&A

Marlow describes himself as a seafaring sailor who had been fascinated with the unknown regions of the world since a young age. Upon returning from the sea, Marlow has trouble finding a new commission aboard another seagoing vessel, so he decides to explore the possibility of a commission exploring the unknown regions of the world. He becomes especially interested in the blankness of the African continent, and thus pressures his relatives to secure a position for him on the Congo river.

Marlow quickly comes to realize that the company is filled with lazy and incompetent men, who have been corrupted by the power that colonialism allows them to wield over the natives. His meetings with the company officials reveal thorough corruption and moral degradation. This leads him to conclude that Colonialism is not only a brutal experience for the colonized but a severely detrimental practice for the character of the colonizer as well. 

Marlow learns about Kurtz’s immoral and violent methods of collecting ivory through the Russian man who seems to be a devotee of the cult that Kurtz has built for himself in the forest. Marlow sees Kurtz’s cabin ringed with spiked faces of the natives, and concludes that Kurtz is not the moral superior that he had imagined him to be. It is important to note that the Russian describes the horrific methods of Kurtz’s rule without ever condemning the man. He goes so far as to suggest that Kurtz is justified for the brutal acts that he had visited on the local population as there had been some who had rebelled against his rule as a god among them.

Initially, Marlow is repulsed by the true conditions that pervade under Kurtz at the inner station. However, as time passes, he gets to fully grasp the position that Kurtz had created for himself, and begins to believe that Kurtz may have been better than most other men in the company. Marlow believes that Kurtz was able to see beneath the layers of altruistic reasons that most colonizing powers claimed to espouse during governing the colonies. He alone was unashamed to fully embrace the exploitative nature of colonialism and exercise unfettered brutality for his material benefit. Marlow also believes that this was only possible because Kurtz had been fully corrupted by the savage nature of the Natives, as he had immersed himself too deeply into their society.