LITERATURE

Literary Resources - Heart of Darkness

English Literature for English learners

Joseph Conrad (3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924)

Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist who is ,regarded as one of the greatest novelists in English in spite of not being a fluent English speaker until his twenties (and then always with a marked Polish accent). While some of Conrad's works have a strain of romanticism, he is viewed as a precursor of modernist literature. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influenced many authors.

Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness is a novella written by Joseph Conrad. It is widely regarded as a significant work of English literature and one of the most important and influential books in shaping Western culture.

The story centers on Charles Marlow, who narrates most of the book. He is an Englishman who takes a foreign assignment from a Belgian trading company as a ferry-boat captain in Africa. Heart of Darkness exposes the dark side of European colonization while exploring the three levels of darkness that the protagonist, Marlow, encounters: the darkness of the Congo wilderness, the darkness of the Europeans' cruel treatment of the natives, and the unfathomable darkness within every human being for committing heinous acts of evil