ABSTRACT
Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, published in 1899, opens on the River Thames aboard a cruising yawl, where several men wait for the tide to turn and carry them out to sea. As the dusk falls, one of the men, Charlie Marlow, begins a tale that unfolds into the novella and, more broadly, a commentary on Europe's scramble for Africa. Marlow's tale is loosely based on Conrad's own experience during a visit to the Congo Free State as a ship's captain in 1890, an experience that prompted Conrad to question the motives and morality of Europe's civilizing mission. In a series of reflections that precede his tale, Marlow observes:
The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it, not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea—something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to. 1
