Heart of Darkness: Part 1 Summary & Analysis

The Narrator describes the scene from the deck of a ship named Nellie as it rests at anchor at the mouth of the River Thames, near London. The five men on board the ship—the Director of Companies, the Lawyer, the Accountant, the Narrator, and Marlow, old friends from their seafaring days—settle down to await the changing of the tide. They stare down the mouth of the river into the Atlantic Ocean, a view that stretches like "the beginning of an interminable waterway."

In silence they watch the sunset, and the Narrator remembers the fabled ships and men of English history who set sail from the Thames on voyages of trade or conquest, carrying with them "The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empire."

Suddenly Marlow interrupts the silence. "And this also," Marlow says, "has been one of the dark places of the earth." He imagines England as it must have appeared to the first Romans sent to conquer it: a savage, mysterious place that both appalled and attracted them, that made them feel powerless and filled them with hate.

Marlow observes that none of the men on the boat would feel just like those Romans, because the men on the boat have a "devotion to efficiency," while the Romans wanted simply to conquer.

Yet Marlow adds that conquest is never pretty and usually involves the powerful taking land from those who look different and are less powerful. Conquest, Marlow says, is redeemed only by the ideas behind them, ideas that are so beautiful men bow down before them.

Marlow then reminds the other men that he once served as captain of a freshwater riverboat, and begins to tell his story. As a young boy, he had a passion for maps and unknown places. As he grew older many of those places become known, and many he visited himself. Yet Africa still fascinated him, especially its mighty river, the Congo. After years of ocean voyages in which he had "always went by [his] own road and on [his] own legs," Marlow asks his aunt to use her influence help him get a job as a steamship operator for the Company, a continental European trading concern in Africa.

The Company hires him immediately: it has an open position because one of its captains, a Dane named Fresleven, had recently been killed. After some time in the jungle, the normally mild-mannered Fresleven had started hitting the native chief of a village with a cane over a disagreement regarding two black hens, and was accidentally killed by the chief's son. The natives, in fear, immediately abandoned their village.

Marlow travels to the unnamed European city where the Company has its headquarters. He describes the city as a "whited sepulcher."

At the Company's office, Marlow is let into a reception area presided over by two women, one fat, one slim, both of whom constantly knit black wool. There, Marlow examines a map of Africa filled in by various colors representing the European countries that colonized those areas. He briefly meets the head of the Company (a "pale plumpness in a frock coat"), then is directed to a doctor. While measuring Marlow's head, the doctor comments that in Africa "the changes happen inside" and asks Marlow if his family has a history of insanity.

Marlow has a farewell chat with his aunt, who sees her nephew as an "emissary of light" off to educate the African natives out of their "horrid ways." Marlow points out to his aunt that the company is run for profit, not missionary work, and expresses amazement to his friends on the boat how out of touch women are with the truth.

Marlow boards the steamer that will take him to the mouth of the Congo with a sense of foreboding. To Marlow on the steamer, the forested coast of Africa looks like an impenetrable enigma, inviting and scorning him at the same time. He occasionally sees canoes paddled by native Africans, and once sees a French ship firing its guns into the dense forest at invisible "enemies."

At the mouth of the Congo, Marlow gets passage for thirty miles from a small steamer piloted by a Swede. The Swede mocks the "government chaps" at the shore as men who will do anything for money, and wonders what happens to such men when they get further into the continent.

At last they reach the Company's Outer Station, a chaotic and disorganized place. Machinery rusts everywhere, black laborers blast away at a cliff face for no reason. Marlow comments to the men on the Nellie that he had long known the "lusty devils" of violence and greed that drive men, but in Africa encountered "a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly."

Marlow then stumbles upon what he calls the Grove of Death, a grove among the trees that is filled with weak and dying native laborers, who are living out their last moments in the shade of the ancient trees.

At the station, the Chief Accountant impresses Marlow with his good grooming. One day the Chief Accountant mentions that further up the river Marlow will probably meet Mr. Kurtz, a station head who sends in as much ivory as all the others put together and who "will be a somebody in the [Company] Administration before long." He asks Marlow to tell Kurtz that all is satisfactory, saying he doesn't want to send a letter for fear that rivals at the Central Station will intercept it.

Just then a dying "agent' from up country" is brought into the Chief Accountants quarters for lack of other space, which gently annoys the accountant. When, a while later, there is a "tumult" of noise as a caravan of pilgrims and natives comes into the station, the Chief Accountant comments, "When one has got to make correct entries, one comes to hate these savages—hate them to death."

A few days later Marlow joins a caravan headed the two hundred miles upriver to Central Station. After a fifteen-day trek through the jungle during which the only other white man fell ill and many of the native porters deserted rather than carry the sick man, Marlow reaches the Station.

At the station, Marlow is greeted by the first man he sees with news that the ship he was supposed to pilot has sunk. Apparently, the General Manager had suddenly decided to try to reach Kurtz at the Inner Station with an inexperienced pilot at the helm of the steamship. The steamship promptly sank.

Marlow, on the Nellie, says that though he can't be sure, he suspects that it's possible the General Manager wanted the steamship to sink.

Marlow is immediately taken to see this General Manager, who is thoroughly unremarkable in intelligence, leadership, and unskilled at even maintaining order. Marlow believes the General Manager holds his position through two traits: he inspires vague uneasiness in others, and unlike any other Europeans he's resistant to all the tropical diseases.

The General Manager explains why he took the steamship onto the river before Marlow, its pilot, arrived: Kurtz, the Company's best agent, is sick. The General Manager takes special interest when Marlow mentions he heard Kurtz's name mentioned on the coast. The General Manager estimates that it will take three months to repair the ship, and turns out to be almost exactly right.

Marlow sets to work fixing the ship and watches the absurd happenings of Central Station, where the various company agents (employees) do no work, stroll about aimlessly, and dream of ivory and wealth. Marlow describes the place as "unreal."

One night a shed bursts into flame. As Marlow approaches he sees a laborer being beaten for setting the blaze and overhears the General Manager talking with another man about Kurtz, saying they should try to "take advantage of this unfortunate accident." The General Manager departs, and Marlow ends up in a conversation with the other man, a young "agent" whose responsibility it is to make bricks (which he never does) and whom the other agents think is the General Manager's spy.

Marlow follows the Brickmaker back to his quarters, which are much nicer than any but the General Manager's. As they talk, Marlow realizes the Brickmaker is trying to get information from him because Marlow's Aunt's contacts in the Company are the same people who sent Kurtz to Africa. The Brickmaker bitterly says that Marlow and Kurtz are both "of the new gang—the gang of virtue" meant to bring proper morals and European enlightenment to the colonial activities in Africa.

The Brickmaker, whom Marlow now calls a "papier-mâché Mephistopheles," continues to speak about Kurtz, and asks Marlow not to give Kurtz a wrong impression of him. Marlow realizes that both the General Manager and the Brickmaker see Kurtz as a threat to their dreams of advancement.

Though he hates lies because they have a "taint of death" and telling them is like "biting something rotten," Marlow pretends to have as much influence in Europe as the Brickmaker thinks he has in order to get the Brickmaker to speed up the arrival of the rivets needed to fix the steamship. Marlow has an idea that the faster the steamship is fixed the better it will be for Kurtz.

Suddenly, Marlow breaks off telling his story in order to try to explain to the men sitting on the ship in the Thames how hard it is to get across his experiences, though he is comforted by the fact that his fellows on the ship, men who see and know him, can at least "see more than I could then." The Narrator observes that it was now so dark they couldn't see Marlow at all.

Marlow resumes his story. When the Brickmaker leaves, Marlow boards his broken steamship, which he has come to love after putting in so much hard work to rebuild it. Marlow says of work: "I don't like work... but I like what is in the work—the chance to find yourself. Your own reality." Marlow tells his foreman they'll soon have rivets. The two of them do a little dance of joy.

But weeks pass and the rivets don't come. Instead, a group of "pilgrims" calling itself the Eldorado Exploring Expedition arrives, led by the General Manager's uncle. They are all greedy, cowardly, and without any sort of foresight or understanding of work.

Without rivets, Marlow can't do any work either. He has lots of time to think, and begins to wonder about Kurtz's morals, and about how Kurtz would act if he did become general manager.