Scarica Heart of Darkness: riassunto dettagliato, BLACK CAT e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! He of Dkne Chapter 1 It was evening and the narrator with other men, who were alll passionate about the sea were on a yawl anchored in the Thames. With them was a man named Marlow who was still a professional sailor; he liked telling reallistic and complicated stories and he preferred staying at sea than land. He started talking saying the Thames was a dark and frightening place yet the Romans had conquered it. Then he proceeded to tell his story: after his trip to the East, he had the idea to go to a huge river in Africa where there was a continental company that had trading stations along it. he asked his aunt there to help him get the job. He had to go to Brussels to sign he contract and he underwent a medical examination for formality where he encountered a strange doctor who asked if he could measure his head and later explained Marlow that he was interested in what happened to people's minds when they went out there. He also gave Marlow a weird advice: to not get angry when he was out there. Chapter 2 He sailed for Africa in a french steamer. He passed different trading posts and once a french warship that was shooting into the jungle. The first trading station he saw had broken machinery everywhere and had company workers' body lying on the ground because they either were dead or fell ill. There he saw the company accountant who wore perfectly white trousers and shirt and who he admired because his accounts were in proper order. The day after, he left and travelled 200 miles on foot. After 15 days of reaching the central station, which had disorder and confusion, someone approached him and told him that the steamer he had to command was at the bottom of the sea. Then he met the manager who he thought was stupid and was only successful because he had never felt ill as other men could have not survived the heat and the poor diet. The manager asked Marlow how long it would have taken to repair the steamer and he answered a couple of months. Chapter 3 As Marlow began working on the ship, a hut bursted into flames. He walk towards it and saw a manager with another man talking. They both saw him and the other man, who was a gentleman, invited Marlow to his room for a drink. There the young man talked to Marlow about a certain mr. Kurtz, who was the chief of the inner station sent from Europe. The truth is the young man only talked to him because he thought Marlow was important to the company. Marlow asked the man to give him rivets but he told him that he would only follow the manager’s orders, one of which was to not let the steamer be repaired quickly. Chapter 4 While waiting for the rivets to come, the Eldorado Expedition arrived at the station, which consisted of little groups of men guided by a white man. These men only wanted ivory and they were called pilgrims as they considered ivory as their religion and the went to Congo just for it. One of the pilgrims was the manager’s uncle and one time Marlow heard the conversation between him and the manager: they talked about mr Kurtz and how they wanted to get rid of him. The uncle told the manager to just trust the climate to get rid of mr Kurtz. They also talked about how mr. Kurtz had fallen ill, all alone, and sent a clerk to send ivory. The Eldorado Expedition then disappeared into the jungle and they received news that all of their donkeys died but he didn’t know what had happened to the men. The rivets, then, finally arrived. The colonial experience Conrad knew from family experiece what it felt like to be ruled by foreigners. Conrad’s fiction examines what happens to men who establish themselves as rulers or traders in a foreign country He believes that the origins of beliefs and moral values are social rather than individual: remove the individual from the society, and the individual’s beliefs and moral views are also removed. The collapse of a man is due to the fact that they don’t have strong beliefs or moral values. Kurtz is an example of this: he is an intelligent man and goes to Africa with definite ideas about the moral and intellectual contribution that Europeans should make to the country. However isolation in the jungle changes him. There is no moral nor social support: he loses his ideals and becomes a savage ruler with wild passions, despite his intelligence and his many talents, he is a hollow man (with no value) Chapter 5
