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The Narrator describes a night spent on a ship (the Nellie) on the Thames River in England. Marlow, one of the men on board, tells of his time spent as a riverboat pilot in the Belgian Congo.

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Marlow- Heart of Darkness is mostly made up of his story about the journey into the Belgian Congo. He has the temperament of a seaman, during the book we also notice his skepticism of the human kind and civilization. The only thing he seems to believe in is hard work.

Kurtz- Described as a man of great intellect, talented and ambitious. He is the antagonist of the book, during his stay in Africa Kurtz is transormed from a man of moral principles to a monster who acts as a god among the natives. His transformation proves that there is a part of darkness inside every human being.

The Narrator- He is one of the five men on the Nellie in the Thames River, he's the one reporting Marlow's story to the reader. He insightful and seems to understand Marlow quite well, but otherwise doesn't say anything about himself.

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Marlow's story takes place in the Belgian Congo, one of the most notorious European colonies in Africa because of the colonizers' immense greed and brutal treatment of the native people.

The book reveals the hypocricy of the colonial effort to "civilize" the natives, it was an excuse to justify the robbing of the Africans resources.

Intrestingly the author pays more attention to the effects of greed on the white colonizers' souls than it does to the damage caused to the black natives.

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Throughout the novella, African characters are often described as less than human, treated like slaves for labour. The portrayal of the African workers reveals how colonial powers justified their exploitation by viewing Africans as inferior, or as in desperate need for control and education.

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Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski was born in Berdychiv on December 3 in 1857. He was an orphan by the age of twelve, and at seventeen he began to work as a sailor in France. Eventually he started sailing on British ships , becoming a naturalized British Citizen in 1886. For the following 8 years Conrad kept working as a sailor, even spending sometime on a steamship in the Belgian Congo. He published his first novel, Almayer's Folly, in 1894. He quickly won critical praise even though he didn't gain a lot of financial succes from his work and both him and his wife, Jessie George, suffered serious illnesses. Conrad died in 1924.

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In the book the surface of civilization often conceals uncomfortable truths about human nature. The novella suggests that beneath the mask of civilization lies a darkness rooted in greed and cruelty. Marlow's story shows how darkness resides not only in the distant and wilde jungle, but also in the human's soul.

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By hook or by crook: by any means.

Recondite: little known, obscure; describing complex and hidden truths.

Corruption: the moral decay at the heart of imperialism and human nature.

Journey: both physical (down the river) and spiritual (inner developement).