Preparing a Voyage and Setting Out

The story is set on the Congo, but it begins at sundown on the Nellie, a boat moored on the Thames. Jones takes the framing seriously. Marlow tells his tale to four companions, a director, a lawyer, an accountant, and the unnamed man who narrates, and that audience, she argues, stands for the Victorian readers Conrad was writing for.

Marlow's first move is to call London one of the dark places of the earth, as it would have looked to the Romans. Jones reads that as the novel's method in miniature: moral relativism slipped into a Victorian room, so that the real attitude toward empire has to be found between the lines.

The film covers the opening pages of chapter one, before Marlow's story leaves England, and sets up the two consciousnesses the book runs on, the narrator's and Marlow's.

Transcript

So we've begun. Now, while the action of Heart of Darkness is set in the Belgian-controlled Congo Free State at the very end of the 19th century, the story itself technically takes place at sundown on the Nellie, a small boat moored on the Thames River, which, as you may know, is a long and mighty river that runs through London, England. So the story that unfolds on an African river is framed by its retelling upon an English river. There are five men aboard the Nellie, one of whom is Charles Marlow, the story's protagonist. This narrative framing is important to understanding much of the text's deeper meanings, which are revealed by reading in between the lines of what Marlow actually says.

Marlow tells his companions about a transformative journey he made down the Congo River in Africa as captain of a steamship dispatched by a Belgian trading company. He begins this tale by reflecting on his youthful longing for adventure and his fascination with the unknown corners of the globe. He also signals to readers his skepticism regarding the idea that European colonization is bringing a morally superior light of civilization to the dark and savage cultures, by reflecting on how London, regarded as the biggest and greatest of towns by his companions, was once, quote, "one of the dark places of the earth," and would have looked like a wild and savage environment to the Romans who first came to England. Here Marlow is introducing some moral ambiguity and relativism that stands in direct opposition to the Victorian sentiments of the day.

While Marlow is our protagonist, our story's narrator is an unnamed man aboard the Nellie. The other men with Marlow and the narrator are referred to only by their jobs. There's the Director of Companies, a lawyer, and an accountant. One way of seeing this group is as a representation of civilized British society, with the unnamed narrator representing the average British citizen. This group, which indicates early on that it is likely to be more sympathetic to British imperialism than is the more unconventional Marlow, comprises the literal audience for Marlow's tale. But it can also be understood as a symbolic representation of the readers of Conrad's work in his time. Both Conrad and Marlow understand this, and the knowledge of this Victorian imperialist audience shapes the tone and structure of the story, requiring readers to search for double meanings and subtle implications to decipher the true attitudes of Marlow and Conrad toward imperialism.

This framing device is thoroughly modern in its stylistic approach. It creates distance between the author and Marlow, and it also introduces a dialogue between two consciousnesses: the narrator's, which is firmly Victorian in its orientation, and Marlow's, which is breaking with Victorian values and anticipating the deeply destabilizing century to come.