History Literature / HeartOfDarkness

* EvilCripple: Kurtz is this during his final days, as he's feeble and nearly bedridden as he slowly wastes away and dies of malaria.

There have also been two MadeForTVMovie adaptations, in 1958 (that one has its [[Film/HeartOfDarkness1958 own trope page]]) and 1993. The latter film had Creator/TimRoth as Marlow and Creator/JohnMalkovich as Kurtz.

There have also been two MadeForTVMovie adaptations, in 1958 (that one has its [[Film/HeartOfDarkness1958 own trope page]]) and 1993.

In 1979, the novel finally got a film adaptation in the form of the legendary ''Film/ApocalypseNow''. It's a loose adaptation with the story taking place in Vietnam during the UsefulNotes/VietnamWar, Kurtz as an American Colonel gone rogue and Marlow (renamed "Willard") as the soldier in charge of taking him down, but otherwise stays true to the novel's focus on the seemingly inherent evil present in humanity. Eleanor Coppola, wife of Creator/FrancisFordCoppola, later made a behind-the-scenes documentary chronicling the film's infamously TroubledProduction. The documentary is named, appropriately enough, ''Film/HeartsOfDarkness''.

* ApatheticCitizens: Overlaps with IgnoredEpiphany. After Marlow finishes talking about his [[FramingDevice journey to Africa]], one of the listeners responds with, "We have lost the first of the ebb." One of the most common interpretations of this line is that shows just how callous most people are to the brutality going on in Africa.

* ClothingReflectsPersonality: The major people Marlow encounters as he goes upriver have worse and worse clothing to reflect the increasing divisions from European society and civility. While the Chief Accountant at the outer station wears fancy and rich clothing, Kurtz is nearly naked.

* GoMadFromTheRevelation: Kurtz's reaction to the jungle, and to the darkness it has revealed within himself.

* ImAHumanitarian: The cannibals who aid the voyage. Despite this habit, they are portrayed as sensible and reserved compared to the European crew — as well as [[NobleSavage incredibly tolerant]], when the Company doesn't pay or even feed them. Marlow himself cannot fathom why they don't revolt and eat the crew, given they are slowly starving the entire time.

* LeanAndMean: Kurtz is described as being severely emaciated as he's slowly dying of a jungle fever and by the time we meet him he's become a cruel "god" to the natives beneath him.

* TheMistress[=/=]DarkMistress: Kurtz is seen with a native consort when Marlow arrives at the camp. While the native woman might be with him because she desires to, it is more likely that she is with him because of his position of power over the natives. She doesn't appear to be afraid or hostile towards Kurtz however.
%%* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: A possible interpretation for Kurtz's last words.

-->But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude -- and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core [...] his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself, and by heavens! I tell you, it had gone mad.

The book starts in the 19th century with five close friends on a boat in the Thames river just outside London, waiting for the tide to go out. As they fill the time with pleasant conversation, one of them suddenly speaks of how the very river they are on was once "one of the dark places of the earth," i.e. how the island of Great Britain was once savage, untamed, and incredibly inhospitable to outsiders. He goes on to explain how he got to know this darkness, along with its effect on people, so incredibly well. It all started when he was just starting out as a seaman... This serves as a FramingDevice for the tale of woe.

The tale tells the story of Charles Marlow, a seaman just hired as a ferry captain for a Belgian trading company in the Congo, after the last one was killed by the natives over a petty dispute. The objective, as laid out by his employer, is to pick up and return with the ivory harvests collected by each trading outpost along the way. As he visits the various trading posts and their leaders, he is forced not only to bear witness to, but try not to succumb to the savage environment, the brutal enslavement of the Africans at the hands of the settlers, and the human heart at its absolute darkest. In the center of all of this is Mr. Kurtz, a man shrouded in mystery but known by all for both being the manager of the top-earning post and for his controversial business practices.

Joseph Conrad drew on his own experience commanding a Belgian steamer on the Congo River in the early 1890s. The novella went on to inspire or serve as the [[Film/ApocalypseNow base]] [[VideoGame/SpecOpsTheLine of]] [[Film/AguirreTheWrathOfGod countless]] [[VideoGame/FarCry2 other]] [[Literature/ThingsFallApart works]], and has long been held as the archetypal anti-colonialist novel for its harsh depictions of the exploitative "Scramble for Africa" of the late 19th century.

In 1979, the novel finally got a film adaptation in the form of the legendary ''Film/ApocalypseNow''. It's a loose adaptation with the story taking place in Vietnam during the UsefulNotes/VietnamWar, with Kurtz being an American Colonel gone rogue and Marlow (renamed "Willard") being the soldier in charge of taking him down, but otherwise stays true to the novel's focus on the seemingly inherent evil present in humanity. Eleanor Coppola, wife of Creator/FrancisFordCoppola, later made a behind-the-scenes documentary chronicling the film's infamous TroubledProduction. The documentary is named, appropriately enough, ''Film/HeartsOfDarkness''.

** One character describes a French attempt to quash rebellious locals. They used a warship to bombard open brush, regardless of the fact that they didn't even know whether anyone was hiding in it. Marlow describes them as aimlessly "firing into a continent."

* ClothingReflectsPersonality: Every single major person Marlow encounters as he goes upriver has worse and worse clothing to reflect the increasing divisions from European society and civility. While the Chief Accountant at the outer station wears fancy and rich clothing, Kurtz is nearly naked.

* EvilCounterpart: Kurtz to Marlow

* GoingNative: According to one reading, Kurtz possibly goes native in horrifying ways, inverting the European life he came from. In an alternate reading, while he has shed his civilized persona, he still hasn't gone native in a meaningful way. Instead, an unnatural and immoral co-dependent relationship has formed, where the natives worship him as a god, while he in return treats them with utter ruthlessness, much like an unloving god would.

* KillEmAll: Kurtz's last written suggestion: "Exterminate all the brutes!"

->It had become so pitch dark that we listeners could hardly see one another. For a long time already he, sitting apart, had been no more to us than a voice. There was not a word from anybody. The others might have been asleep, but I was awake. I listened, I listened on the watch for the sentence, for the word, that would give me the clew to the faint uneasiness inspired by this narrative that seemed to shape itself without human lips in the heavy night-air of the river.

Joseph Conrad drew on his own experience commanding a Belgian steamer on the Congo River in the early 1890s. The novella went on to inspire or serve as the [[Film/ApocalypseNow base]] [[VideoGame/SpecOpsTheLine of]] [[Film/AguirreTheWrathOfGod countless]] [[VideoGame/FarCry2 other]] [[Literature/ThingsFallApart works]], and has long been held as the archetypal anti-colonialist novel for its harsh depictions of the exploitative “Scramble for Africa” of the late 19th century.

If you were looking for the [[SimilarlyNamedWorks totally unrelated video game]], you can find it [[VideoGame/HeartOfDarkness here]]. If you were looking for the actual videogame adaptation of this work, you’re looking for ''VideoGame/SpecOpsTheLine''.

%%* GodGuise: Kurtz’s status.

* NotSoDifferent: Marlow describes both Britain and Africa as places of darkness, where the former was once seen as untamed and savage by the Romans.

* FamousLastWords: A dying Kurtz, being taken out of the jungle that drove him mad, can only whisper "The horror... the horror..."

* CompositeCharacter: Kurtz is inspired by several Europeans who "made their mark" on the Congo. The name is a take off of one in particular, George Antoine Klein ("kurz" is German for short; "klein" is German for small).

* IWillWaitForYou: Kurtz's fiancé. Presented as pathetic, because she has deluded herself about Kurtz to the point that she's barely functional as an independent person.

* ThePowerOfLegacy: Marlow lies to Kurtz's fiancé when asked to recount Kurtz's last words.

* SlaveryIsASpecialKindOfEvil: The treatment of the African natives by the Company, which, while not actually called slavery, basically is, and is portrayed as such. In one scene Marlow witnesses a grove where quite a few African laborers who have gotten sick are dumped, and left to die.

* NothingButSkinAndBones: Kurtz, who is described as unnaturally, skeletally thin when he's finally retrieved..