50 Fun Facts About Heart of Darkness

Who wrote Heart of Darkness?

He was born Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski and did not speak English fluently until his twenties.

In what year was Heart of Darkness first published?

It ran as a three-part serial in February, March and April.

Who narrates the main story in Heart of Darkness?

Conrad said Marlow first appeared in his earlier story Youth.

Marlow is hired as captain of what kind of vessel?

He spends months fishing it out of the river and repairing it before he can set off.

What commodity does the Company trade in?

Kurtz is its most prolific ivory agent, and the manager resents him for it.

Which river, never named in the text, is the setting of most of the novella?

The Congo Free State was then the private colony of Belgium's King Leopold II.

Where does the frame story of Heart of Darkness take place?

Marlow reminds his listeners that the Romans would have found savagery here nineteen hundred years earlier.

Which city does Conrad's narrator call "the greatest town on earth" while drawing parallels between it and Africa as places of darkness?

The comparison is central to the book's argument that civilised people and savages differ little.

In which periodical was Heart of Darkness first serialised?

The February 1899 issue was the magazine's 1000th, a special edition.

Heart of Darkness first appeared in book form in 1902 alongside which two other stories?

Conrad had originally planned a Marlow trilogy of Youth, Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim.

How old was Conrad when a Belgian trading company appointed him to one of its Congo steamers in 1890?

When the captain fell ill, Conrad took command and steered up the Lualaba to the innermost station at Kindu.

How many years after returning from Africa did Conrad start writing the novella?

He drew on his travel journals and called it "a wild story".

Conrad described the novella to a friend as roughly how many words long?

He said the final interview between the man and the girl locks the whole narrative into "one suggestive view of a whole phase of life".

Which agent who fell ill and died aboard Conrad's own steamer is often proposed as a basis for Kurtz?

Researchers have suggested more than twenty prototypes for the character.

Members of the disastrous "rear column" of which venture have been suggested as sources for Kurtz?

Its leader Henry Morton Stanley and column commander Edmund Barttelot are among the names cited.

Which Congo Free State administrator does Adam Hochschild name as the principal inspiration for Kurtz, citing heads on stakes?

Hochschild's book King Leopold's Ghost argues the novella barely exaggerates the real Congo.

What organisation commissioned the report that Kurtz writes?

It is read as a sarcastic dig at the International Association of the Congo.

What chilling postscript does Kurtz scrawl at the end of his report?

It undercuts the altruistic sentiments of the pages before it.

What fascinated Marlow as a child, drawing him to Africa?

The image of a river on the map particularly drew his attention.

What horrifying sight does Marlow find in a ravine near the Outer Station?

The chief accountant then tells him of the remarkable Mr Kurtz, who "will go far".

What does Marlow discover on reaching the Central Station?

He learns the manager resents Kurtz rather than admiring him, and spends months on repairs.

How long does the journey from the Central Station to Kurtz's station take?

The party pauses about eight miles below the Inner Station and wakes in thick fog.

Who is killed when the steamboat is attacked with arrows near the Inner Station?

Marlow frightens the attackers off by repeatedly sounding the steam whistle.

What nationality is the wandering admirer of Kurtz who boards Marlow's boat at the Inner Station?

His patched clothes earn him the nickname the Harlequin.

What does Marlow see on a row of posts outside Kurtz's station house?

Kurtz then appears, carried on a stretcher like a ghost, and calms the massed natives with a shout.

What word does the Company's station chief use to condemn Kurtz's methods?

He complains that Kurtz has harmed the company's business in the region.

What are Kurtz's famous last words?

Marlow hears him whisper them weakly as the steamer heads downriver.

Who announces Kurtz's death with the line "Mistah Kurtz—he dead"?

T. S. Eliot took the line as the epigraph for The Hollow Men.

What does Marlow tell Kurtz's fiancee his final word was?

She is still deep in mourning more than a year after his death.

According to the novella, Kurtz's mother was half English and his father half French, so "All ... contributed to the making of Kurtz." All what?

He was a painter, musician, writer and promising politician before the jungle changed him.

Kurtz's painting, seen by Marlow, depicts what?

It is read as a symbol of his early view of himself as a civilising force.

The Congo Free State was privately owned by which monarch from 1885 to 1908?

The Belgian parliament reluctantly annexed it as a colony in 1908 after an international outcry.

Which Irish humanitarian did Conrad befriend in the Congo in 1890, later famous for exposing its abuses?

Casement was knighted in 1911 for his human rights work and executed in 1916 for treason.

Which critic dismissed Heart of Darkness as a "minor work" with an "adjectival insistence upon inexpressible and incomprehensible mystery"?

By the 1960s the novella was nonetheless standard reading in colleges and high schools.

Which Nigerian novelist called Heart of Darkness "an offensive and deplorable book" in a 1975 lecture?

His lecture was titled An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

Achebe's 1958 novel written partly in response to Conrad's portrayal of Africa is called what?

It shows colonialism and missionaries through the eyes of an Igbo community.

Which campaigner against Leopold's Congo rule called the novella "the most powerful thing written on the subject"?

Morel led the international opposition to the Congo Free State's brutality.

Which critic wrote that Heart of Darkness had been analysed more than any other work studied at universities?

He put it down to Conrad's "unique propensity for ambiguity".

Where did the Modern Library rank Heart of Darkness on its 1998 list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century?

It has been widely translated and republished since its quiet 1902 book debut.

Which T. S. Eliot poem uses "Mistah Kurtz—he dead" as its epigraph?

Eliot had wanted a Conrad quotation for The Waste Land too, but Ezra Pound talked him out of it.

Which director adapted the novella for radio in 1938 and planned it as his first RKO film, to be shot entirely from Marlow's point of view?

The project collapsed, partly because the war closed European markets; he made Citizen Kane instead.

Who played Kurtz opposite Roddy McDowall's Marlow in the 1958 Playhouse 90 television version?

That version added a backstory in which Marlow was Kurtz's adopted son, and featured Eartha Kitt.

Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now moved the story to which conflict?

Martin Sheen's Captain Willard is sent to "terminate the command" of Marlon Brando's Colonel Kurtz.

Who wrote the original screenplay for Apocalypse Now?

He first developed it in the late 1960s with George Lucas slated to direct.

Apocalypse Now premiered unfinished and won which prize?

It grossed 150 million dollars worldwide despite mixed early reviews.

Which actor was originally cast as Willard in Apocalypse Now but replaced by Martin Sheen after a few days?

Coppola felt Keitel could not play Willard as a passive onlooker.

What natural disaster wrecked much of the Apocalypse Now sets in the Philippines in May 1976?

Typhoon Olga destroyed 40 to 80 percent of the sets at Iba and shut production down.

Who played Kurtz in Nicolas Roeg's 1993 television film of Heart of Darkness?

Tim Roth was Marlow, in a version aired by TNT.

Which 2019 science-fiction film starring Brad Pitt is loosely inspired by Heart of Darkness?

Pitt's astronaut travels to the edge of the Solar System to confront his rogue father.

Which 2012 video game set in a sandstorm-ravaged Dubai is a direct modernised adaptation, with a character named John Konrad in place of Kurtz?

Far Cry 2 is a looser adaptation, and its final area is called The Heart of Darkness.