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This novella has one of the highest ratio of meaning per page, the text is only 106 pages long, yet you can get interpretations which are many times longer than the original! Let's look closely at the text without referring to loads of background information and see if we can find out what it is about.

Like many novellas (a piece of literature longer than a short-story but shorter than a novel) Heart of Darkness' has a frame, in fact it has two frames with two narrators, the first is an anonymous passengers on a pleasure ship lying at anchor in the mouth of the Thames who listens, together with some other men, to Marlow whose business on board isn't quite clear talking about his time as the captain of a steamer on a river in Africa. The function of a frame is twofold: on the one hand the story seems more credible if there's a source that vouches for its being true, on the other hand the frame creates a distance between the reader and what is told, the reader can side with the narrator or distrust him.

The tidal currents of the Thames evoke memories of the golden age of discovery, of knight-errants' the nation is still proud of, "Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch . . . , bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth! . . . The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealth, the germs of empires." These thoughts on the glory of imperialism aren't attributed to anyone, we can assume that they come from the anonymous passenger.

Marlow, however, has to think of the times when the Romans came to conquer and exploit the unknown land in the north and found themselves surrounded by wilderness, savagery, darkness, the reader gets a completely different view of the process of colonisation and imperialism, Marlow doesn't see any glory in this part of the English history. "The conquest of the earth . . . is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much."

But then he adds, "What redeems it is the idea only . . . something you can set up, and bow down before and offer sacrifices to . . . " and this leads us into the story proper. Marlow, an English seaman wants to see and explore a river in Africa which has always fascinated him on maps. He manages to get the job he's dreamt of with a company on the continent, no further details are given besides the short remark that the director "was satisfied with my French. Bon

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