T HE G LENCOE L ITERATURE L IBRARY Study Guide for Heart of Darkness and “The Secret Sharer” by Joseph Conrad Meet Joseph Conrad Conrad and his father were allowed to move back to Poland, where, before Conrad was twelve years old, his father also died of the disease. Thereafter, Conrad lived with relatives. He had never given up his dream of going to sea, though his uncle tried to dissuade him from pursuing it. At the age of sixteen, Conrad left for Marseilles, France, where he had distant relatives, and joined the French merchant marine. Over the next few years, he sailed several times to the West Indies. From Sailor to Author As a young adult, Conrad became a seaman in the British merchant marine. Though he knew only a few words of English when he entered the service, he began picking up The artist appeals to that part of our being the language by listening and talking to his which is not dependent on Wisdom. He British shipmates. Gifted with a natural facility speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, for languages, he quickly learned English. By his to that sense of mystery surrounding our lives; late twenties, he had become a British citizen and to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain. had risen to the rank of captain. A few years later, —Joseph Conrad he began writing his first novel, Almayer’s Folly, but he worked on it only sporadically because of the demands of his career. When he was in his s a child, Joseph Conrad dreamed of sailing late thirties, he finally finished the novel and the high seas. His fascination with the A began to devote himself primarily to writing. unknown reportedly led him to put his finger on a Heart of Darkness, which was first published in blank spot in the middle of a map of Africa and 1898, established Conrad as a master of psycholog- declare, “When I grow up, I will go there.” When ical fiction and a brilliant prose stylist. It was soon he grew up, he did go “there.” He lived his child- followed by several other tales of the sea, including hood dream and became a mariner, visiting such “The Secret Sharer,” published in 1910. distant places as the Congo, Constantinople, Bangkok, Java, Singapore, and Madras. Conrad’s Art Conrad’s fiction is characterized by a narrative technique that involves time shifts, A Difficult Childhood Conrad, whose birth stories within stories, and the use of symbol and name was Jozef Teodor Konrad Nalecz myth. To a reader who had asked about the mean- Korzeniowski, was born in 1857 in Russian- ing of one of his stories, he replied: controlled Poland. When he was three, the family moved to Warsaw but did not live there long. A work of art is very seldom limited to one Conrad’s father, a Polish patriot and political exclusive meaning and not necessarily tending activist, took part in a movement to free Poland to a definite conclusion. And this for the Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. from Russian control and was arrested and impris- reason that the nearer it approaches art, the more it acquires a symbolic character. oned soon after the family arrived. When Conrad was four, the family was During his lifetime, Conrad’s close friends were deported to Vologda, in northern Russia, far from authors Stephen Crane, John Galsworthy, Ford the center of political activity. Soon after, Madox Ford, and Henry James. He continued to Conrad’s mother died from tuberculosis. Later, write until his death, in 1924, at age sixty-six. Heart of Darkness and “The Secret Sharer” Study Guide 13 Introducing the Novella [Heart of Darkness is a] dreadful and fascinating successful—and greedy—traders in ivory. tale, full as any of [Edgar Allan] Poe’s mystery Steaming a thousand miles upriver from Kinshasa, and haunting terrors, yet with a substantial basis Conrad reached the company’s inner station. of reality that no man who had not lived as well There he met an ailing agent named Georges as dreamed could conjure into existence. Antoine Klein, who may have been a model for —from a review in The Nation, 1906 the character Kurtz. Since its publication, Heart of Darkness has BACKGROUND become one of the most read and debated works of fiction in the English language. Why? Perhaps Like many authors, Joseph Conrad drew on his it is because Conrad plumbs the depths of experiences when he wrote. He often incorpo- human consciousness to explore the dark side of rated details about people he had known, places the personality. Perhaps it is because his sophis- he had visited, and events he had witnessed. This ticated narrative technique helped paved the technique gives Heart of Darkness a sense of way for modern fiction. Or perhaps it is because authenticity and immediacy that moved critic of his elegant prose style. Whatever the reasons, F. R. Leavis to write, it is likely that Heart of Darkness will continue The details and circumstances of the voyage to to be read, discussed, and analyzed for many and up the Congo are present to us as if we years to come. were making the journey ourselves. Conrad himself referred to the work as “experi- ence pushed a little (and very little) beyond the THE TIME AND PLACE facts of the case.” The novella takes place in the Congo River basin The novella is based on a four-month stint in the summer of 1890, during a period when the Conrad spent in the Congo. Out of work, broke, colonization of Africa was at its peak and and eager for a chance to realize his boyhood Belgium’s King Leopold II was ruthlessly exploit- dream of exploring central Africa, he had ing the land and its people. European countries rushed to claim territory in Africa and to estab- accepted an assignment to command a steamboat Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. up the Congo River for the Belgian Company for lish strongholds that would secure their status as Upper-Congo Commerce. This company ranked world powers. Before that period, few Europeans as one of late-nineteenth-century Europe’s most had explored the “Dark Continent.” Did You Know? The unnamed ivory trading company referred to hands of company agents, who terrorized and throughout Heart of Darkness may have been killed Africans who failed to meet their rubber based on companies such as the Anglo-Belgian quotas. King Leopold cleared a substantial India Rubber Company. During the twenty years profit before he lost his monopolistic control of that King Leopold controlled the company, in the rubber trade. A reform movement sparked which he owned half the stock, an estimated by Heart of Darkness and eyewitness reports five million people in the Congo died at the helped break his power in the region. 14 Heart of Darkness and “The Secret Sharer” Study Guide Introducing the Short Story “The Secret Sharer” remains one of Conrad’s was given a chance to escape by his captain. most characteristic stories, and it contains Conrad chose to make Leggatt a more sympa- passages of language as beautifully evocative as thetic character than Smith, who was known as a the most celebrated passages in Heart of tyrant and whose crime was more savage than Darkness. that portrayed in the short story. Conrad is said to —Joyce Carol Oates have considered “The Secret Sharer” a favorite among his own stories. He wrote it based on the BACKGROUND experience of commanding the ship Otago in Bangkok, Thailand, after the death of its captain. Like the central characters in Heart of Darkness, It was Conrad’s first and only sea command. the characters at the center of “The Secret Sharer” are based on people that Joseph Conrad met during his seafaring career. In particular, the THE TIME AND PLACE fugitive Leggatt is based on a first mate named “The Secret Sharer” takes place on a ship in the Sidney Smith, who, in an incident widely known Gulf of Siam (now Gulf of Thailand) sometime in East Asia, had killed a combative seaman and during the 1890s. Did You Know? According to German folklore, every living doppelgänger is often a device for revealing being has a doppelgänger—an exact, but a character’s unconscious desires or usually invisible, spirit double. Legend has conflicts. In “The Secret Sharer,” the it that seeing one’s doppelgänger is a sign murderer Leggatt is the captain’s very real of approaching death. In literature, the doppelgänger. CRITIC’S CORNER [Conrad shows] that a hidden part of man committed to order and the rules of society might suddenly embrace and identify itself with a being, a presence, an apparition which seems most antithetic to his own conscious self, a walking reminder of all that inner darkness and weakness which civilized man has sup- pressed in order to make group life possible. —Tony Tanner Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Heart of Darkness and “The Secret Sharer” Study Guide 15 Before You Read Heart of Darkness Part 1 FOCUS ACTIVITY Imagine that you are about to leave on a long journey to a distant country where everyone is a stranger to you. How do you feel? Quickwrite Jot down your feelings, explaining why you feel as you do. Setting a Purpose Read to discover how Charlie Marlow feels about embarking on a trip to Africa. BACKGROUND Did You Know? In A.D. 43, Roman armies invaded and conquered most of the area that was later known as England.