Heart of Darkness Topic Tracking: Darkness Imagery
Part 1
Darkness Imagery 1: Before Marlow begins speaking, the sun is setting and dark clouds hang over the river.
Darkness Imagery 2: The knitting women in the office were sitting outside what Marlow calls "the door of Darkness," knitting black wool.
Darkness Imagery 3: The jungle that Marlow sailed along was extremely dark and foreboding.
Part 2
Darkness Imagery 4: As night fell, the manager's uncle pointed directly at the "profound darkness" of the jungle.
Darkness Imagery 5: Marlow describes his ship's course up the river as heading directly and deeply into the "heart of darkness."
Darkness Imagery 6: Marlow tells his shipmates that Kurtz belonged to the "powers of darkness."
Part 3
Darkness Imagery 7: In the middle of the night, Marlow awoke to hear chanting coming out of the "black, flat wall of the woods."
Darkness Imagery 8: Marlow says that his nighttime search for Kurtz had a "peculiar blackness."
Darkness Imagery 9: Marlow compares seeing the "impenetrable darkness" of Kurtz to looking down into a sunless hole.
Darkness Imagery 10: Marlow came across Kurtz sitting in the dark; as Kurtz died, Marlow blew out the candle he had brought in, and night was falling all around the ship.
Darkness Imagery 11: Marlow felt Kurtz as a "shadow darker than the night" as he entered the house of Kurtz's fiancé.
Darkness Imagery 12: The fiancé was wearing mourning black; and it was dusk when she came in the room. As the conversation proceeded the room became darker and darker.
Darkness Imagery 13: Night has come to the river; the narrator remarks on the intense, cloudy darkness around them.