Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad

THE CHARACTERS

• THE BRICKMAKER
  

  The brickmaker of the Central Station takes Marlow aside and tries to pump him for information under the mistaken impression that Marlow has highly influential connections in Europe. He would seem like more of a villain if he weren't so pathetically ineffective- as Marlow observes, he can't even manage to make bricks. (His attempt to get information from Marlow is so obvious and incompetent that it's comical.) He is a young aristocrat who toadies shamelessly to the manager, doing his menial secretarial tasks. The alliance has brought him a few special privileges, and also the dislike of the other pilgrims, who think he's the manager's spy.- He's capable, as he demonstrates with Marlow, of fawning one minute and making veiled threats the next. Like his ally the manager, he resents Kurtz because he fears that if the highly efficient Kurtz is promoted to general manager, his own position will be endangered. The brickmaker is typical of the malaise that cripples all the Company's trading stations. Instead of a "devotion to efficiency" (which Marlow says early on is the saving grace of colonialism), he's devoted to himself. Trade and progress concern him a lot less than a possible promotion.

• THE ACCOUNTANT
  

  On first arriving at the Outer Station, Marlow becomes acquainted with the Company's chief accountant for Africa, a man who, in his "devotion to efficiency," is the very opposite of the brickmaker and the other pilgrims of the Central Station. His books are in "apple-pie order," and he really does care about his job, just as he cares about his appearance, which is immaculate. Marlow admires him. Further, the accountant thinks highly of Kurtz. After all, such an efficient worker would have no reason to fear for his job (unlike the manager and the brickmaker) if Kurtz were promoted, which he calmly predicts is what will happen. He holds the rest of the agents of the Central Station in little regard, and even suggests that to send Kurtz a letter through there would be imprudent because the agents there might snoop into it.

  However, the accountant's devotion to efficiency blinds him to the sufferings of both whites and blacks in Africa. When a sick agent is brought into his office, he complains that the groans distract him from his work; he is not particularly concerned that the man is dying. He hates the Africans "to the death" simply because they make noise. Perhaps Conrad is suggesting- though not explicitly- that even at its best the Company is inhumane, caring more about numbers than about people. When Marlow last sees the accountant, he tells us he is "bent over his books,... making correct entries of perfectly correct transactions; and fifty feet below the doorstep I could see the still tree-tops of the grove of death" where a group of exhausted natives have crawled to die (Chapter I). "Perfectly correct transactions" is an ironic way of phrasing it. How could transactions that lead to wholesale death be perfectly correct?

• KURTZ'S INTENDED
  

  Marlow meets the woman Kurtz was engaged to marry, his Intended (it is always capitalized), after Kurtz has been dead for more than a year. She is living under the delusion that Kurtz was generous, kind, and noble to the end, and Marlow doesn't choose to enlighten her. He lies that Kurtz died with her name on his lips. (Proper Victorian that he is, Marlow thinks it fitting and just that women be relegated to the world of "beautiful illusions.") But he pays a price for his dishonesty. The sudden recognition of how intimately goodness and lies are mingled in the world almost drives him to despair.

  Though there's something saintly about the Intended, there's also something slightly repellent in the intensity of her delusion. She's linked by a gesture to Kurtz's savage mistress. And just as that woman represents the soul of the jungle in all its cruelty, the Intended is the soul of civilization, a civilization woven partly of truth and partly of the lies we need to go on living. The Belgian public needs the lie of the Company's high ideals and philanthropic intentions in order to stomach the colonization of the Congo; likewise, the Intended needs the lie of Kurtz's ideals and intentions to believe that he died for a worthwhile cause. But as Marlow perceives how necessary it is to lie, Kurtz's final judgment- "The horror! The horror!"- rings in his ears, and it suddenly seems like a judgment not just on Kurtz's own life and the darkness of Africa, but a judgment on even the best, the most beautiful parts of civilization- including the drawing room of this loyal, tragic woman.

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