Kurtz symbolically stands for greed and commercial mentality, love for power, the repentant sinner and the influence of barbarism on civilized people. The story centers around Marlow and Kurtz, two major characters in the novel. Heart of Darkness is thus, at its most abstract level, a narrative about the difficulty of understanding the world beyond the self, about the ability of one man to judge another. Heart of Darkness suggests that this is the natural result when men are allowed to operate outside a social system of checks and balances: power, especially power over other human beings, inevitably corrupts. Cracks were beginning to appear in the system: riots, wars, and the wholesale abandonment of commercial enterprises all threatened the white men living in the distant corners of empires. By the 1890s, most of the world’s dark and unreachable places had been positioned under European control, and the major European powers were stretched thin, trying to administer and protect massive empires. Imperialism is at the center of Heart of Darkness.

Like much of the best modernist literature produced in the early decades of the twentieth century, Heart of Darkness is much about alienation, confusion, and profound doubt as it is about imperialism. Like their Victorian novelists, this novel relies on tradition as a heroism, which is yet under continuous attack in a changing world. Heart of Darkness in particular, offers a connection between Victorian norms and values and the principles of modernism. It is his one of the best stories which explores the terrifying depths of human corruptibility, social and psychological disorder through the metaphor of a journey to the heart of the African continent. On the surface level, it is like a mystery story, but on an implicit level, it is a journey within, a journey into the subconscious.

In 1890 Conrad sailed to the Belgian Congo and he gave his experiences a shape of novella ( Heart of Darkness) after a long gap of time.

Heart of darkness author