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Heart of Darkness Summary 77340 Views


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Description:

What happens when Charles Marlow journeys up the Congo River? Who is Mr. Kurtz—is he really amazing or just a crazy weirdo? And what’s up with all the chained up natives and fog and heads on poles? The horror, the horror!

Language:
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Transcript

00:04

Heart of Darkness, a la Shmoop.

00:07

Captain a riverboat up the Congo, they said.

00:11

Collect the ivory, they said. It'll be easy, they said.

00:17

Yeah, right. My name is Charles Marlow, and this is what happens when you work for a bunch

00:22

of Belgians.

00:23

I should have known something was amiss from the beginning. When I arrived at the Company's

00:29

station in Africa, it was a mess...

00:34

...complete with random explosions and overworked native men in chains.

00:39

It was also at the station that I first heard about the Amazing Mr. Kurtz.

00:44

Was my riverboat waiting for me at Station Number One? Of course not. I had to truck

00:50

two hundred miles through the jungle to the Company's Central Station...

00:54

...and what did I find when I got there? My battleship had been sunk. Apparently, the

01:00

guys from the Central Station killed it when they tried, and failed, to go and rescue the

01:04

Amazing and Very Sick Mr. Kurtz. Yeesh. So, I set about trying to fix my ship. The

01:11

hours and hours... and hours... spent on repairs nearly drove me to bust into my stash of emergency chocolate.

01:19

As for the Amazing and Very Sick Mr. Kurtz, turns out nobody liked the dude, because he

01:25

got the gig at the Inner Station via his European connections.

01:31

Finally, I got the riverboat fixed. It took two months to get up the Congo to the Inner

01:36

Station. There was fog, and the natives shot arrows at us...

01:41

...and my helmsman got killed.

01:44

A Russian in motley signaled my ship from the Inner Station.

01:49

While some of the guys went to collect Kurtz, Ivan came aboard to tell me how totally rad

01:55

the Inner Station's lord and master was, although, to be honest, Kurtz sounded less rad and more

02:00

completely batpoop freakin' insane. I got out my trusty telescope to observe as

02:05

the men from my ship came hauling the Amazing, Very Sick, and Probably Crazy Mr. Kurtz from

02:10

the station. I saw heads on poles.

02:16

I saw an army of natives.

02:20

All in all, as Kurtz got situated aboard my ship, I was wishing I'd never left Europe.

02:28

That night, I discovered that Kurtz had left my ship and gone back to shore. I had to go

02:33

look for the guy, and talk him into coming back aboard.

02:39

We set sail the next day under less than ideal conditions.

02:43

Kurtz handed me a packet of papers and a photograph, and proceeded to snuff it.

02:52

In the end, I got sick, too, and nearly died, but I

02:56

eventually made it back to Europe with Kurtz' stuff.

02:59

I gave the report Kurtz had written, entitled the "Suppression of Savage Customs", to

03:03

an official, although I might have done a little editing first.

03:08

I also went to visit Kurtz' fiancee. Dude had been dead a year, and this chick was still

03:13

wearing black. Guess she didn't know about Kurtz's hot girlfriend in the Congo.

03:19

She asked me what Kurtz' last words were. I lied and told her he called her name because,

03:24

really, how do you explain crazy?

03:27

I swear, I'll never work for the Belgians again.

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