Heart Of Darkness

JOSEPH CONRAD: THE AUTHOR AND HIS TIMES Joseph Conrad didn't set out to become one of the great English novelists. He didn't set out to be a novelist at all, but a sailor, and besides, he wasn't English. English was his third language and he didn't begin learning it until after he was 20 years old! He was born Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in 1857, in an area of Poland that was part of Russia and is …

…better. But he's about to witness something even more terrible. He steps down into a gloomy grove and discovers a group of dying Africans. These men aren't legally criminals or slaves either, though they're bound by "time contracts" to work for set periods. They certainly don't understand contracts and probably don't even understand time. These victims are workers who have become diseased and worn out, maybe because of the unfamiliar food or the unpleasant surrou