Classics Narrated

Returning from the Inner Station, Marlow falls ill after Kurtz dies. Recovering, he is compelled to carry Kurtz's writings back to Europe, and to bring sympathy to his bereft fiancee, trying hard not to speak ill of the dead.

The Russian trader explains Kurtz's overwhelming force of personality to Marlow. They find Kurtz desperately sick, but unwilling to leave the jungle and its people, and take him back on board the steamer regardless.

At the Inner Station, Marlow finds violence, death, uncanny echoes of Kurtz's presence, and an odd trader, who informs him that the people fought to keep Kurtz with them.

Marlow steams deeper into the jungle, to the Inner Station, growing more fascinated as he learns more of Kurtz, a man of remarkable abilities. Hunger follows the ship, whose crew are cannibals, with dense fog adding to the palpable tension.

Marlow travels to central Africa, finds death, callous indifference, anxiety, and avarice instead of vaunted civilizing ideals in his employer's stations.

At a conference on board ship near London, an old sailor named Marlow recounts his decision to join a European trading company active in Africa.