The Frame Story

I just noticed there are two rivers in this story. One is the Congo. The other is the Thames, the setting for the frame story. I completely forgot about it. In the frame story, an unidentified narrator describes the scene on board a yacht stalled by weak winds and the tide on the “lower reaches” of the Thames within sight of London. There are four men onboard the yacht, a lawyer, an accountant, a “Director of Companies, who,” the narrator describes as, “our Captain and our host,” and Marlow, the old seaman, who is about to tell the story of his journey up the Congo River.

The Thames, according to the unidentified narrator has provided “unceasing service” to “all the men, of whom this nation is proud,” commanders of naval expeditions and sea merchants. Later he calls the Thames a “venerable stream” that carried “the dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths,” and “the germs of empires.” In addition, Marlow begins his tail, as the sun sets on the Thames which the unseen narrator describes as peaceful, immense, and “unstained.”

At the same time, the sun is setting a “brooding gloom,” lies to the west. It becomes “more somber every minute.” This foreshadows the tone of the story itself.

Marlow's descritpion of the Congo which he provides later is a stark contrast to the unidentified narrator's description of the Thames.

"Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were king... You lost your way on that river as you would in the desert... till you thought yourself bewitched and cut off forever from everything you had known once -somewhere- far away- in another existence perhaps.

The way that Marlow is described in the frame story is also interesting. The unseen narrator describes him as sitting “cross-legged, with his arms dropped and the palms of his hands outward," resembling "an idol.” He is also captivating his audience with his speech. Son of Kurtz?