Heart of Darkness: Plot Summary

1. The Narrator describes a night on a ship at the mouth of the Thames River in England.
2. Marlow, one of the men on board, recounts his time as a riverboat pilot in the Belgian Congo.
3. Marlow secures a job as a pilot on a steamship on the Congo River through his well-connected aunt.
4. He first travels to the Company headquarters in a European city he describes as a "whited sepulcher", then to Africa to assume command of his ship.
5. The Company headquarters is ominous, and during his journey, Marlow witnesses extreme waste, incompetence, negligence, and brutality.

6. He sees a French warship firing into a forest without reason and encounters exploited black labourers left to die.
7. At the Company's Outer Station, Marlow meets the Chief Accountant, who mentions a remarkable man named Kurtz, running the Company's Inner Station deep in the jungle.

8. Marlow hikes to the Central Station and discovers his steamship has sunk in an accident.
9. During the three months it takes to repair the ship, Marlow learns that Kurtz is a man of impressive abilities and enlightened morals, marked for rapid advancement in the Company.
10. The General Manager and the Brickmaker fear Kurtz as a threat to their positions.

11. Marlow becomes obsessed with meeting Kurtz, who is rumoured to be sick.
12. Once the ship is fixed, Marlow sets off upriver with the General Manager and company agents he calls Pilgrims.
13. The journey is long and difficult, with native drums beating through the night, river snags, and blinding fogs delaying them.
14. Just before reaching Inner Station, the steamship is attacked by natives, and Marlow's helmsman is killed by a spear.
15. At Inner Station, a Russian trader tells them that Kurtz is alive but ill.
16. The General Manager fetches Kurtz, while Marlow learns that Kurtz has made himself a brutal god to the natives.
17. When Kurtz is brought out on a stretcher, the natives, including a woman who seems to be Kurtz's mistress, appear ready to riot, but Kurtz calms them.
18. The Russian slips into the jungle, revealing that Kurtz ordered the attack on the steamship.
19. Marlow discovers Kurtz crawling toward the native camp and persuades him to return to the ship, warning he will be "utterly lost" if the natives attack.
20. The steamer sets off the next day, but Kurtz is too ill to survive the journey and gives Marlow his papers for safekeeping.
21. Kurtz's dying words are: "The horror! The horror!" which Marlow believes is Kurtz judging himself and the world.
22. Marlow falls ill but survives, returns to the European city, and delivers Kurtz's papers to the relevant people.
23. The last person Marlow visits is Kurtz's Intended, who believes Kurtz was a great and moral man.
24. Unable to destroy her illusions, Marlow tells her Kurtz's last words were her name.
25. Back on the ship in the Thames, Marlow falls silent, and the Narrator feels the Thames leads "into the heart of an immense darkness."