Heart of Darkness

American  

noun

1. a short novel (1902) by Joseph Conrad.

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Heart of Darkness Cultural  

1. (1902) A short novel by Joseph Conrad. It concerns a seafarer, Marlow, who is sent to the interior of Africa in search of a “mad adventurer” named Kurtz. The book's title refers both to the location of the story and to the evil and darkness in people's hearts.

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Francis Ford Coppola based his 1979 film Apocalypse Now on a version of Conrad's story set during the Vietnam War. He released a newly edited version, Apocalypse Now Redux, in 2001.

Example Sentences

He has his own reasons for wanting to complete the task — events in his past that explain why he ended up on his journey to the heart of darkness through the bottom of a whiskey bottle in Southeast Asia.

From Los Angeles Times

To me, the Man character is kind of a reclamation of the Kurtz character in “Apocalypse Now,” which always had this sort of romantic, Victorian White Man's Burden kind of racism to it because of its history, because of its source in “The Heart of Darkness.”

From Salon

Coppola had, himself, poured some $16 million into the $31 million budget for his Vietnam-set telling of Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness.”

From Seattle Times

He came close to going broke as the movie, its roots in Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” ran way over budget and over schedule.

From New York Times

In 2019 Brazile explained her decision to journey into the heart of darkness to a skeptical New Yorker writer by insisting, "If you want to help the country, if you want to try to improve democracy, you have to go into places where you are uncomfortable and try to stir things up."

From Salon