He took command of a steamship in the Belgian Congo in 1890, and his experiences in the Congo came to provide the outline for Heart of Darkness. Conrad's time in Africa wreaked havoc on his health, however, and he returned to England to recover. Conrad's works, in particular Heart of Darkness, provide a bridge between Victorian values and the ideals of modernism. Like their Victorian predecessors, these novels rely on traditional ideas of heroism, which are nevertheless under constant attack in a changing world and in places far from England. Like much of the best modernist literature produced in the early decades of the twentieth century, Heart of Darkness is as much about alienation, confusion, and profound doubt as it is about imperialism.
Imperialism is nevertheless at the center of Heart of Darkness.
At the same time this begs the question of whether or not it is possible to call an individual insane or wrong when he is part of a system that is so thoroughly corrupted and corrupting. Heart of Darkness is thus, at its most abstract level, a narrative about the difficulty of understanding the world beyond the self, about the ability of one man to judge another. Although Heart of Darkness was one of the first novels to provide a critical view of European imperial activities, it was initially read by critics as anything but controversial. Conrad's decision to set the book in a Belgian colony and to have Marlow work for a Belgian trading concern made it even easier for British readers to avoid seeing themselves reflected in Heart of Darkness. Although these early reactions seem ridiculous to a modern reader, they reinforce the novel's central themes of hypocrisy and absurdity.