Charlie Marlow Timeline and Summary

Marlow’s chilling out on the Nellie and tells his story to the men aboard while they’re stuck on the flooded Thames River.
As a young man, Marlow was always enthralled by maps, especially the blank spaces where, he imagined, he would explore and fill in. The African Congo River, in particular, draws him hypnotically like a snake does a bird.
He takes advantage of his seamanship experience to acquire a steamboat with the Company to travel up the Congo and re-supply the ivory stations.
When Marlow comes to the port city to sign his contract, he gets an ominous and unshakable sense of discomfort. Two women who sit and knit black wool in the office really unnerve him.
He boards a French steamer for the continent and, on the way up the river, he sees African slaves rowing a boat. He is amazed by their powerful, natural energy.
Upon reaching the first station, Marlow distinctly dislikes what he sees. The Company has the manacled black slaves futilely trying to blow up a cliff to clear a path for a railway. Not far from the work site, a multitude of sick slaves lounge around lethargically beneath a grove of trees. When Marlow goes among these sick and dying. He attempts to give one slave a biscuit, but the man is so far gone that he expires right there at Marlow’s feet.
During his stay at this first station, Marlow hears the name Kurtz for the first time from the accountant. He learns that Kurtz is a top agent working in the interior.
After ten days, Marlow treks to the interior with a caravan of pilgrims and black slaves.
When they reach the Central Station, Marlow receives a mental blow. His steamboat has had an accident and will take several months to repair. It delays his trip by three months, much to his frustration.
He takes an immediate dislike to the manager, whose lack of emotion and mediocrity unnerve Marlow.
After a shed burns down in the Central Station, Marlow chances across a man simply called the brickmaker who likes to babble on endlessly. For reasons yet to be revealed, the brickmaker tries to get information out of Marlow. Marlow plays along to figure out exactly why, and we find out that the brickmaker has a burning desire to move up the company ladder and become the assistant manager. He hopes to do so with the recommendation of Marlow’s aunt’s connections.
Marlow is highly amused.
While the brickmaker kisses up, Marlow tunes him out and concentrates instead on the hypnotic (and rather sinister) spell of the wilderness surrounding them. The brickmaker eventually grows discouraged by Marlow’s distance and backs off, though rather resentfully.
Marlow turns his attention toward his steamboat. He grows obsessive about getting enough rivets to complete the repair job. He jokes with the black foreman about it.
Soon, a dubious group of explorers called the Eldorado Exploring Expedition arrive, headed by the manager’s portly uncle.
As happens quite frequently, Marlow doesn’t like this guy.
So he has no problem eavesdropping on the manager and his uncle while they talk about Kurtz.
He learns that Kurtz is ill, but still manages to crank out more ivory than all the other stations combined. The two connivers, seeing Kurtz as a threat to their ambitions, accuse him of stealing the ivory and hope that the inhospitable climate will kill him.
On his newly repaired steamboat, Marlow finally starts his journey to the Inner Station and Kurtz. He travels with the manager, the brickmaker, a bunch of white pilgrims, and black cannibals.
Marlow finds himself extremely freaked out by the endlessness, eerie silence and hostile aura of the forest. His sense of reality becomes so warped that he feels as if time has stopped and he is living in a dream.
We arrive at a turning point when Marlow admits he is identifying with the black savages out in the bush, whose thunderous and profoundly sad screams strike him deep in the heart. He sees humanity in their (supposed) primitivism.
Fifty miles before they reach the Inner Station, Marlow discovers an abandoned flag post with a warning sign nearby, telling travelers to approach with caution.
They continue on and Marlow finds a deserted hut. He explores it and finds a book written by a sailor. Marlow thinks the parts he can’t read are written in "cipher," though he receives a lot of comfort from the text anyway.
At the Inner Station, Marlow meets a curious man he calls the harlequin who dresses in colored patches and swings from one extreme mood to another. It turns out that the harlequin is an intimate associate of Kurtz. Marlow learns that the hut they found earlier was the harlequin’s and so he returns the book to him, much to the harlequin’s delight.
In conversing with the harlequin, Marlow learns a lot about Kurtz. He finds out that for the majority of the time, Kurtz has been acquiring ivory by forming alliances with various native African leaders and raiding villages for their ivory supply. The native Africans seem to adore Kurtz. We don’t know why, either.
Marlow discovers that the ornamental balls or "knobs" on the posts outside Kurtz’s hut are actually far more morbid in nature than he first thought. They turn out to be human skulls. Rebels’ skulls, as the harlequin explains.
While they converse, a group of native Africans arrives, bearing the sick and skeletal Kurtz on a stretcher. Kurtz, having heard of Marlow through letters, is glad to see him, but does not have a chance to talk to him before the manager brusquely arrives and asks to see him in private.
While Kurtz and the manager converse, Marlow notices a group of Africans gathering outside. A wildly beautiful native African woman is visible, adorned in brass trappings. The harlequin tells him that she is close to Kurtz.
When the manager emerges from Kurtz’s tent, it is obvious they have had an argument. Marlow alienates himself from the crew by siding with Kurtz over the manager.
The eve before they are supposed to leave, Marlow wakes up around midnight to find Kurtz gone. He takes it upon himself to find Kurtz because, he reasons, he cannot have gone far crawling on all fours. He finds Kurtz in the woods.
Kurtz talks to him and tells him that all his plans for greatness were ruined by the manager. During their conversation, Marlow becomes fascinated by the spell of the forest. He thinks Kurtz’s words have become ineffectual. So he takes Kurtz in his arms and carries him back.
The next morning while Marlow is leaving with Kurtz, a group of native Africans and the warrior woman gather on the banks of the river, restless. When it seems the pilgrims and native Africans are on the edge of violence, Marlow disperses them by blowing the steam-whistle.
In the next few days, the steamboat breaks down and they have to wait to repair it. During this pause, Kurtz dies. Marlow is especially affected by Kurtz’s last words: "The horror! The horror!"
When the rest of the crew finds out about Kurtz's death, they rush to see, but Marlow stays put, for which he earns a reputation of callousness. This almost causes his men to mutiny against him. But they don’t. Marlow reaches Europe safely.
Back in Western society, Marlow feels out of place and cannot hide his contempt for normal people who haven’t traveled down the Congo and witnessed evil firsthand. His experience has changed him so much that he sees the troubles of everyday life as petty.
He tries to decide what to do with the personal papers Kurtz entrusted to him. He refuses to surrender them to the Company.
Instead, he decides to return Kurtz’s personal effects to his fiancée, called the Intended. When he meets her, Marlow is struck by her beauty and her brilliance. The more he talks to her, the more he discovers that she did not know Kurtz whatsoever, at least not the Kurtz that Marlow has known. She idealizes Kurtz, saying that every man who has met him cannot help loving him.
The final straw comes when the Intended asks Marlow to repeat Kurtz’s last words to her. He lies. Instead of telling her "the horror! The horror!" he tells her that Kurtz said her name with his dying breath. She not only believes him, but is gratified and says she already knew.
Marlow justifies his lie to her by saying that telling her the truth would simply be too dark.
The narrative ends here.

Next Page: Mr. Kurtz Timeline