First, however, he digresses to tell the story of his predecessor with the Company, Fresleven. The Company was eager to send Marlow to Africa, because one of the Company’s steamer captains had recently been killed in a scuffle with the natives.Īfter he hears that he has gotten the job, Marlow travels across the English Channel to a city that reminds him of a “whited sepulchre” (probably Brussels) to sign his employment contract at the Company’s office. Marlow recounts how he obtained a job with the Belgian“Company” that trades on the Congo River (the Congo was then a Belgian territory) through the influence of an aunt who had friends in the Company’s administration. He recounts that he first got the idea when, after returning from a six-year voyage through Asia, he came across a map of Africa in a London shop window, which reinvigorated his childhood fantasies about the “blank spaces” on the map. ![]() This train of thought reminds Marlow of his sole experience as a “fresh-water sailor,” when as a young man he captained a steamship going up the Congo River.
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