Henry

While the story does get off to a slow start plot wise, there is still plenty to digest within the first twenty pages. First, we see that Marlow's story overpowers the original story of men on a boat. It's mysterious that the story opens with a character we currently know almost nothing about. Conrad has also started developing a mysterious tone for the setting. He describes the coast as "tr[ying] to ward off intruders" (16), and makes references to the fate of other foreigners. This includes a danish man who previously held Marlow's job, who found himself dead after a "misunderstanding about some hens" (10), and a Swede who "hanged himself on the road" (17). We get a feeling that this new territory is too maddening, to different for some European travelers, but this is what attracted Marlow to Africa in the first place.