In its final moments, the text steps outside of Marlow’s story and returns to the frame narrative. The narrator ruminates once more on the surrounding landscape, yet his imagery deviates sharply from the one used to open the text.

Whereas the narrator had previously used metaphors of fire and sparks to describe the Enlightenment brought by Europeans to distant lands, here he focuses on images of darkness: the alliterative “black bank” that “barred” the offing; the waterway that “flowed sombre”; the “overcast sky.” As Marlow told his story, the light aboard the ship gradually darkened, and here that literal and…