Nutshell Summary

Heart of Darkness begins on the Thames in London, where an unnamed narrator sits aboard a ship named The Nellie with a group of other men. Among them is Marlow, a seaman with a penchant for telling long and verbose stories. 
 
Marlow begins to recount a story about his journey into Africa. It is thus from Marlow’s perspective that the rest of Heart of Darkness is told – with occasional interjections by the unnamed framed narrator we hear from at the very beginning of the text.