While the political accusations will intensify with the African stories, still to be written at this point, they are already present in these early Malay fictions also. But what occasioned the shift in Conrad from a believer in the dream of disinterested adventure to a denouncer of its consequences in “Heart of Darkness?” To a great extent, his changing relationship to the endeavor itself, giving up the sea and the particular role that career required him to play, freed him effectively, if not entirely consciously, to subvert the usual celebration of the white man in the tropics.

In agreement with Jean-Aubry, Garnett contended that Conrad's Congo experiences were “the turning-point in his mental life and that their effects on him determined his transformation from a sailor to a writer” (Garnett, Letters, p. 8). Not only the African books but also the first Malayan ones were the fruits of his trip up the Congo. He later stated that in his early years at sea he had “not a thought in his head … I was a perfect animal.” His Congo journey had forced a more reflective point of view. Garnett had seen that the “sinister voice of the Congo with its murmuring undertone of human fatuity, baseness and greed had swept away the generous illusions of his youth, and had left him gazing into the heart of an immense darkness” (Garnett, Letters, p. 8).