The Englishman who tells the story of Heart of Darkness, and the four who listen to it, do not consider it a particularly English story. The “primary” narrator does not repeat for it what he has already said of another of Marlow's tales: “This could have occurred nowhere but in England, where men and sea interpenetrate …” The action of Heart of Darkness takes place in the “centre of a continent” – Africa – and its main actors are employees of a European company – “a Continental concern.” Marlow comments that “all Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz,” the novel's central figure, and most later critics have followed Marlow's lead in considering Kurtz's story one of European, not English, depravities (p. 50). Yet England has a special role to play in this story about the relations between Europe and Africa. Eloise Knapp Hay and Benita Parry have shown that England does not remain immune to criticism in Heart of Darkness. It symbolizes the ideal of efficient, liberal imperialism worshipped by Kurtz's “gang of virtue” and the sense of common purpose shared by the friends aboard the Nellie. The brooding gloom of Africa hovers over England too. Marlow tells his story in an effort to stave off this darkness by explaining his own behavior in Africa in ethical terms.