Charles Marlow
Marlow's name may be inspired by the Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe. Conrad's father was a translator of William Shakespeare who doubtless would have known of Marlowe's work as well. Some intertextual interpretations of "Heart of Darkness" have suggested that Marlowe's "The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus" may have influenced Conrad. Charles Marlow describes a character as a "papier-mache Mephistopheles", a reference to the Faust legend. Marlow's and Kurtz's journey up the Congo River in "Heart of Darkness" also has similarities to another work by Marlowe, "Dido, Queen of Carthage", in which Aeneas is stranded on the shore of Libya and meets the African queen Dido.
The Left Hand of Darkness
The protagonist of the novel is Genly Ai, a male Terran native, who is sent to invite Gethen to join the Ekumen, the coalition of humanoid worlds. Ai travels to the Gethen system on a ship which remains in solar orbit with Ai's companions, who are in stasis; Ai himself is sent to Gethen alone, as the "first mobile". Like all envoys of the Ekumen, he can "mindspeak"—a form of quasi-telepathic speech, which Gethenians are capable of, but for which they have lost the ability. He lands in the Gethenian kingdom of Karhide, and spends two years attempting to persuade the members of its government of the value of joining the Ekumen. Karhide is one of two major nations on Gethen, the other being Orgoreyn.