Heart of Darkness
Ratings464
Average rating3.3
Couldn't make any sense of what was happening. The prose is awful.
Read 59/3:49 26%
My 15-year-old asked if I'd be interested in reading this to help her with a school paper. (Worry not, this means I equipped myself to ask her interesting questions rather than doing the work for her!)
I'm so glad I said yes. Conrad was clearly a gifted writer, and had progressive (for his time) views about colonialism. What struck me most was this: while he clearly abhors the casual cruelty of colonialism, he seems even more repelled by its stupid futility.
Conrad's narrator is as artful and barbed as Jane Austen's, adroitly conveying his contempt with a factual description:
When near the buildings I met a white man, in such an unexpected elegance of get-up that in the first moment I took him for a sort of vision. I saw a high starched collar, white cuffs, a light alpaca jacket, snowy trousers, a clear necktie, and varnished boots. No hat. Hair parted, brushed, oiled, under a green-lined parasol held in a big white hand. He was amazing, and had a penholder behind his ear.
or even by merely relating a name: International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs
My English Major soul thrills at the potential points of analysis and comparison. Kurtz is the hypnotic center of the tale, yet barely appears himself (Rebecca, anyone?). I'm actually quite curious about Kurtz and can't wait to check out Brando's portrayal in Apocalypse Now. And the story hammers at the thoughtless, egotistical presumptuousness of the white characters as they attempt to invade and improve a “dark” place, resulting merely in the suffering of both the natives and themselves (this review is being written about two weeks after missionary John Chau got himself killed by flouting laws meant to protect the Sentinelese people - it's not clear yet if he also managed to exterminate them with any of his foreign microbes).
Conrad wasn't the most evolved in his attitudes toward native Africans (or women), but his portrayal of the evils of colonialism is so well crafted and evocative, it continues to resonate in the present day.
If you're into poetic prose, colonialism, and gossip, this is your jam!
Not much happens. It's mostly people talking about how amazing Kurtz is and people talking about people talking about how amazing Kurtz is. But we're never really shown him being amazing. That's part of the point, I think, but everything seems hollow.
Conrad's prose is elegant and evocative, but there's not much plot or even character development to latch onto. Ultimately, I don't get it. Surely I'm missing something but I think the story is bland and mediocre.
If I'm being truly honest I hated this book to begin with. It seemed slow moving and nothing happened. However as I got into it and studied it a little more I understand what Conrad was trying to do. I mean he fails miserably, but I got it and it became a book I quite like.
The Heart of Darkness is a novel encapsulated in adventure, existential thought, darkness, and inquisitiveness. The book follows the journey of Marlow and his recollection of memories once serving as a steamboat captain along the dangerous bends of Congo river. It's written as a frame narrative (story within a story), which does demand attentiveness considering the story often jumps in and out of first-person account, philosophical pondering, and so on. Light and darkness is explored predominantly throughout, as is the duality of human nature (albeit pessimistic at times). I'll more than likely come back and read this again one day - as it's full of themes and underlying currents which only several reads allow for. This book is small in length, but long and rich in content.
I can't say I enjoyed this book, but I am glad I read it. It was very well written in a style that takes a long time to describe simple things, but poetic nonetheless. I feel there is a deeper meaning somewhere, but it seems to show how messed up imperialism was during this time.
There are a lot of books that are classics that many people had to read in school, and usually, that results in them having a bad experience with the book, or being disinclined to enjoy reading at all. My school failed me in that regard, the only classics I ever had to read for school were Of Mice and Men and Catcher in the Rye.
This resulted in me being a fully grown adult reader with nearly a thousand books read, but hardly any of them being classics. I've been trying to rectify that. Some classics are incredible, even today. Some I respect, but didn't resonate with me. And some are so mind numbingly boring that I thank the lucky stars that no English teacher subjected me to them, lest I have been scared away from my love of reading forever.
I listened to this book on audio, narrated by the superb Kenneth Branagh, who you may know from many things but is best known for my generation from playing Professor Lockhart in Harry Potter. Branagh did a wonderful job; and I was still bored to tears. I can't tell you really anything that happened. There was darkness, and Africa, and Kurtz. But it was all a drudge. In a week, it might as well have been that I never read this.
I'm sure it has literary merit. Far be it from me, hundreds of years after its been hailed as great work, for me to dismiss it utterly. But on audio, dissecting prose and literary merit is much harder for me. If the book had engaged me AT ALL, I might have been inclined to read this physically, slower, and pondered whatever literary or philosophical accolades it supposedly has. But alas, I would rather read a dictionary or a soap ingredients list. And so Heart of Darkness finds its way into the cobwebs of my mind; another box to check off in the list of “classics”, utterly forgotten until someone at a party in a decade mentions it, and I respond with, “Ah yeah, I read that. Kurtz, huh?” and change the subject to a more interesting book.
This book felt like a morbid tale with all of the gloomy atmosphere, and the hostility among all the characters and above all it felt like an allegory of the narrator Charles Marlow's individual psychological descent. rather than being fiercely anti-colonial, this book has painted a picture of deeply flawed individuals some of them are full of greed, some want power, and some want adventure in the sense of being able to partake in a journey to the darkest part of the world but all of they had something in common which is their sense and humanity has become dark and dim. the main theme is not how congo has tuned itself from the upstream of progress but how the “civilised” people have traded their so-called civility to feel superiority and economically privileged with any means be it violence or manipulation. Now we get what exactly is this heart of darkness. Our protagonist here is called Marlow, who has proclaimed himself curious by nature so he came to explore the mysterious Africa, where colonizers plundered and made the continent a raw material provider. he is certainly not likeable in fact his thoughtlessness and lack of morality don't make him a cartoonish villain but it does portray that he is not bothered with anything at all. he doesn't care. his ambivalency was certainly a quality which at first made me very confused but ultimately we can see in this allegory there are no heroes, we do have many antagonists and some characters who were merely treated like a symbol (the cannibals, Curtz's mistress., his fiancee)
I quite liked it, although I like stylistic language, Conrad's prose was too much for me sometimes. 3.5 stars out of 5.
Summary: This novel, written in 1899, is narrated by Marlow, who retells his experience working for a Belgian-owned company in the Congo. On his journey down the Congo River, Maslow encounters a variety of situations, some eye-opening, some confusing, and some terrifying. The book explores ideas such as imperialism, racism, and intercultural interactions.
I read this for a class, and liked it. Would probably love it if I read it again (and didn't have to write a paper on it).
Short review: Like many of the classics I am reading these days, I understand why it is important. But it wasn't a story for me. I didn't really get why they characters ‘decent into madness'. I probably needed to read this in a group to understand what was going on.
My full review is at http://bookwi.se/heart-of-darkness-by-joseph-conrad/
5 stars
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad is one of the best books I???ve read in a while, because of the setting, the plot, and most importantly the ideas that it contemplates. Only about halfway in the book, I realized that the film Apocalypse Now was adapted from this book. It follows Charlie Marlow, who has used his connections to get a steamboat to transport ivory downriver, finds out about Kurtz, who has established himself as a god amongst the local populace. Marlow takes a growing interest in the man and undertakes to meet him. The book considers how hollow civilization can really be, the consuming power of greed, civilization???s fa??ade of enlightenment, among others.
I recommend it to you if the setting and ideas of the book. This is a book that I will be buying a physical copy for my library.
I've read this one before – 29 years ago. But I was feeling nostalgic for some of the stories I'd read as a teen and I tracked this one down and decided to re-read it for kicks. It's a sf book in a light-hearted vein with a bumbling anti-hero named Roger Tyson who gets caught up a time warp. He meets a comely agent from the the future named Q'nell and the pair of them are pursued by the mysterious Oob the Rhox through a series of time portals. They try to figure out how to repair the damage caused by these as various people all over Earth and from different times find themselves reliving the same day over and over again. Silly, fast-moving stuff. (Written in 1970.)
Kept waiting for something to happen. Then, abruptly, the book ended as pointlessly as it began.
I DONT KNOW WHAT I THINK ABOUT THIS BOOK! Is the darkness the horrific treatment of the Congo at the hand of the Belgians, or is it a dated and colonialist metaphor for primitivism??? Is it both??? Are we supposed to agree with the perspective of the narrator?? Are we supposed to criticize it?? I don't know! Still hard to read dehumanizing portrayals of the Congolese whatever the intended reading. Also so much tell and less show. Idk. I'll be thinking about it a lot at least.
The heart of darkness that is profusely referred to in this novella could come to mean so many things. And what it really means, what is really meant, why it means so, who means and for whom, to my mind, reflects the appreciations and apparent criticisms of the book.
Man's own capacity; a capacity to corrupt and get corrupted, man's ultimate inability to comprehend and rend the thick shards of ambiguity life catches us in, sort of feeds that impenetrable heart of darkness. Do we not all own it, have it, exhibit it? And then, if that is so, Heart of Darkness is a parable of human nature.
Despite hearing about the reservations on the racist tones and the not so anti-imperialist stance, I feel that there is more to this work than just that. Nowhere am I determinedly able to maintain that the text gives way to an authorial voice depicting a for or against sign, let alone some agenda to obey. If anything, it is a rich and complex novella with a promise to yield thoughtful discussion.
Degradation of human beings, material and spiritual, is what is at heart of the tale. And the language that captures the prose captivates aspect and attention with poetical sensitivity.
Still, I can hear reserved echoes of criticisms leveled against the ‘dark' heart (particularly in its treatment of the natives of Congo, attributed as well to the racist tradition existent in Western literature). But if the dark treatment of Africa is to be considered as representative, what about the ‘light' that is coming from the other side. Is it, in Conrad's view, all the more redeeming or ‘civilised'? And can we say then which does the voice means when it sighs profoundly the word, ‘Horror'? I don't know yet. In that I find the book more open-ended than we presume probably.
Somehow, style is central to narration and is thus worthy of re-readings. The narrative voice is aptly unreliable. Never do we really get to know what Marlow thinks in his own heart; he is a voice telling but somehow devoid of an intimacy towards readers. Perhaps, through what he sees on the outside, he sees the all too dark heart of his own and is unable to reveal it to us as Kurtz does. Marlow envies Kurtz for “He had something to say. He said it.”
Much shorter than I had expected from this often studied classic fictionalisation of Conrad's time in the Congo DR, or Belgian Congo as it was unfortunate to be at the time. Leopold was a ego maniacal madman at whose hands the Congo became a plaything to be exploited for his person wealth - but this is really just the background to the part of history the story takes place in.
The writing I found to wonderfully descriptive. I read some reviews by people who dismissed it as poorly written and unnecessarily complex. I think there is a difference between reading of your own free will, and having to read a book for University, and most people bemoaning the difficultly of reading it (it is 101 pages long! (although my copy has ridiculously small print)) are students.
There is simply no point in plot descriptions, there are hundreds of reviews to give that.
Here are a few sentences I enjoyed:
The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth. describing the Thames, P2.
Trees, trees, millions of trees, massive, immense, running up high; and at their foot, hugging the bank against the stream, crept the little begrimed steamboat, like a sluggish beetle crawling on the floor of a lofty portico. It made you feel very small, very lost, and yet it was not altogether depressing, that feeling. in the upper Congo river, P43.