This is not an easy read. But I would read it just for the pleasure of language use. literary beauty it has. before the theoretical thinking on colonialism, turning native or fieldwork, this is a very early but sophisticated engagement in a novel form....

I know that scholars are going to disagree with me but Conrad's narrative alternates between exasperatingly long stories of inconsequential matters and skimming over consequential matters. For instance, we are given page after page of Marlowe waiting for his rivets and then, all of a sudden, he is underway with no explanation of how the repairs got done or when the rivets finally arrived. Kurtz himself is just a tiny part of the narrative. We really dont learn about the inner Kurtz. More time is spent with his grieving fiance than is spent with him. " The horror, the horror" , has for some reason become a famous line in literature , much like, " We'll always have Paris, has become in the cinema.

I read this book in college, years ago and thought it was boring at that time. I ordered it for my Kindle, thinking the mature me would appreciate the book but I was still disappointed.

Some of the description is excellent and it is a good look at colonial Africa at the time, so the book was not a total loss but a disappointment nevertheless.

It reads very much like a novel translated from another language into English. Of course, we know that Conrad, although born in Poland, was perfect in English but the writing somehow seems awkward.

My Kindle has been perfect for re reading the classics but this one fell quite short.

Classics of western literature tend to take on an air of infallibility, with billions of English professors offering interpretations that become better known than the work itself. The baggage-free reader of "Heart of Darkness" will find that Conrad used a lot of vague allegory and symbolism that lent a haunting and disturbing feel to the story. But Conrad's symbolism is sometimes so diffuse that a cynical reader may find that the English professors are seeing what they want to see, and that the story might be a little too short and stunted to truly inspire a century of over-analytical aggrandizement. Conrad was surely commenting on the dangers faced by European colonialists in Africa and their tendencies toward cruelty and megalomania. But since he focused more on the travails faced by Marlow the boatman rather than Kurtz the mad colonial demagogue, the reader may be annoyed at both Conrad for leaving many loose ends, and at the interpreters for making vast claims about groundbreaking commentary on history and European society. If you're suspicious of academic interpretations, you'll probably find that this story, while certainly delivering some haunting lessons, may not have accomplished everything you've heard about. [~doomsdayer520~]

This is a hard book to like, but I think it is very possible to appreciate, and frankly I loved it. It's dark, but the descriptions are beautiful and truly make this book work; they are what drives this terrifying and psychological plot.

Very complex and thought provoking, quite powerful and poignant. Excellent uses of symbols and motifs. I appreciate the value and importance of this book (probably 4 stars for this) and I definitely think everybody shoud read it , but I can't say I enjoyed reading it.

That is what Rossini reputedly said about the music of Richard Wagner, and a similar sentiment might be applicable to this novella. Wait--I take it back--not "awful"...but certainly...ponderous. Prolix. Demanding and uncompromising--in a way which is not really warranted, not perhaps necessary, but the author's prerogative nonetheless.

If you throw it away after a couple pages, I understand. However, unlike Henry James's The Turn of the Screw--which is gussied-up, ain't-I-a-weighty-writer? crap--Heart of Darkness is a true masterwork, and if you GET THROUGH IT, you'll come across some excellent stuff.

And at only seventy-two pages, you should manage.

Conrad, despite his unconcern for his readers' patience, DOES know how to create a classic character. Kurtz is such a one...and the suspense that builds over the course of the narrative makes the reader anticipate greatly his introduction. You're also left wanting more (and, when it's all over, feeling a bit short-changed), an attribute shared by other all-time classic figures such as Sherlock Holmes, Jeeves the butler, and Hannibal Lecter (before Thomas Harris sold him down the river).

The MLA claims that Heart of Darkness is the sixty-seventh best novel(la) of the 20th century (despite its complete and total 19th century tone, style, and atmosphere), and I'll go along with that. It's a much more significant contribution to literature than an impostor-work such as On the Road (ranked #55), but it may, however, suffer in the rankings due to its brevity.

My advice: drink some Mountain Dew, hunker down for a couple hours, and get this book under the belt.

I was motivated to re-visit Conrad's early masterpiece by Sebald's Walk in Suffolk, which contains a bio chapter on Conrad with emphasis on his Congo experience, which was a traumatic one. Conrad had taken up the job of a skipper of a river steamboat, but he quit after a short time, in disgust with the colonial practices of the Belgians and their crude exploitation methods.
Marlow is Conrad's alter ego here, a captain who tells his story to some other guests at a dinner party. The party takes place on a ship in the Thames estuary around the turn of the 19th century. An initial narrator gives us the frame of the five men coming together for a chat and a drink and dinner. Marlow then takes over and tells us 'one of his inconsequential stories', as the introducer expects with some sarcasm: how he got the Congo job and went there with curiosity. He is appalled from the start by the crude colonialist violence that he observes on the African West Coast and then in the Congo territory itself, and by the raw greed of the colonialists. Kurtz of course, the main protagonist of Marlow's tale, who has not much of a 'life' role to play in the story, stands for the fallen white man, the one whose character cracked and who gave in to temptations and demons, his personal ones and from the world around him. He had the reputation of being a superior specimen, a man with morality and efficiency. The 'heart of darkness' is an ambiguous place and title. It can mean the center of the unknown inner Africa, but it also means the soul of the fallen man.(Kurtz is best known with the face of Marlon Brando and the whispered words: the horror! the horror! But Apocalypse Now transformed the story from Congo colonialism into Indochina war cruelty.)
Marlow's attitude is ambiguous, he thinks like a benevolent white man with an essentially racist attitude himself, but with a more 'humane' approach. He is realistic about imperialism: the conquest of the earth means mostly the taking it away from those who have a different complexion and flatter noses. He even takes history with a broader sweep: looking over the Thames at sunset towards the 'monster' city he is reminded of the times when this was a dark place for the invading Roman army.
The book is written in a remarkably opaque language. One struggles with every single sentence just to follow the story line. This is unfortunate, I am sure a more straightforward narrative technique would have opened a broader audience for the subject.
Conrad was a man who produced stunning visual effects of the mind with his inventions, but he was not a chief engineer of narrative simplicity. If one is looking for a good straightforward narrative, this is not it. If one is willing to take up the struggle, one is rewarded though. One has to wrestle meaning out of his writing, it is not a walk in the park. The style is highly contextual, every sentence implies worlds and assumes you know which ones. At the same time, he is also able to come up with pretty gems of sentences like when Marlow describes his steamboat: she rang under my feet like an empty biscuit tin, but she was nothing so solid in make, and rather less pretty in shape.
In line with the frame narrator's low expectations for Marlow's story, half of the audience is asleep by half way. I was not.

I was motivated to re-visit Conrad's early masterpiece by Sebald's Walk in Suffolk, which contains a bio chapter on Conrad with emphasis on his Congo experience, which was a traumatic one. Conrad had taken up the job of a skipper of a river steamboat, but he quit after a short time, in disgust with the colonial practices of the Belgians and their crude exploitation methods.
Marlow is Conrad's alter ego here, a captain who tells his story to some other guests at a dinner party. The party takes place on a ship in the Thames estuary around the turn of the 19th century. An initial narrator gives us the frame of the five men coming together for a chat and a drink and dinner. Marlow then takes over and tells us 'one of his inconsequential stories', as the introducer expects with some sarcasm: how he got the Congo job and went there with curiosity. He is appalled from the start by the crude colonialist violence that he observes on the African West Coast and then in the Congo territory itself. Kurtz of course, the main protagonist of Marlow's tale, stands for the fallen white man, the one whose character cracked and who gave in to temptations and demons, his personal ones and from the world around him. The 'heart of darkness' is an ambiguous place and title. It can mean the center of the unknown inner Africa, but it also means the soul of the fallen man.(Kurtz is best known with the face of Marlon Brando and the whispered words: the horror! the horror! But Coppola transformed the story about Congo colonialism into one about Indochina war cruelty.)
Marlow's attitude is ambiguous, he thinks like a benevolent white man with an essentially racist attitude himself, but with a more 'humane' approach. He is realistic about imperialism: the conquest of the earth means mostly the taking it away from those who have a different complexion and flatter noses. He even takes history with a broader sweep: looking over the Thames at sunset towards the 'monster' city he is reminded of the times when this was a dark place for the invading Roman army.
The book is written in a remarkably opaque language. One struggles with every single sentence just to follow the story line. This is unfortunate, I am sure a more straightforward narrative technique would have opened a broader audience for the subject.
Conrad was a man who produced stunning visual effects of the mind with his inventions, but he was not a chief engineer of narrative simplicity. If one is looking for a good straightforward narrative, this is not it. If one is willing to take up the struggle, one is rewarded though. One has to wrestle meaning out of his writing, it is not a walk in the park. The style is highly contextual, every sentence implies worlds and assumes you know which ones. That is not a recipe for timeless literature. I can not imagine how a reader in 100 years would even know what Conrad is talking about most of the time.

An excellent work on the role of the imperial European forces in the shaping of the political and economic spheres in Asia and Africa around the turning of the previous century. Since these forces have been instrumental in the determination of the present day attitudes toward western powers, they must be studied carefully help in overcoming the negative aspects of what has resulted.

Heart Of Darkness Book Review



Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is a novel based on him. The book is absolutely amazing. The story is being told of Marlow who travels up the River Congo into the heart of the African Continent, at the height of European colonialism. Throughout the journey Marlow suffers a profound transformation on his out look into human nature, taking him into the darkness. He holds views of African continents, describing the natives with contempt. His prejudices are not able to remain indifferent to the cruelty and horrors of colonization.

Marlow becomes obsessed by his goal to meet Kurtz. Kurtz is a mystical character who has become famous for his success finding an enormous amount of ivory. Deep inside Marlow holds the hope that Kurtz will be able to give him a logical, justification for the horrors he has seen. When they meet, Marlow finds Kurtz has become a savage himself and has lost ties to any moral standard. He has plunged himself into insanity and horror. This book is a very suspenseful. I guarantee you that you will be on the edge of you seat reading this book. It is very deep, and can be interrupted in many different ways. So if you get a chance you should definitely read this book.



~Chris

Heart Of Darkness Book Review

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is a novel based on him. The book is absolutely amazing. The story is being told of Marlow who travels up the River Congo into the heart of the African Continent, at the height of European colonialism. Throughout the journey Marlow suffers a profound transformation on his out look into human nature, taking him into the darkness. He holds views of African continents, describing the natives with contempt. His prejudices are not able to remain indifferent to the cruelty and horrors of colonization.
Marlow becomes obsessed by his goal to meet Kurtz. Kurtz is a mystical character who has become famous for his success finding an enormous amount of ivory. Deep inside Marlow holds the hope that Kurtz will be able to give him a logical, justification for the horrors he has seen. When they meet, Marlow finds Kurtz has become a savage himself and has lost ties to any moral standard. He has plunged himself into insanity and horror. This book is a very suspenseful. I guarantee you that you will be on the edge of you seat reading this book. It is very deep, and can be interrupted in many different ways. So if you get a chance you should definitely read this book.

~Chris