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Summary: Existentialism
Review: I read this book 20 years ago in college, back then I didn't understand it. Now I re-read it again and it meant so much now. To me the best part of the book is the last 30 pages of this edition. Conrad described human nature: good and evil, by using language that is so deep and beautiful. Those last 30 pages, I re-read it many times.
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Summary: Heed not The Modern Library List, THIS is Conrad's Best
Review: Everyone alive should read "Heart of Darkness," everyone who loves literature MUST read it. Simply put, it is the best work of one of the best authors of this century. It is also probably the greatest novella of this, or any, century. Since many reviewers have already outlined the plot (and pretty much everyone should already know it for the most part) I will not do so. I also will not write in this review what I feel the major themes of the work are because I believe the most enjoyable thing about reading and re-reading works such as this is discovering the themes for oneself. All I'll say is that "Heart of Darkness" is well worth the hype. There are those who claim it is racist and this is a view which probably cannot be disproved by the text. However, I do not agree with it. Approach this work with an open mind. What Conrad describes is universal. So is this book's impact.
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Summary: One of the best...
Review: Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" is among the finest literary works of our time. His ultra-dense examination of colonialism and the myriad of sociological questions that it raises is THE most powerful novel I have ever read. Like many of Conrad's other works, this masterpiece is misleading in that its shortness suggests it can be read in one sitting. In reality, it is a truly monumental novel, each paragraph of which should be savored and meditated upon, as they are all equally amazing - at the same time beautiful and horrible. It's become a cliche when discussing Conrad, but this novel is truly a journey into the darknesses of the human mind on so many levels.
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Summary: Journey into the immensity and power of this short work
Review: Every time I read this I am always amazed at how much has been accomplished in so short a span of pages. And the effect of this work does not diminish with repeat readings. So if you have already read this and most people have read it again. I gaurantee you won't regret it. This is probably the most perfectly executed work of Conrads career and that is saying a lot. Very few authors wrote a greater number of works that remain classics and relevant than he. The primitive world has a voice in this book as do colonial administrators and we even get to hear from that one who has gone off the edge of the map of humanity and into his own realm of darkness but the voice dominating this book is Marlowes'. He tells the tale aboard a ship in safe harbor in the London docks but his voice takes you on quite a journey. From the very first scene described in the administration offices with strange black clad women figures sewing we know this is going to be like no tale we have heard before. The work as a whole is so perfect it makes one think of music as the only comparison. Still no other tale like it exists. If you haven't picked this one up in a while do so and listen to Marlowe tell it once again. Listen to the music and feel the power of the primitive pulse through you as you journey toward the heart of an immense darkness.
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Summary: "We live, as we dream...alone"
Review: One of the reasons I enjoy reading the classics of Literature is that they tend to highlight certain epochs and environments that no longer exist: they offer the reader a glimpse, or perhaps a longer gaze, into a way of life and society that has all but been swept away by modern sprawl and the dominance of Western culture. In Literature, one can frolic with the thieves of Victorian London, or hunt the Appalachians for red-coats; visit the Arabian peninsula a thousand years past or explore an Africa of unexploited majesty, an Africa where danger and death lurk in the sting of an insect bite or a chucked spear rather than the blight of AIDS or genocidal discord. The latter example comes, of course, from Joseph Conrad's novella _Heart of Darkness_, an autobiographical work concerning the depths of the 'dark' continent relatively unspoiled by the greedy decrees of parliament, but on the verge of massive and irrevocable change. The hounds of 'progress' have penetrated but not yet subsumed, and the jungles still contain an ancient, breathtaking wildness that leaves the narrator Marlow quaking with respect and primal fear. _Heart of Darkness_ contains one of the finest builds of tension I've ever experienced on the printed page. Inundated with both the boredom of long travel and the moments of inexplicable terror that Africa conjures, Marlow's slow steamboat journey into the Congo wilds becomes as torturous for the reader as it is for the narrator, an awesome build of suspense that the actual climax of the book--the arrival at Kurtz's station--cannot really match...but then, it is always the ambiguous that haunts us; the mysterious and the unknown that furrows the feverish brow. Concrete, tangible adversaries can be fought against or at least acknowledged, while the brutish designs and desires that lurk under that impenetrable canopy, that seethe within the human heart, are far more difficult to confront, defeat, and master in turn. Conrad's style, short declarative sentences coupled with longer stream-of-conscious insights, is a delight to read. I enjoy this style of writing immensely, and find it communicates the central ideas of theme and story far more clearly that those with totally stripped or totally convoluted prose. _Heart of Darkness_ is told by a true master of the English language, and the fact that the author did not originally speak English makes this an even more remarkable feat-; or perhaps not, considering that Conrad was probably not exposed to any corruptions of the English language at a young, formulative age. Recommended.
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Summary: Shortness of Novel Belies its Depth
Review: Joseph Conrad created a small masterpiece with the writing of Heart of Darkness (along with the near-miss of masterpiece status of the Secret Sharer, included in this volume) that still reverberates as an examination of the human pysche. Kurtz is a powerful creation that lasts because he is both so frighteningly unreal as he grows in Marlow's imagination but, in the end, too devastingly real as a product of the horrors around him. The territory surrounding the Congo river was truly as horrible as anything brought forth in this novel and reading Adam Hochschild's history, King Leopold's Ghost, along with this book by Joseph Conrad will give the reader a powerful view of the effects of colonization on the continent of Africa. A terrifying journey down the Congo that is important to take.
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Summary: Beyond innocence
Review: Joseph Conrad's powerful book "The Heart of Darkness" tells the narrative of Marlow, a character drawn much from the author's own experiences in the Congo, as he travels the great river unto the heart of the uncharted continent of Africa and finally to meet the enigmatic Mr. Kurtz. As he ventures farther away from civilization and further into the heart of darkness, he discovers Mr. Kurtz, a remarkable man who at once was disgusted at the world that has developed about him, and yet unable to escape it. Mr. Kurtz left Europe for Africa as a prodigal employee of "The Company", which controls ivory trade in its region. In venturing further into the continent, he rose to become the head of a trading post, where he finds himself the uneasy ruler elevated by the natives. Perhaps it is a lesson in how absolute power can corrupt man. The story of Mr. Kurtz itself is an enchanting story of tragedy: how he has risen into power, to be worshipped as a god by the natives, as he leaves behind his society where he had previously struggled to be more accepted. This last aspect is unfortunately easy to be overlooked, instead focusing on the more explicit narriation of the evil brought by society onto the heart of the uncharted continent. This work is a bitter protest against the systematic exploitation that the Europeans slowly brought into Africe. The book's powerful use of prose and poetic abstraction beings evocation of the suffocating effect of being taken away from our societal rules and placement, to be subjected to the overwhelming power of nature and the mysterious and untamed. Unfortunately the same writing style that invokes powerful, vivid imagery, makes it hard to follow this book in a few places. This work was the basis of Francis Coppola's "Apocalypse Now", a critically renowned adaptation of the story cast in the Vietnam War. The main difference is that in this book we got to know Mr. Kurtz a little more intimately through the friends and family members who came later in the story to collect his writings, and thus become a more informed witness to his tragedy.
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Summary: Incredible. An amazing book.
Review: I wrote a review of this book after reading it once and gave it two stars. I now have read the book four times (for my literature class) and every time I read it it gets better and better. Conrad's prose is so rich that each rereading brings hitherto undiscovered points to the fore. So skillful is it that in the space of 100 pages it delivers a thorough examination of moral corruption, the nature of existence and the horrors of 'civilising' enterprises that existed in Africa circa 1900. I think I can honestly say that the first time you read this book you will not like it, since reading it for the first time is a mentally gymnastic and physically exhausting process. But please, read it again, and again, because if you do you'll discover just how good this book really is.
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Summary: The end of Romanticism
Review: Like few other books have, the Heart of Darkness abolishies sentimental yearnings of the Romantic era, and blasts the reader into modernism with its haunted themes and brooding charachters. Typical of Conrads work, the book is vivid and opaque leaving the reader with more of a vauge impression than with a clear story or meaning. The prose of the book is a precursor to the dark fiction of Camus and Satre. It is a gaunt book of lean and hungry liasons between petty ambition, meglomania, greed, envy and insanity. It is a book that echoes within itself, repeating over and over, on different levels, its themes of delusion and desperation in the petty bourgeoisie trapped in the rotting outskirts of colonial Africa. Recomended for those wishing to trace the roots of modern literature, this book is a critical junction between the romanticicsm of the 19th Century and the existentialism of the 20th Century.
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Summary: have read it over and over
Review: like many others, I was dragged kicking and screaming through this in school, but then, to my surprise, found myself coming back to it over the years. Each time I re-read it, I got different takes on it. "Heart of Darkness" is a book that tells a story on many levels - it's a story of the folly of imperialism, it's an adventure yarn, it's an exploration of the pros and cons of Victorian society, and at its heart (so to speak!) it's really an examination of the archetypal Film Noir issue - how is a good man to resist temptation and keep to a moral code (and what code, and why?) in a world which does not adhere to that code, a world full of darkness.
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