Heart of Darkness

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Summary: How to keep from misunderstanding this book (and then some)
Review: Get this book.

And read it, and then read it once more, its not that long.

Then wait a week, then read it a final time.

It is almost impossible to comprehend this entire book if one reads it only once through. It is very in depth, and very complicated, no word is wasted in this book, hence it cannot, and should not be 'skimmed'. No passage is wasted, there is basically no unneeded character.

Secondly, some persons have reviewed this book, and have said something to the effect that everything evil is black, and some have gone so far to say this book is racists towards blacks/Africans, and they are entitled to their opinions, however as I see it, both opinions are against mine.

However, if any prejudice exists in this book, it is just a little bit, and toward women, but then again, this was written at the turn of the century, and thus was the culture.

And about the color black, it has been used over and over in history to show evil. But in this book, it isn't as much evil, as it symbolizes the truth, and light symbolizes mankinds devices to be happy, and sometimes this means to aviod the darkness (truth). Main examples of this are african slaves themselves. Ivory is light, and make people happy, the slaves are dark in this book and are the truth behind the ivory. Then in the end when Kurtz dies, he only can see black, even with a candle in his face; when one dies they supposedly see 'their life flash by'. I think Conrad is using this, and Kurtz is seeing the truth (dark) about his life, and cannot see the candle, and mutters his last words "The Horror... " A last example of this is when Marlow is speaking with The Intended (Kurtz's fiancee), and lies to her, up to this point, the room is getting darker and darker, and if Marlow were to tell the truth, quite possibly the Intended (her forehead was white, rembemer, because she didn't see the truth about Kurtz) would see the truth, and all light would be gone, and the room would have been pitch black.

Anyways, as I said, this IS a masterpiece, it should be read several times, and should be thought about quite seriously.

Rating:
Summary: Heart of Bordem
Review: I had to read a fiction book for my Sophomore English class; we received a list of books on college and many other's top ten lists. I had scored really high on a reading test and decided that I should go for on of the harder books. Don't let the title deceive you, Heart of Darkness might seem like a murder mystery, or a dark story from a famous authors mind, but be forewarned: this book is not an easy book to get through. This book explores deep into the aspects of one mans thoughts as he journeys down a river as an ivory boat captain. This story tells of a man and a whole legacy he has built up and how great he is and about the man seeks him out on a ship with rumors growing more and more colossal. When you finally meet him you are greatly disappointed at the sick pathetic man you read about. Joseph Conrad was a deep intellectual writer. This was written in the early 1900's and so it is also a different writing style than the kind writers use nowadays so you might not get what you'd expect. I would highly recommend being around College level before reading this. Not for the sake of understanding it, but from the tolerance high school will give you when reading boring books.

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Summary: A Brilliant Novella
Review: Conrad writes with the sort of depth rarely exhibited by an English language writer. This is one of the most challenging and best written books that I have ever read. Some of the quotes alone could be collected into a masterpiece. Attention should be paid to the dream-like narrative of Marlow's tale (if you must know - of a European man traveling into the heart of Africa). Conrad understood many things about human nature which are buried in the text. This is not just a colonial novel. The major accomplishment here is combining smart philosophy with a deft style, something rarely achieved by writers bent on espousing their views. This is an important book and should not be missed by anyone interested in superb writing and great literature.

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Summary: Heart in the Jungle
Review: "The necessity which impelled me to go to sea and to become a writer was a hidden, obscure necessity, a completely masked and unaccountable phenomenon," Joseph Conrad wrote in "A Personal Record."

Conrad's most famous work, based upon his traumatic experience in the Belgian Congo in 1890, is the novella "Heart of Darkness," a Symbolist masterpiece narrated by the eloquent, brooding Marlow, to whom, as to his creator, "the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine." "Heart of Darkness" is surely one of the perennial best works of literature in English literature. Though Conrad's vision is tragic (he might have said realistic), his tone is often comic. His dense, convoluted prose, English uneasily qualified by undercurrents of the Polish and French that were the author's earlier languages, is sometimes obscure. Every writer knows that melodramatic expressions of despair about the progress of composition can become a kind of fetish, relied on to ward off the onset of a genuinely catastrophic blockage. But in Conrad's case, despair seems to have been the condition for writing anything at all - a state of affairs he did his best to exacerbate by making it a practice to borrow money from publishers against books he had not yet written. He was unlike most writers who spend the better part of their lives sitting in a room, turning sentences around, he himself spent some 20 years gathering experience and adventures as a sailor and explorer of strange, exotic places. The "shadowy country" of inextinguishable desires and fears" that shaped his fiction was not only a literary construct, but in many cases grew out of an actual landscape whose emotional and physical geography the author had explored himself.

This story is a vision of a man who knew that the real darkness lay not in the jungles of the Congo, but within his own solitary heart...

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Summary: A brilliant, disturbing work
Review: Conrad's Heart of Darkness is a brilliant, disturbing work which, like most of Conrad's fiction, is drawn heavily from his own life. Conrad served as a ship captain on the Congo River, succeeding a captain who was brutally slain by local savages, and the fictional account of Marlow's trip into the African jungle very much mirrors his own true life adventure. Conrad's time in Africa affected him deeply, as he nearly died from disease and felt the effects of his time in Africa, both physically and psychologically, for the rest of his life.

The book works on many levels. First, it is a concise, suspenseful adventure story about Marlow's search for Kurtz, an ivory trader and member of a colonial trading company that has gone into the jungle and apparently been corrupted by his power. Psychologically, the novel explores mankind's infinite capacity for evil and corruption, when unleashed from the bounds of law and civilization. Potlitically, the book is a scathing indictment of European colonialism, and the savagery with which a supposed "civilized" nation such as England or Belgium, at least in the nineteenth century, could and would plunder locals for the almighty lucre. If there was any lingering doubt as to Kurtz's sanity when Marlow finally reached him, the impaled heads greeting visitors to the camp stand as a stark reminder of the depths to which he has fallen in his effort to "kill all the brutes." I thought Marlow's benign condescension towards Kurtz' wife, at the end, was a fitting and memorable end to the saga.

Heart of Darkness, while relatively short, is not a quick read. Conrad's language is so concentrated, his style so calculated, there are simply no wasted words or throwaway scenes. It is truly remarkable that someone like Conrad, for whom English was not a first (or even second) language, could craft novels such as Heart of Darkness, Nostromo, and The Secret Agent. If you have not read this book since it was forced upon you in school, or if you are curious to reaquaint yourself with it after seeing Coppola's brilliant adaption in Apocalypse Now, you owe it to yourself to pick this up and give it your attention. It is an enduring classic, one of the first really modern novels.

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Summary: Skilled
Review: English majors are justly fond of Conrad, who packs his stories with subtlety, symbolism, parallels, and rich imagery. "Heart of Darkness" is a brief and strangely absorbing read. Its plot is simple enough on the surface, about a sailor who guides a steamer up the Congo in search of a vaunted ivory trader. But beneath the surface, in a palpable atmosphere of unease, lie the book's complicated themes. This isn't just a condemnation of European activity in Africa, but a glimpse at the evil within every man. In some ways this book is a precursor to "Lord of the Flies" and other twentieth century books of despair, and yet Conrad does not leave the reader without hope. In skilful, mystical passages about light and dark, black and white, tall and short, jungle and sepulchre, Conrad gives us much food for thought about the nature of humankind and the possibilities for both good and evil. I see this book more as a warning than a simple cry of despair - though it pays ample attention to "the horror" of it all.

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Summary: One of the best short books ever
Review: I had no idea of even the background for Heart of Darkness, let alone the plotline, before I read it. What I discovered was a wonderfully intricate description of one man's venture through the jungles of the Belgian Congo and the psychological depths of his own mind. Highly reccomended, although it is best to read with an open mind, many ideas introduced early in the novel aren't explained until the very end.

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Summary: an under appreciated classic
Review: Many people have given this novelette a bad review, and I believe that this is purely due to their lack of understanding. It is true that this novelette is one of the most difficult in the English language (and cliff note are HIGHLY recommended) the diction and symbolism reveal Conrad as a master in the literary world. One issue that most people have with this novel is the racist factor. This book was written in 1902! What do you expect? People argue that in this novelette everything evil is black. This color motif has been used throughout history, and it is not necessarily affiliated with the race; however, in this case, it is arguable. I confess that I am unable to see racism on the part of Conrad. Yes, the characters in the novel, mostly the manager, committed racial atrocities against the natives, however the whites symbolized a spiritual death. In the novelette, the only truly evil people were white. (Oops, I think I got side tracked in my attempt to defend HoD and discredit those whom found the book a "horror." Frankly this book is a brilliant insight to the true nature of man and the potential for man to succumb to his many lusts and commit grievous atrocities against other men. Conrad illustrates the necessity to navigate through evil in order to live and the burden of human freedom, the ability to choose between the evils we are faced with and the unpredictable outcome that spawns from our decisions. The majority of the people who gave this novelette a bad review were students that were forced to read it. In a world of telivision, the internet, and video games, students have lost the patience to read such novels, purely because they are too lazy to actually think while reading. For such people, I agree that they should not read HoD, because they should not have to use their brain cells for comprending the text, when it's obvious that they need to devote their entire brain just so that they can awknowledge the existance of the words on the page.

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Summary: I despise this book with every ounce of my being
Review: Every time I think of this book I shudder. Never in my life have I been so bored and so offended as I was while reading Conrad's anti-climactic "masterpiece." First of all, how can the book be called anything but racist with its imagery: everything evil is associated with the color black, and it's not exactly subtle. Meanwhile, we are expected to see through Marlowe's eyes how corrupt the lying Europeans in Africa are, but as soon as he gets home, what does he do to the Intended? He lies! But of course, she's just a stupid woman, as the ever-so-enlightened Marlowe would be quick to tell us.

Rating:
Summary: What is so great about this book?
Review: Conrads style is painful. Why force oneself to suffer through the complex maze he uses to discribe something as simple as a river bank. Detail is important to all good literature but Conrad beats you senseless with it. This work is also racist (even for its time), it is chock full of eurocentric cliches of Africa's culure and peoples.