Rating: 
Summary: Read it only for school
Review: Never have I read a more boring book. The prose was very hard to follow, and all of my classmates concurred that this book was horrible. The plot was nice, but Conrad's writing style falls flat. Like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Joseph Conrad is so obsessed with symbolism that he forgets to make his narratives enjoyable. GET THE CLIFFS NOTES on this. They will be invaluble in translating the text of this novella.
Rating: 
Summary: Fantastic story, tough reading
Review: This now classic story about one man and search for the truth of the human soul is still popular today and inspired not only a direct film adaption but also inspired Frank's "Apocalypse Now" in 1979. Although this story is short, concise, and to the point I must warn younger readers. The wording of this is not especially easy. Unless you are an experienced reader steer clear. I'd say junior in high school and up. If you ignore me prepare for "the horror".
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Summary: The surreal fiefdom of Kurtz
Review: Having read the other reviews written here, I expected "Heart of Darkness" to be primarily about Howard Kurtz and his surreal fiefdom located along the shore of the Congo River. But we only get to meet Kurtz toward the end of this book. In the rest of the novel the narrator, a sailor named Marlow, circles about the subject of Kurtz by talking with people who only talk about Kurtz or their efforts to reach him. This novel will be a shock to the modern reader who is not used to the anachronistic racial stereotypes and blunt language found in "Mark Twain", "Candide", or other. Conrad calls the blacks of Africa "savages" and describes their comings and goings as a "wriggling mass of black arms". In "Heart of Darkness" we also see the stereotypical native with a bone through his nose-it's just like Edgar Rice Burrows's "Tarzan". Conrad mentions the blacks with hostility and talks of them as if they could not be real people. But he backs away from this callousness and speaks admirably of the helmsman of the steamer. He says that the heretofore-ignorant sailor became a loyal trusted aid with a big heart. Maybe Conrad is saying something about the merits of colonialism here. Regarding physical beauty, Conrad is enamored with the vision of a black woman who is evidently Kurt'z mistress. In these two characters we see that Conrad has mixed feelings toward the blacks. Another reviewer wrote of the metaphors that fill so many sentences. Conrad also deploys a lot of symbolism. That Kurtz's aide de campe was dressed like a Harlequin reminded me of Picasso's many portraits of a boy dressed similarly dressed. And the phrase "Heart of Darkness" is used repeatedly throughout. I believe it's meaning varies from one instance to the next. Prima façie it just means the obvious: Kurt'z camp is located in the middle of previously unknown and hostile country, a void. The narrator Marlow himself mentions this when recalled looking wistfully over maps of the world with huge unknown holes drawn into them. Chinua Achebe, author of "Things Fall Apart", wrote in an essay on "Heart of Darkness" that Europeans have traditionally used Africa as a "foil" the comparison with which makes their own accomplishments seem grander. His novel is, of course, an attack on colonialism itself. "Heart of Darkness" is about a journey into the Belgian Colony of the Congo. As you might know, Congo was renamed "Zaire" by the dictator Robert Mugabe. The warlord Laurent Kabila deposed Mugaba and now presides over its war with neighboring Rhawanda. For an up-to-date travelogue of Africa I recommend Shrinivas Naipal's memoir of Africa "East to West". He mentions "Heart of Darkness" frequently. I believe he see his trip as the "Heart of Darkness" journey revisited 100 years later.
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Summary: Darkness at the Heart of Mankind
Review: Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad is a story that connects the audience to the narrator's senses most perfectly. We come to understand the environment, the setting, the other characters and Kurtz strictly from the narrator's first-person point-of-view, as he experiences things. We are not able to see how the world views him. Is he seen as superior, a drone, a sailor? His dreamlike consciousness navigates us, the readers, down the river as if we are a part of the flow of things, ripples in the water, patches of the darkness. Conrad uses language to paint images in our minds. He poignantly uses metaphors such as, "In exterior he resembled a butcher in a poor neighborhood" to animate those images and allow them to breathe a bit. His choice of words and word combinations, his poetic tone, his elegant style and smooth transitions craft a superbly sensual experience. He is, on the surface, talking about the exploration of man in Africa with all of its physical and moral dilemmas, and yet the underbelly is the interior of man, an endeavor to touch the reader at his core. "Each station should be like a beacon on the road towards better things, a center for trade of course, but also for humanizing, improving, instructing." When Conrad says that the "germs of empires" floated into man's head, "ebbing down the river into the mystery of an unknown earth," his metaphors appeal emotionally to something deeply serious; a commentary on the heart of man. Our senses are assaulted with tastes and surfaces, sounds and images. The "tremor of far-off drums," the "silence driven away by the stamping of our feet," and the "heads on the stakes" are nothing if they are not sensual. When we read, "she rang under my feet like an empty Huntley & Palmer biscuit-tin kicked along the gutter," we can see it and hear it and almost feel the vibrations of the tin. Conrad portrays darkness as being universal. All men can relate to the drums, there's a great passage where Conrad explicitly says so, "Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you--you so remote from the night of first ages--could comprehend." There are implicit phrases as well, woven neatly around the events. "I assure you that never before, did this land, this river, this jungle, the very arch of this blazing sky, appear to me so hopeless, and so dark." The narrator, himself, even wonders about his own darkness. In the book the darkness is related to health, to success, to savages, and to humanity. To all things. Memory verses sense of memory: Kurtz's story couldn't be real memory, but only perceptions of memory, mutated with time, flourished by the total experience. We know that Conrad himself underwent experiences similar to those of the narrator of his story. Are we to then assume that the writer's memory has been fictionalized? The rape of the land, the consequences to the soul, the temptation of solitude, become a dark challenge, constructing moral dilemmas. Kurtz discovers, "He was empty inside." His words, "the horror, the horror" display what he, homself, had become at the end. There was a homologous hegemony. For as much as the natives were influenced by the white men's guns and mechanical wonders, the whites didn't have a chance of not being influenced themselves. "(White) men that come out here should have no entrails." They were savages, even the pisher assistant to Kurtz, who couldn't discern taking the human heads off the stakes in the ground. Kurtz began his journey believing he wasn't corrupt like the others, he perceived himself as being in control. But the jungle changes all who enter it. They become wild and uncivilized. For all of their manicuring and white collared shirts, their symbolic clinging to systems that didn't apply, they acted as beasts. "His starched collars and got-up shirt fronts were achievements of character." "Just kill this guy if we need to...there are no laws here." Yet, there were laws. There were natural laws. The geographically transplanted white men were so far removed from imposed structured laws, that they were ill equipped to survive in nature, to respond to its own innate laws. Civilized man no longer saw himself as part of nature. He was not just separate but superior and impious. He irresponsibly answered to no one. He was corrupt, imprisoning the natives, stealing from them, plundering the earth's ivory, murdering anyone he wanted. Conrad's own description sums up the heart of darkness portrayed so vividly in this book: "They wandered here and there with their absurd long staves in their hands, like a lot of faithless pilgrims bewitched inside a rotten fence. The word 'ivory' rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from some corpse. By Jove! I've never seen anything so unreal in my life. And outside the silent wilderness surrounding this clear speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion."
Rating:
Summary: Powerful
Review: Though difficult, Conrad's work speaks volumes about the human spirit. It is difficult to dislike and a treasure of emotions.
Rating:
Summary: A true masterpiece
Review: Heart of Darkness is one of the most beautifully written books I've ever read. Conrad's prose is descriptive without being tiresome, and draws out the deepest feelings from the reader. I did not find his portrayal of the African slaves racist in the least. He is writing from a white man's perspective and his descriptions of the slaves are honest. The deception of the supposedly noble intention of the British imperialists is clearly laid out through beautiful imagery (e.g., blindfolded woman carrying a candle). I am eternally grateful for the English class that required me to this book; I believe this book opened my eyes to many things in this world and my comprehension of imagery in literature and poetry has increased tremendously after reading and dissecting this book.
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Summary: OH MY GOD THIS BOOK WAS BORING
Review: It seems that all of the previous reviews that gave bad ratings were from students whom were forced to read this horrible novel. The narration of Marlow was unrealistic and dreadfully boring. Seriously: it's a seaman telling a story off the top of his mind, yet he incorporates extreme detail and excessive figurative language that just bogs you down. Oh, so detail is great, but how great is it if you have to analyze each individual word just to find some point in this nonsense. I think young students would benefit from the theme of this story (not that I found one), but the style of presenting it just makes you want to burn this book (not a bad idea, it's only $1.00! ). A very well written novel? Well, Conrad surely knows how to make a student's learning experience miserable. Five stars for boredom. One star for everything else.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best
Review: How can an author who did not begin to learn english until he was twenty have such control over the language? Like Joyce, and other masters of the English language, Conrad can at times be difficult to read, and confusing to follow, but underneath the complex exterior is a powerful tale that has the potential to give you a deeper appreciation for literature and maybe even for life. Although the book has been called both racist and sexist, I do not believe that this is the case. I believe Conrad illustrates the feelings and "the horror" of the time as only a master artist could. If you read the novel, do not do so looking to label it as racist or sexist, but rather look at it as an attempt to bring light upon the oppresion of both non whites and women that was taking place at the time. Is the "heart of darkness" really the African jungle and its people as one might naturally assume, or did Conrad want to ironicly portray the colonist, the white europeans, to be the true savages, the true heart of darkness? There are many questions in this book, and it would be impossible to read the novel without finding yourself moved.
Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece in Every Respect
Review: Brilliant, Stunning, Literarily and Metaphysically moving. Standing proudly on my self as one of the greatest books of all-time, the classic status of this book is well deserved. Not only in its moving message, but in its unparalleled writing, Conrad takes us inside the heart of darkness, the heart of man, and brilliantly displays the dark truth, offering an optomistic view of how we can "breath the dead hippo and not be contaminated." Very few other books encapsulated such a powerful message as this one, and no other book does it with such great literary value. This masterpiece offers to even the most discriminating reader the truth in man's condition and leaves the reader with the challenge of knowing that truth. If you are lloking for a classic, superbly written, and infinately meaningful book that transcends time, The Heart of Darkness will leave even you breathless.
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Summary: beauty in the cynical truth
Review: "It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream -- making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams...." He was silent for a while. ". . . No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence -- that which makes its truth, its meaning its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream alone...." the most articulate description of the human existence.
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