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Summary: The little novella that led to the big movie.
Review: Many comment on the beauty of Conrad's prose. I do not find it here. Weighing in on the many reviews of this book, I confess at the outset that I often find Conrad's prose turgid and sometimes unbearable. Wading through this novella was a labor-- and not a labor of love. It is difficult to believe that the same author produced both this nightmarish harrangue and the compelling, "An Outpost of Progress." Conrad's novella lives on primarily because it was the basis for Coppola's movie, _Apocalypse Now_. In fact, the movie is almost wholesale piracy of the novella. The painful irony is that Coppola muffed the ONE redeeming part of Conrad's work: the narrator's meeting with Kurtz's widow. I strongly suspect that these were scenes-- definitive scenes-- that wound up on the cutting room floor. In _The Heart of Darkness_ we do have these scenes, and they are the salvation of the novella. For those who return to civilization, the heart of darkness is always defined in the context of civilization, as jarring and fraudulent as that context may be.
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Summary: Achebe is right!!
Review: Everything Achebe says about this book is absolutely correct. This book well reveals the ludicrous, insane nature of European stereotypes about Africa and Africans. These stereotypes still persist in the minds of many. Read this book...then read Achebe's Things Fall Apart...then read Conde's Segou....
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Summary: Phonies Love This Book
Review: Not so hot; phony intellectuals are told this is a great work so they make up all sorts of lies about layering and craftsmanship, when it's really just a so-so story and the ending with the guy Marlon Brandon played in the movie (Apocalypse Now) going crazy and Conrad never explaining why there should be such a fascination with him. It might be a nice book if there was a story here. But these modern phonies do not understand that writing is supposed to be enjoyable.
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Summary: One of the dark places of the earth
Review: One of the most powerful stories ever written, and the fact that Conrad himself had a similar experience that the story was based upon makes it even more powerful. This is my all time favorite novel, and the criticisms by Chinua Achebe about this story are not only wrong, but downright ludicrous.Michael Szul
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Summary: Old stories of moral and mental decay, both relevant today.
Review: "Heart of Darkness", perhaps Conrad's most famous stoyr, will strike a familiar chord in the hearts of most readers. Its statements about human nature may have more relevance today than when they were first printed. The film "Apocalypse Now" went far beyond 'burrowing' from this story, and therefore repeats Conrad's themes in more ways than one. "Heart of Darkness" may seemingly depict the darker side of greed and deception, but actually, the underlying theme alludes to something much worse, although seemingly innocuous....
The 'hero' of "Heart of Darkness" embodies all of the virtues of his society. Unfortunately, he goes a little too far; he embodies these values a little too much. As a result, he loses his humanity. Ironically, his monstrous behavior actually epitomizes the values held most dear by those who interface with him. "The Secret Sharer" reveals the flip side of the argument presented in "Heart of Darkness". This time, the main character falls into the extreme of superficility. As the captain of a ship, he supposedly acts as a model of propriety for his subordinates to follow. In fact, the captain's superficiality goes to such extremes that he lies and does other things to help a fugative to escape from justice. The captain does these things not out of any moral concerns, but rather because the fugative resembles him. The captain's amorality may could seem like immorality, if the reader has not encountered people as similarly lacking in depth. Conrad spent time as a seaman himself, and therefore knew the implications of the actions of his charactors. From that context, he saw how circumstances called for group effort in matters of survival. He sets many of his stories in such settings not merely out of familiarity, but rather to relate these powerful statements.
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Summary: the depravity of the human soul
Review: Conrad's rich imagery takes this exploration of the human soul and transcends it to a spiritual sourjourn. "The horror, the horror".
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Summary: Masterpiece
Review: I first read this tale when I was fifteen and its power and craftsmanship has only increased in stature...I've read it countless times since. For an example of some of the finest prose this century, read this book.
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Summary: The brooding gloom of an accursed inheritance.
Review: The words, "brooding" and "gloom" appear in four of the first five paragraphs of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Why this mood? It was the pessimism gripping England late in the 19th century brought on by Darwin's startling revelations and the subsequent realization that perhaps mankind is not God's chosen. Conrad seasons the narrative with images of evolution. The story is told aboard a yacht at anchor, riding out the tide in the Thames, a waterway that led "to the uttermost ends of the earth," even "to the night of the first ages." Scientists speak of early man as if he lived long ago, but Marlow, the narrator, guides the reader to him on a "sea of inexorable time" to the other "end of countless ages . . . to the beginning of time." The journey itself is a voyage to Africa and up the Congo River in search of ivory. There Marlow encounters Kurtz, once the prodigy, now thoroughly corrupted by the horror of an encounter with the "appalling face of a glimpsed truth." Heart of Darkness truly ranks among the greatest of English language novels.
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Summary: What is human?
Review: I read 'Heart of Darkness' late in life and remember thinking -'what a powerful story'- as I was turning the third page. As I turned the fourth page, I realized that 'Apocalype Now' was taken from it, if not word for word, then tought for thought. Nevertheless, the power of Conrads imagery is so overwhelming, that I found myself holding my hand over my beating heart, while imagining myself on that river steamer, making my way into the heart of Africa, into a world where men existed without knowledge of any life outside there own villages. I immediately went out and purchased his other titles before I'd finished 'Heart Of Darkness', just so that I would not be without them, should I suddenly finish the one that I was reading, and wish to go immediately to the next. If you wonder about the boundaries of human experience, this book will not disappoint!
H
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Summary: the darkness of the heart
Review: i remember the first time i read this book. i had to. it was for english class.
it took a while to cut through the dense writing style that covered conrad's story like the jungle that surrounded marlow and kurtz, but after i found my way through, i too became lost.
it's about the brutal nature of civilization vis a vis the truth of the violence of nature. it's about deciding whether the good guy WOULD wear black or white. it's about the old saying that "nothing is ever what it seems." truth found these men in the one place they felt they would rule untouched. it showed them that the outside world and its pretty laws of society are only for pretending that we wouldn't do exactly as they did if we found ourselves in the jungle. at his heart, man is dark, hidden within society's shell like truth hides in the jungle for marlow and kurtz.
one bit of advice... read this book only if you feel you can handle the truth of man. i've gone into the jungle and never returned. it's all horror for me now. and i like it
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