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Summary: Thoughts on Heart of Darkness
Review: Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is a terrifying tale of corruption, greed, and evil. The story is narrated through the character Marlow, and begins as Marlow recounts his horrific adventure to his shipmates.
Marlow works for a Belgium trading company whose primary interest is ivory. As Marlow continues his job he quickly learns the shady intentions of the Company and he describes in detail the sinister practices used to acquire ivory. One man in particular has become completely engulfed in greed and obsession. His name is Kurtz, and it is Marlow's job to remove Kurtz because his conduct has become too extreme and his practices could taint the Company's reputation. During Marlow's shocking quest he becomes educated on the dark side of mankind.
The Heart of Darkness is a fascinating nightmare. Imagery overflows as Conrad vividly describes the Europeans' sick trading practices and their excessive greed. Heart of Darkness is a well-written book, though it is extremely fast paced and sometimes hard to follow. Despite the intriguing storyline, it is often difficult to understand exactly what is happening. However, the book certainly should not be disregarded. The reader should be aware that the Heart of Darkness is very intense and is not an easy read.
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Summary: Nihilism and Existentialism
Review:
The nightmare of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is found in its stark portrayal of madness under the influence of an environment filled with desolation. Its protagonist, Mr. Kurtz, is raised amongst civilized people, adapts virtues that were regarded proper in society during the Victorian era, yet when he travels into the Congo, where these qualities are of no consequence, he abandons them to become wild. To understand how Kurtz fell to this emotional corruptness, a reader must be aware of three main elements that cause his disillusionment: power, greed, and isolation.
When Kurtz was living in England, he was a follower of the island's ruling party and conducted tasks amongst the supervision of its magistrates. Under these conditions, most of his actions were in abidance with the law, and if he were found conducting himself improperly in society, a harsh punishment in the form of fines or imprisonment for activities against the state could result. With his voyage into the Congo in the obtainment of a fortune through ivory trade, the lack of ruling parties in these far-flung outposts has an immediate effect on his persona. He discovers as he travels further into the interior of Africa, that lawlessness grows as the watchful eyes of government factions fade away into the nothingness of primeval jungles. Many individuals thrown into an environment where they find unbridled freedom will seek means of overpowering others, and as Mr. Kurtz finds himself the sole member of intelligence amongst a province populated by heathens, he seeks ways to gain rule. When Marlow arrives to bring Kurtz back to civilization, the ivory trader has become supreme ruler over most of the land's inhabitants and has brainwashed the people into following his whims. He gains power over the natives through his ruthless treatment of traitors, putting their heads on stakes, his disregard for English customs, and failure to adhere to the application of a well-bred indoctrination into the mindset of his people. He encourages savagery, for he understands people bred from the wild will only follow those who enforce nature's unwritten code. He grows so favorable towards his position as ruler over the jungle that when he discovers Marlow is coming to take him back to civilization, a place where he has no control, he tries to stop him and dispatches natives to massacre all the passengers on the steamer. Marlow survives the onslaught and takes Kurtz away from a place he believes has deranged the man's mind but has actually offered him a gift so many people seek in life: control over the masses.
Ivory in an insurmountable supply creates greediness in Kurtz. He is renown in the Congo for his expertise in the ivory trade, and no one can match his production. Boatloads of the valuable commodity are sent downstream, bringing him handsome profits, yet when he achieves financial success the glamour of wealth becomes false to him. He begins to see his business not through what he can get for his product but in how much he can produce. Money is not needed in the jungle, and Kurtz goes out on hunting expeditions not to earn profits but to possess ivory in massive numbers, for he finds gratification in ownership of these valuable items. Kurtz's greed is shown in his desire to kill a Russian friend unless he returns ivory stolen from a personal stock and through his continuous, almost mindless ventures into the jungle for more supply. What purpose does his life serve while being taken up in this melodramatic pursuit of materialistic gain?
The jungle, in its loneliness and impenetrability, drives Kurtz to a mental regeneration. He has lived away from England and its cultured people for many years and his separation from society awakens the chained beast within him. All men come from the primeval and carry from their earliest ancestors a propensity for wildness. How this wildness comes out in obverse behavior, depends on a person's condition, state of affairs, or environment, and when Kurtz comes to Africa, all of these factors play against etiquette, so he allows the jungle to take control of him. The characters in the book regard this abrupt change in Kurtz as madness, but would not a prisoner of any social standing put behind bars for a long period of time suffer a change in his or her mental makeup? Kurtz is not driven mad but has formed a closer bond with his surroundings, and through this friendship, has survived years of solitude and contact with unpredictable savages. It would be true to surmise he could never survive in England with his current mental instability, but the same could be said of a tiger, which could outlive any unarmed lawyer in the wild.
When we come to the end of the story, we wonder if Kurtz's actions and words are not stupid mutterings from a lunatic but held a meaning beyond reason. He utters before his death the powerful words which have been memorialized in further works of literature and a film adaptation of the book set in Vietnam. Is this final cry against life a disgust for what he has become in the Congo? The reader can make his or her own conjectures upon the meaning of these words, but in the story, it is certain, through Kurtz's big plans for life and his universal ideas toward improving the future that he wishes for immortality. Maybe he discovers how useless personal gain, greed, and betterment over others are in the end when all that invites us is death. Marlow understands this when he recounts the story of Kurtz onboard a cruising yawl to a materialist who may be unaware that his respectable position in society and his economy will mean nothing if he died the next day. Then there arises the supposition of Kurtz's imperialistic tendencies having an association to his fateful words. Before he utters his final disgust upon the unfairness of life through its inevitable end in death, the reader is shown through the crippled man's mad control over the natives, the propensities of a conquering magistrate whose existence is centered on the exploiting of lower denizens on foreign soil. In this representation of a domineering controller of inferior members in a country not of his own nationality, his actions are reminiscent of the imperialists living in his era, who despised death, yet Kurtz's mind set, in other ways, could be seen as nihilistic, for from Kurtz there is a blatant disregard for civilization, law, and the substance of life. It is almost impossible to generalize Kurtz under a political label, but the reader discovers he has become one with the jungle, wild and untamed.
If Kurtz is a nihilist or an imperialist gone native, what is Marlow? Marlow is introduced in the story as a wanderer, who looks at life not for what he can get in the means of materialistic gain or private ownership of commodities to suit his egoism, but for its natural experiences. As a sailor who has spent most of his life on the sea, without a home or a family to call his own, his opinions on life reflect the futility of finding substance in civilized society. He regards cities like Gravesend, a city that sends thousands of ships out to reap the benefits of foreign colonies, as one of the darkest places on earth. These qualities, although inherent of an anti-capitalist, do not make Marlow a Marxist. Yes, Marlow regards the bourgeoisie, represented by the crew accouterment of the lawyer and accountant, as loathsome creations of capitalism, his affiliation with socialism vanish in an expressive disregard to all government precepts through an inherent nihilism that grow out of his experiences with Kurtz. Before he meets this mystic man, Marlow is an average adventurer, probably of independent political affiliation, searching for the meaning of his existence, and he discovers from rumors by other traders and outpost attendants in his trek through the Congo that Kurtz holds the answer to his purpose in life. Yet when he does meet him, only more confusion arises. Although Marlow gets no answers, his regard for civilization and its learned denizens rise to a fervid abhorrence, and by the end of the book we find this simple sailor more confused and distraught about his personal existence than at the time he started his journey into the abyss.
The meaning of Heart of Darkness can be generalized as humanities breaking away from a cave dwelling past to advance and destroy the earth with concrete materialism. The book could be used as a foretelling of our eventual demise, an end which could come in many forms yet not is limited to technology replacing us, nuclear holocaust, class struggles, and human wrought disintegration of the ecosystem.
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Summary: A river of darkness
Review: "And if you gaze into the abyss,
the abyss gazes also in to you"
-Nietzsche- (beyond good and evil)
I'm 26, to a reader of my generation is very difficult to approach this novel without remembering scenes from Coppola's mesmerical movie, but, once you get on the boat and start going up river, you are way beyond anything previously told.
Conrad's story deals with the perils of a young sailor,Marlow, sent to find old, misterious man Kurtz, to do this Marlow takes a boat up a river deep in the heart of the dark congo, as the story moves on, the plot gets more and more psycological, as if with every mile travelled the narration needed to get more technical, more insightful.
The heart of darkness takes us too close to a sane mind going off the ground, it's a wonderful book.
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Summary: Fabulous Book of Literature
Review: After looking at the negative reviews written by high school students who probably listen to MTV and eat sugar all day and have names like Gina, Tabitha, and Bunny, I found it ironic that their comments should perhaps dissuade young people from taking this book up. This book is a work of art, and it is written in a style that is intended to examine the mind of a man, for those of you too confused by this, I suggest you keep reading Anne Rice.
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Summary: You Become Like that Which You Behold...
Review: Conrad's classic excursion into NIGHTMARE and psycho-spiritual disintegration rings--perhaps--with greater Truth,realism and terror then when it first challenged the sensibilities of "modern readers" a century ago.The "adventure"of Marlow voyaging into The Heart of Darkness is(now)a PM horror story of prophecy confirmed with a voice echoing from our apocalyptically violent epoch's Collective Id.Themes of arrant greed;corruption by power;moral decadence;and sheer rank folly parading as heroism comprise a story which can still be grasped as a monumental attack on Imperialism and indictment of The West's FAUSTIAN mythology.But...to note Yeat's gnostic warning"as Things Fall Apart"...prescience of Conrad's anti-Myth approaches the dimension of Pagan Parable. Here is the story...to oppose the mad Nietzschean's...of PM's archetypal MADMAN,the untermensch,Mr.KURTZ. Conrad's hypnotically languid, serpentine dream/nightmarelogic narrative plummets readers(unlike Dante,who had Virgil to guide him)into the depths of "unearthly earth": Hell's 10th Circle where Satan's visage is his own, Gorgon's-mirrored face. The JUNGLE Kurtz'double Marlow journeys into is no more African than a tourist's trip to San Antonio, "Remembers the Alamo". Terms like "Jungian" or resort to occult
esoterica regarding "initiation ordeals" cannot suppress ill-at-ease awareness that Conrad's poetic hymn to Spiritual Danger evokes and sustains. Writers of the ilk of Dostoyevsky, Kafka, Melville(now Czeslaw Milosz and Vladimir Solovyov)warned
of ERUPTION of the Heart of Darkness into Civilization as it defied and destroyed The Spiritual Anchors of Being in the name of SELF-APOTHEOSIS. Now even children experience THE HORROR as their daily lives witness collapse of Category Institutions(Home;Church;School;fundamental Sexual ontology)that are architecture,not merely of a Society but of Human Intelligibilty of itself:LOGOS. To say Joseph Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS experiences like the worst psychedelic Mind Surgery is perhaps trite but approaching n analogy that post-LSD PM trippers might recognize. HEART OF DARKNESS is not a tale for children. It is the low road to where a Self-Infatuated Culture is driving itself. It is the Rough Beast ride...no longer slouching toward Bethlehem...in high,hell bent gear." You Become like that which you behold...yet amazing in Power and Grace or howling with dread and shame," said Blake. "You become like that which you Love," said St. Augustine. HEART OF DARKNESS...in Kurtz ultimate illumination of The Damned, manifests what one becomes when Self-Love and hubris ultimately betrays the Lover...
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Summary: Heart of Overanalysis
Review: Heart of Darkness is a popular choice for AP English classrooms. The era is colonialist. It has teens, possibly twenties, of themes. It's written in a challenging style- which might derive from Conrad's linguistic abilities (English his third language) or his complex grammatical usage. It has a message, much like To Kill A Mockingbird, that is politically correct and manages to fit into these modern times although "Marlow" (Conrad, really) is not a fan of women or "savages" (blacks). The book is deeper than the river its set on. The book is also considered a classic by college professors, who, of course, are always right.
The book starts out on the Thames, with a nameless narrator that plays no part in the storyline, but rather listens to his fellow sailor, Marlow, a man of adventure whom explores sea and land alike with fervor, tell a story. The ship is docked in the harbor for the night, and Marlow starts talking. He doesn't shut up for the rest of the book. Relating the story of his trip to Africa, Marlow talks about working for a French Exploration Company that asks him to use a steamboat in order to bring back one of their best workers, Mr. Kurtz. Mr. Kurtz has apparantly gone mad in the jungle. Marlow sets off for Africa and arrives at a station where he is, after a two-hundred mile march, forced to wait another two months for his steamboat to be fixed. Along the way, foolish white boyz praise Kurtz. And he finds Kurtz- eventually. But there's a lot of adventure that happens along the way- including a surprising death by arrow- and Kurtz is not what anyone would expect.
I thought this book was decent. This is not, by any stretch of the imagination or my pretense, a favorite book of mine. There's a lot to analyze in it, but that's just it- there's a lot to analyze. The themes it tackles, especially power, are important, but are not the themes I wish to think about during my spare time. Conrad's style I also find annoying. Ornamentation for ornamentation's sake is the reason I have always hated, with incredible passion, Jane Austen. It's like there's ten feet of doilies surrounding each sentence. Same with Conrad. Same with this book. Don't read it- now. Someone will make you read it in college, and although it will be worth your time, it won't be a lot of fun.
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Summary: "The mind of man is capable of anything..."
Review: I read this book in my advanced English class my senior year and at first I was a bit unethusiastic. The introduction is a bit tedious and long describing in detail how Marlow decides to travel to Africa and how he gets there through his aunt's help. But by the second chapter I was intrigued and by the end of the novel it became my favourite book.
Joseph Conrad is considered one of the greatest, if not the greatest writer of the English language and the funny thing is it is his third language (behind Polish and French). He decided to write "Heart of Darkness" in English because according to him English has words no other language has that he wanted to put in this novel.
The book starts out on a steamboat on the Thames River where the narrarator is talking with a number of other folks on board. Marlow sits (like Buddha) nearby and just starts talking. He then becomes the central speaker and through the narrarator, Marlow's story is told. As a young lad he saw the Congo River and he became transfixed with it and decided one day he would go to Africa. When he becomes an adult his aunt gets him a job in Africa at a Central Station where the head manager manages the smaller stations that are bringing in ivory. Here is where the story hooks the reader. Out in the middle of the jungle is a man by the name of Kurtz. This man is greatly admired and hated at the same time because he is bringing more ivory than all of the stations combined, yet he is the only one out there excluding the Africans he took with him. He sends back any man who has been an assistant to him and the only word out is that he was considering coming back but turned his steamboat around and stayed out in the jungle. Marlow's job is to find him.
The book is amazing and beautifully written. It is almost like a poem with outstanding word images and depth in the words. The theme of the novel is "Absolute power corrupts absolutely." In my opinion the novel is not so much on colonization in Africa as the theory of Conrad's that man is capable of anything and that when a person is out in the middle of nowhere they are capable of anything. Both Kurtz and Marlow are people to be admired, Marlow because he hates lies and the colonization and Kurtz because he always tells the truth. He knows what he did and that is why his last words are "The horror! The horror!" He is the horror.
The novel is a beautifully sculpted nightmare of what man is capable of. It is my favourite book and I think everyone should read it.
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Summary: A Voyage Into Absurdity
Review: It is remarkable that one of our greatest books in the English language is written by someone whose first language was not English (and written in such a gorgeous, ambiguous style). This is one of my favorites, in a way, because its theme is so straight forward and yet so hard to grasp. Much has been written about this book and many film versions have been made. My take on it is that it is kind of an ironic and absurd voyage that takes place. Marlow plunges into this darkness with such fervor only to find something at the other end which makes the whole voyage seem like it was all in vain - just as Kurtz attempts at a successful love-life came to the same disapointing end. So Kurtz simplifies his existence to its basic human form - and only begins to accentuate the worst trait of humanity - greed. It is almost like Thomas Hobbes' vision of humanity - something completely vile. Our only hope in the end is Marlow - what does he learn from this - food for thought.
Rating: 
Summary: Just dull
Review: Many people find the writing style of those who are considered "classic" writers to be dull. I'm not one of those people and have enjoyed a large number of classics. However, in this case, I did find the book to be boring. The aim was to create a psychological exploration of Kurtz - a man on the "frontier" in Africa - an exploration that shows the extremes of horror and despair amongst varying circumstances, and one that unfolds alongside a physical exploration of Africa.
This aim was not achieved as I found it just too dreary. It's not that the pacing was slow - plenty of great works have slower pacing. It's that it was slow and the actual writing didn't make up for it. Perhaps Conrad's other stuff is better.
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Summary: A Satire!
Review: Nothing positive is coming out of imperialism as practiced in the Congo as Conrad shows it . . . the native population is portrayed as practically sub-human, with their societies untouched by the Europeans. Likewise, the Africans appear to have had no effect on the traders. The narrator is the only one who has compassion for these people, except for Kurtz at the end of his life who, looking back on what he has done, exclaims the horror, the horror. Conrad takes the imperialist society of the late eighteenth century to its extremes and shows how shallow it all is. But this story has greater application. It shows how human beings can be reduced to sub-human beings by members of the "superior" spociety. This allows the protagonist to treat these beings with something less than humanity, as witnessed throughout history . . today included. The heart of darkness may be in the heart of humanity, not just on a large multi-colored map.
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