Customer Reviews

Heart of Darkness: Great Books Edition

5 star:		(142)
4 star:		(43)
3 star:		(20)
2 star:		(16)
1 star:		(25)

 

 

Set in the Belgian Congo during the 19th century Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, is a journey to the darkest corners of the wilderness and the human heart. The story is told by Marlow, a sailor, who journeys to the Congo to captain a river steamer and ends up on a expedition to save an extrodinary ivory trader by the name of Mr. Kurtz.

Throughout this journey he encounters the raw brutality of colonialism in all its horror and greed. Conrad brings the reader to the frontier where men do savage things all for the spoils of conquest. This is in sharp contrast with other African adventure classics, such as King Solomon's Mines, which take a much more amiable view of the conquest of Africa.

Conrad shows all this barbarism with vivid imagery. His description of the Congo wilderness brings it life with all the mystery and majesty it is due. Conrad's prose is magnificent; you feel like you are at Marlow's side throughout the whole story. However anyone thinking this is a fast paced thriller is mistaken. It plot moves at a leisurely pace and isn't as rushed as novels today.

Another one of the beauties of this book is its re-readability. I first read it through without reading the introduction and I am glad I did. It let me interperet the meaning of the book without anyone else's influences and when I read the introduction at the end I found that there was a myraid of other themes that could be drawn from the story that I had not thought of. I am now reading it a second time in a new light. I suggest anyone reading it the first time to skip the intro and the footnotes until you've read it once. It will definetly make it a more enjoyable read.

Not that it is not already an excellent book. Heart of Darkness is a literature masterpiece that shows the raw repungent character of colonialism and human nature with haunting power.

When Kurtz exclaims "The Horror! The Horror!" it is in the same sense that we would also cry out if suddenly faced with the unshielded countenance of God. At the threshold, just before we were either consumed, or absorbed, this too would be our cry.

This most remarkable of books is a dissection of the Western psyche. We start with the capital city of the living dead in Europe itself. This is a land of sleepwalkers who have never awakened- they live out their lives spinning castles in the air that ultimately mean nothing. This is the state of the modern Western mind. Theory and profit, but no soul. On the journey down the African coast we encounter the European battleship antiseptically shelling the coast. These are transplanted westerners hiding in the shells of their technological terrors while lobbing shells into the outer world- without really being contaminated by it. Then we reach the coast, where the high ideals preached in Europe are more and more obviously abandoned the farther inland one travels. When the land and the natives become "difficult", pure force and brutality are used to overcome and destroy.

In other words, if they will not be "westernized", turned into copies of us, they must be obliterated. Preferably while making us a profit.

Kurtz was a strong man. He was ambitious and powerful. Perhaps he kept up the charade of "civilizing" the natives and the land in the name "progress" longer than anyone else. He kept up these empty lies until he penetrated to the deepest core of the primeval jungle. And then, this hollow shell of ideals and greed imploded. You see, as Conrad points out, Kurtz was fundamentally hollow. Yet Kurtz didn't just die, he was too strong. Instead, into that vacuum rushed the primal force itself. Kurtz became what he hated the most- he became the soul of the jungle- because he had none of his own. He became an "animal" in its highest sense, a totally natural man. Indeed he became a natural King, as the native tribes recognized. He and the land were truly one.

It is a mistake to judge Kurtz by the standards of the city of the dead. Kurtz and his warriors sweeping across the jungle, taking heads and ivory as trophies, was as natural as lions running down gazelles.... Far more natural than the hypocritical, brutal, soulless, enslavement of the coastal natives in the name of "civilization"....

I was exposed to Conrad when I took a course in Modern Fiction as an undergraduate, 20 years ago. I took the course as an elective to fill a lit requirement. It was one of the best courses I've ever taken, and of all the tremendous books that were assigned, this was my favorite. I have read this at least 1/2 dozen times in my life. I WAS glad, however, that I had a literary scholar walk through this one. I doubt I would have appreciated it as much had I not. I would therefore recommend the critical edition if you're reading this on your own. Modern Fiction - the literary period from circa 1900 to the mid-fifty's, is not everyone's cup of tea and can understand the negative reviews. The best of these works are dense, relative to today's standards but worthwhile - at least to me. Simply, they don't make'em like this anymore.

After reading Heart of Darkness, take another look at Apocalypse Now, the best film adaptation of a novel - ever.

Dark, hypnotic, surreal - Heart of Darkness stands alone as a unique classic of american literature.

When Kurtz exclaims "The Horror! The Horror!", it is in the same sense that we would also cry out if suddenly faced with the unshielded countenance of God. At the threshhold, just before we were either consumed, or absorbed, this too would be our cry.

This most remarkable of books is a dissection of the Western psyche. We start with the capital city of the living dead in Europe itself. This is a land of sleepwalkers who have never awakened- they live out their lives spinning castles in the air that ultimately mean nothing. This is the state of the modern Western mind. Theory and profit, but no soul. On the journey down the African coast we encounter the European battleship antiseptically shelling the coast. These are tranplanted westerners hiding in the shells of their technological terrors while lobbing shells into the outer world- without really being contaminated by it. Then we reach the coast, where the high ideals preached in Europe are more and more obviously abandoned the farther inland one travels.

When the land and the natives become "difficult", pure force and brutality are used to overcome and destroy. In other words, if they will not be "westernised", turned into copies of us, they must be obliterated. Preferably while making us a profit.

Kurtz was a strong man. He was ambitious and powerful. Perhaps he kept up the charade of "civilising" the natives and the land in the name "progress" longer than anyone else. He kept up these empty lies until he penetraded to the deepest core of the primeval jungle. And then, this hollow shell of ideals and greed imploded. You see, as Conrad points out, Kurtz was fundamentally hollow. Yet Kurtz didn't just die, he was too strong. Instead, into that vacuum rushed the primal force itself. Kurtz became what he hated the most- he became the soul of the jungle- because he had none of his own. He became an "animal" in it's highest sense, a totally natural man. Indeed he became a natural King, as the native tribes recognised. He and the land were truly one.

It is a mistake to judge Kurtz by the standards of the city of the dead. Kurtz and his warriors sweeping across the jungle, taking heads and ivory as trophies, was as natural as lions running down gazelles.... Far more natural than the hypocritical, brutal, soulless, enslavement of the coastal natives in the name of "civilisation".....

~This was the first novel I read by Joespeh Conrad, and I just finished reading it again a few days ago. This book is one of the most interesting stories that also examines the character of a man. Marlow is an older sailor who tells the tale of his time as captain of steamship in Africa. He works for a an ivory trading company, and his mission is to go up river to Kurtz's station. Marlow vividly recalls his thoughts and feelings from his trip up the river. After an introduction to how he~~ came to his position, we join Marlow in Africa as he is awaiting his command. It is here that he first hears of the extraordinary Kurtz. The manager, who seems greedy, and his brick layer, who wants to be Assistant manager, don't like Kurtz. But the more Marlow hears about Kurtz, the more he wants to talk with him. As he repairs his ship, as he sails up river, his anticipation builds. Nearing Kurtz's station, I could feel Marlow's angst when he believes Kurtz dead. The man Kurtz had been~~ was no more. He had become someone else, a man with power. The desire for more ivory had possessed him. In his last words, Kurtz reveals his opinion on life and the relationships therein: "the horror, the horror." The story remains one of my favorites.~

Marlow, a British sailor at the turn of the century, recounts his search for a certain Mr. Kurtz, along a river in Congo, to an anonymous "I." The book is a monologue told over a single evening. The emotions Marlow displays are awe (towards Kurtz), disdain (towards the misdeeds of the company Marlow works for and the misdeeds of the "natives"), and fear. The intensity of such emotions draws one to follow the monologue till the end. I grew interested in this novel due to the ubiquitous references to it in contemporary political literature. The book I found however to be of psychological nature more than anything else. Never once while reading was I convinced that ideology was the crux of the matter. To the contrary I felt as if imperialism/colonialism were used as articles to justify the existence of the puzzle that was Kurtz. Conrad may have intended Kurtz, in his bleakness and contradictions, to be an embodiment of such ideologies, as contemporary critics like to put it. Such arguments naturally lend themselves to the interpretation that this novel is a critique of imperialism. It may well be, if one can assume that Conrad understood the highly politicized term "imperialism" as we do now. I suspect that this novel is instead really a critique, or a report, of "the present," the circumstance Conrad had experienced.

O.K., but english teach years ago in high school over did this one a bit. But, I found that I loved the story in spite of it being beat to death in class. Wonderful book, and can be enjoyed for fun and/or for the brain.

I really didn't like this book. It was really dull and I didn't enjoy the symbolism. That however is probably because I am a moron. But whatever the reason, I didn't like it.

When reading the introduction of a book, any book, I always grow suspicious when I'm told that repeated readings will unlock the book's true majesty. Unlike, perhaps, the providers of such advice, I tend to read in a manner that allows absorption of the material on the first try. God willing, we are given but 75 years on this earth and innumerable books to consume, yet somehow, to truly understand Conrad, we've got to read HIM over and over again. This doesn't seem to be my problem. It seems to be his.

Heart of Darkness is a novella in which a man named Marlow recounts his journey up the Congo in search of Mr. Kurtz, an ivory trader. At just over 100 pages, the book is a model of literary economy, but it's gift of brevity is also it's curse. Marlow and Kurtz never fully develop as characters and, subsequently, I didn't really care what happened to them. True, I enjoyed the content, but without once making a connection to the protagonist.

Heart of Darkness is, for all intents and purposes, a good read with some fine interwoven philosophy, but I fail to see how it merits the traditional adulation and controversy it receives. Because of today's hot-button issues of race and colonialism, perhaps it insinuates itself into popular culture leaving more behind than it should (eg. reviewers whose interminable parade of paragraphs come only by way of projection). Simply put, however, Heart of Darkness is a good short story about a restless seafarer in search of a jungle-addled company man. It rates 4 stars. Nothing more and nothing less.

It seems to me that some people take way too much meaning out of certain books. To me, books should be like music. The message should be in the words, not by deciphering "now what was the meaning of the tattered book in the hut?" Many praise this book as literary genius, but I think it was no more than a boring story (hard to get through it's measly page number). If you want the story told in a good way, rent Apocalypse Now; it's based (albeit more loosely) on the book.