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 A Classic of British Literature February 15, 2007
presypclhs (New Jersey USA)
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is a classic of British literature. Although Conrad was born in Russia-controlled Poland and did not become fluent in English until he was 21 years old, he demonstrates a tremendous mastery of the English language. Like many of his stories, Heart of Darkness is based on one of Conrad's own adventures (when he captained a steamboat down the Congo River).
Heart of Darkness chronicles the adventures of Charlie Marlow, a sailor and wanderer whose adventures lead him into the Congo Free State (under the control of Belgium) during the height of African Imperialism. As Marlow progressed further and further into the Congo, he confronts the growing darkness of mankind. The novel is often mistakenly taught in schools as a great anti-Imperialism novel, but this is not quite accurate. Almost every aspect of Heart of Darkness is ambiguous. Although Conrad clearly criticizes the false claims of humanitarian motives in imperialism, he does not condemn the act of imperialism. It is not even clear whether Conrad considers the Africans to be human.
Despite all its ambiguities, the Heart of Darkness is an important novel. At the very least, it paints a stunning and painful portrait of the cruelty and inhumanity of imperialist activities. If Conrad is not condemning imperialism, which is likely the case, then the novel ably portrays the underlying racism (and sexism, incidentally) in European thought during the time period.
The Secret Sharer is a short-story included with some copies of Heart of Darkness. The story follows a ship captain who rescues someone from the waters and allows him to stay on his ship, hidden from the ships' crew. The man turns out to have been a sailor on another ship who killed a crew-member during a storm. The captain protects the killer and eventually allows him to escape. Like the Heart of Darkness, the Secret Sharer is an ambiguous tale open to myriad interpretations.
Conrad's writing style is, admittedly, difficult at times. Although both stories are short, it takes a considerable amount of time to finish each one. The Heart of Darkness is told almost entirely through narrative which, at times, can become confusing and force the reader to go back and re-read some of the previous passages. Some readers are turned off by Conrad's writing style, while others find it very appealing. Whether you find it challenging or not, however, it is important to read the Heart of Darkness. It is difficult to find a better portrait of the horrors of imperialism.
Shortness of Novel Belies its Depth July 27, 2001
Ricky Hunter (New York City, NY United States)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Joseph Conrad created a small masterpiece with the writing of Heart of Darkness (along with the near-miss of masterpiece status of the Secret Sharer, included in this volume) that still reverberates as an examination of the human pysche. Kurtz is a powerful creation that lasts because he is both so frighteningly unreal as he grows in Marlow's imagination but, in the end, too devastingly real as a product of the horrors around him. The territory surrounding the Congo river was truly as horrible as anything brought forth in this novel and reading Adam Hochschild's history, King Leopold's Ghost, along with this book by Joseph Conrad will give the reader a powerful view of the effects of colonization on the continent of Africa. A terrifying journey down the Congo that is important to take.
Darkness imprisoning me... July 17, 2002
Derrick Hoeben (Florence, South Carolina)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Well, indeed the novel gives the reader an immense feeling of darkness as he/she traverses through the short novel's odyssey. Upon finishing the story, one feels as though one's entire environment is surrounded in darkness. Looking outside at the sunny day, taking a walk, or giving help to charity are all futile attempts to escape the newly digested darkness the reader has swallowed. Conrad is a master of bringing out the dark side in everyone. Marlow knows he can never escape this darkness, yet he makes an impressive attempt through the relating of this narrative itself.
Marlow's account of the story is the first time anyone has heard of Kurtz' actual outcome/fate. Thus the narrative gives Marlow the chance to tell this story to a certain group on the Nellie. Since the group (more than 1 person) digests the truth via this narrative they can then in turn outweigh the lie Marlow told to 1 person--Kurtz' Intended. Such an outweighing helps to somewhat free Marlow from the burden he has carried since his prevarication. A must read.
"Mistah Kurtz--he dead." An influential work on five 20th century seminal works October 20, 2007
Michael A Neulander (VA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I read this book for a graduate Humanities course. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, written in 1899 is a seminal work about the ills of colonialism, as well as a postmodern look at the subject of mankind. Conrad's book had a crucial influence on five important works of the twentieth century: J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough. Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land, Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces, and Francis Ford Coppolla's movie Apocalypse Now, screenplay by John Milius, was based on Conrad's book. Another interesting fact is that this work was read by Orson Welle's Mercury Theater Players on the radio and was to be his first movie. After doing some work on it he abandoned the project to do Citizen Kane! I would have loved to of seen what Welles could have done with this story. Conrad's story is so riveting in part, because he himself served as a riverboat captain. High school teachers and college professors who have discussed this book in thousands of classrooms over the years tend to do so in terms of Freud, Jung, and Nietzsche; of classical myth, Victorian innocence, and original sin; of postmodernism, postcolonialism, and poststructuralism.
Just a taste of the plot reels you in! Marlow, the narrator of Heart of Darkness and Conrad's alter ego, is hired by an ivory-trading company to sail a steamboat up an unnamed river whose shape on the map resembles "an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country and its tail lost in the depths of the land" (8). His destination is a post where the company's brilliant, ambitious star agent, Mr. Kurtz, is stationed. Kurtz has collected legendary quantities of ivory, but, Marlow learns along the way, is also rumored to have sunk into unspecified savagery. Marlow's steamer survives an attack by blacks and picks up a load of ivory and the ill Kurtz; Kurtz, talking of his grandiose plans, dies on board as they travel, downstream.
Sketched with only a few bold strokes, Kurtz's image has nonetheless remained in the memories of millions of readers: the lone white agent far up the great river, with his dreams of grandeur,his great store of precious ivory, and his fiefdom carved out of the African jungle. Perhaps more than anything, we remember Marlow, on the steamboat, looking through binoculars at what he thinks are ornamental knobs atop the fence posts in front of Kurtz's house and then finding that each is "black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids-a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth" (57).
I especially became interested in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness from the movie Apocalypse Now. There is a scene in the movie that shows Colonel Kurtz's nightstand in his cave. T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land is one of three books on the nightstand. The other two are Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, and J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough. Anyone wanting to understand the movie Apocalypse Now, especially the character of Colonel Kurtz, and what Milius and Copolla are trying to tell their audience need to read these three books as well as Conrad's Heart of Darkness!
As a graduate student reading in philosophy and history I recommend this book for anyone interested in literature, myth, history, philosophy, religion and fans of Apocalypse Now.
Colonialism/Antin-colonialism November 19, 2008
J. Lawson (New Mexico)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Joseph Conrad is an amazing writer; he uses the English language of the late 19th and early 20th centuries beautifully, he describes the colonial world at its apogee, he tells engrossing stories but even his seemingly potboiler plots (such as The Secret Sharer) raise disturbingly serious moral issues. All of these qualities are epitomized in The Heart of Darkness. Can anyone read the Heart of Darkness without thinking of Apocalypse Now? I believe the movie is one of the best adaptations of literature to film but the impact of Conrad's story is as vivid as the movie.
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