Heart of Darkness (1899) is a novella by Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad about a narrated voyage up the Congo River into the Congo Free State in the Heart of Africa. Charles Marlow, the narrator, tells his story to friends aboard a boat anchored on the River Thames. This setting provides the frame for Marlow's story of his obsession with the successful ivory trader Kurtz. Conrad offers parallels between London ("the greatest town on earth") and Africa as places of darkness.Central to Conrad's work is the idea that there is little difference between "civilised people" and "savages." Heart of Darkness implicitly comments on imperialism and racism.Originally issued as a three-part serial story in Blackwood's Magazine to celebrate the thousandth edition of the magazine, Heart of Darkness has been widely re-published and translated into many languages. It provided the inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 film Apocalypse Now. In 1998, the Modern …
Heart of Darkness (1899) is a novella by Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad about a narrated voyage up the Congo River into the Congo Free State in the Heart of Africa. Charles Marlow, the narrator, tells his story to friends aboard a boat anchored on the River Thames. This setting provides the frame for Marlow's story of his obsession with the successful ivory trader Kurtz. Conrad offers parallels between London ("the greatest town on earth") and Africa as places of darkness.Central to Conrad's work is the idea that there is little difference between "civilised people" and "savages." Heart of Darkness implicitly comments on imperialism and racism.Originally issued as a three-part serial story in Blackwood's Magazine to celebrate the thousandth edition of the magazine, Heart of Darkness has been widely re-published and translated into many languages. It provided the inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 film Apocalypse Now. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Heart of Darkness 67th on their list of the 100 best novels in English of the twentieth century.
This is a 110 pages book of metaphors, long metaphors, short ones, tortured ones and blistered ones.
Disappointing, I've been to Africa in the 60s and it's a beautiful but sometimes really hard world that is certainly worth much more than obscure metaphors.
For those interested in gaining a more insightful vision I highly recommend Romain Gary's Les racines du ciel.
Conflicting feelings about this book.
There's a lot that I did like about it. I liked the story and the meandering structure of it.
I liked the darkness of it.
I liked how dammit it was of colonialism.
But I did not enjoy the writing style very much. I felt overwhelmingly like I didn't know who was saying what, who they were saying it to, what they were referring to.
This feeling grew more and more as the book went on and I suppose that's more or less the point isn't it - that we're feeling the descent into the madness of the narrator. But it was just a challenging read for me, and without enough reward to pay off the effort.
I really wanted to like this book. It's a classic isn't it? You're supposed to like it. Everyone talks about how great it is. But I just couldn't …
Conflicting feelings about this book.
There's a lot that I did like about it. I liked the story and the meandering structure of it.
I liked the darkness of it.
I liked how dammit it was of colonialism.
But I did not enjoy the writing style very much. I felt overwhelmingly like I didn't know who was saying what, who they were saying it to, what they were referring to.
This feeling grew more and more as the book went on and I suppose that's more or less the point isn't it - that we're feeling the descent into the madness of the narrator. But it was just a challenging read for me, and without enough reward to pay off the effort.
I really wanted to like this book. It's a classic isn't it? You're supposed to like it. Everyone talks about how great it is. But I just couldn't quite gel with it; honestly if it weren't so short I probably wouldn't have even finished it.
