Heart of Darkness is a short but compelling novel which follows the journey of the narrator, Marlow, into the heart of Africa at the height of the British empire. Marlow is shocked by what he sees when he first arrives in Africa — the inhumane manner in which the British officers treat the natives who are forced to work in chain gangs, malnourished and whipped for any mistakes they might make. After this initial shock, he takes up his post and, while waiting for his steamer to be repaired, takes stock of the men he's going to work with, learning about their petty rivalries.
The station manager, in particular, has something against a man named Kurtz who works further inland and the more Marlow hears about Kurtz, the more curious he becomes. He finally boards the steamer with a crew consisting of a few white men whom he calls "pilgrims" because they always carry long wooden staves, and a number of black men or "cannibals." The steamer is attacked when it reaches Kurtz' territory but Marlow finally manages to get the natives to back off.
This is when Marlow finally meets Kurtz, although his curiosity about the man has been further whetted by a meeting with a Russian who brings news of him. Marlow doesn't understand why there is such an aura of mystery around Kurtz but when he meets him, he realizes that Kurtz has gone a little crazy in this foreign land. On the one hand, he seems to rule over the natives like a king but on the other hand, he also hates them and, in a famous line, says "exterminate all the brutes." Kurtz is also fatally ill and dies on board the steamer, before reaching England.
In a sense, Conrad sets Kurtz up as a symbol of the British Empire ruling over Africa and other colonies all around the world. Conrad's implication is that although Britain lorded it over the colonies and benefitted greatly from the trade, it lost the moral high ground by treating human beings as less than they really were.
Joseph Conrad was of Polish Ukrainian descent but he traveled a great deal throughout his life, living in France and finally becoming a British subject. Heart of Darkness is based on his journey to Africa and what he encountered there. When the novel was written, many people didn't even realize that this was meant to be a commentary on British imperialism; they merely thought of it as a description of an alien, exotic place. Now, of course, we recognize Conrad's commentary in the book and also his struggle to accept that he belonged with a set of people who were denuding Africa of all its riches. Incidentally, Conrad didn't learn English until his twenties but his grasp of the language was so strong that he went on to write Heart of Darkness and several other novels, including Lord Jim, which have become literary classics.
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"Joseph Conrad is one of my favorite English novelists. Chronologically speaking, I would argue that Conrad is the next great novelist following Charles Dickens (though I'd be willing to discuss Thomas Hardy). Like Dickens, most people first encounter Conrad in their high school English class - that is, in the worst possible context, unless you're one of the lucky few to have a stellar teacher. Worse yet, most folks are forced to read Heart of Darkness (and A Tale of Two Cities, in Dickens' case), not because of the book's inherent literary value but rather, I suspect, because of the perceived historical lessons a student may draw from it. Indeed, this was where I first encountered Conrad, but later I had the pleasure of reading his entire canon as a grad student and fell in love with books like Lord Jim and Chance: A Tale in Two Parts. It's been at least ten years since I last read Heart of Darkness and reading it today, far removed from high school and grad school or any school really, I was able to encounter it with completely fresh eyes. It is a very strange book - the manner of its storytelling is infamously odd, its subject matter is at once harsh in substance yet foggy in presentation, and in some ways, the action never rises to at least this reader's expectations. Still, it is so mesmerizing in its evocation of mystery and its use of repetition that I feel its poetic aspects are what make this book so special and persistent in my memory. For book lovers, the new Penguin Deluxe Classics Edition is a great book object - appropriately spooky cover artwork by Mike Mignola, plus nice touches like French flaps, a rough front and deckled pages."
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Kenneth (4 out of 5 stars)