Heart of Darkness (Green Integer)
by Joseph Conrad
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Read in April, 2008
I started this and then read a couple of other books and just finished this one off today. I've been trying to read some more classics in the past year or so and I am truly learning why they are classics. It definitely makes me less tolerant of all the junk out there. There is just something uplifting about good writing, even when it's a depressing story like this one. Somehow it just draws you in. This book is very dark, mysterious, and dreamlike. You sort of travel with the narrator, a s...more
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How a personal crises can develope easily and become a general crises
دل تاریکی سرشار از نماد است. به همین دلیل هرکس آن را به صورتی که خواسته توصیف کرده است. استعمار و استثمار آفریقا توسط اروپا؟ سیاهی تمدن اروپایی در برابر سفیدی توحش آفریقا؟ خشونت هنر؟ چند گانگی تمدن اروپا در برخورد با تمدن های دیگر در قار...more
دل تاریکی سرشار از نماد است. به همین دلیل هرکس آن را به صورتی که خواسته توصیف کرده است. استعمار و استثمار آفریقا توسط اروپا؟ سیاهی تمدن اروپایی در برابر سفیدی توحش آفریقا؟ خشونت هنر؟ چند گانگی تمدن اروپا در برخورد با تمدن های دیگر در قار...more
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Another Conrad. Well, why not? I have to read them both, so I might as well read them back to back. I know this is the most frequently read Conrad, but as I said, I think I liked The Secret Agent better.
The psychology of The Secret Agent is more subtle than in this novel, and I think that makes for a better book. The later book also spells out specific behaviours and attitudes that reveal that psychology better than Heart of Darkness does. It's a case of show, don't tell, creating the more int...more
The psychology of The Secret Agent is more subtle than in this novel, and I think that makes for a better book. The later book also spells out specific behaviours and attitudes that reveal that psychology better than Heart of Darkness does. It's a case of show, don't tell, creating the more int...more
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This is a book I read twice and will probably never read again. I try to see this as a "great" novel but I have always wished Conrad had achieved a greater separation between his own voice and Marlow's. For me his inability to do so made it difficult to stomach the inherent racism in the book. The passage that will always stick out in my mind is the one in which the narrator muses that an educated black man is as "unnatural" as a dog putting on clothes and walking on its hind...more
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Read in July, 2008
I didn't enjoy the intricate descriptions, psychological complexities, and social commentary of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness this time as much as I did on my third read. I tend to blame myself for this, but maybe Heart of Darkness just can't stand up to four reads in eight years.
There's a lot to be said about Heart of Darkness. And there certainly has been a lot said about it. It's worth reading if only to join the discourse in which Chinua Achebe declared Conrad...more
There's a lot to be said about Heart of Darkness. And there certainly has been a lot said about it. It's worth reading if only to join the discourse in which Chinua Achebe declared Conrad...more
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Read in July, 2008
recommends it for:
masochists
I think this was the fourth time I have picked up this book, and I forced myself to read it. This time was no easier...I tried reading slowly, I tried reading quickly, I tried reading aloud, and NOTHING improved the writing. There were moments when the descriptions of the river, the jungle, were wonderful and eerie. And then there were the long babblings of Marlow the narrator. If I were one of his audience on the boat, to whom he was recounting his journey into the heart of darkness, I migh...more
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Read in September, 2001
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Read in April, 2008
When I was a child, my father caught me frowning at a very small gift wrapped package I'd received. The dashed hopes for a larger package were broadcast across my face.
"Dynamite comes in small packages." My father counseled me. The literal and figurative truth of this statement has revealed itself throughout my life.
This story is specifically relevant to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. It is a small book. (Surprisingly small.) And it is pure dynamite. (Super po...more
"Dynamite comes in small packages." My father counseled me. The literal and figurative truth of this statement has revealed itself throughout my life.
This story is specifically relevant to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. It is a small book. (Surprisingly small.) And it is pure dynamite. (Super po...more
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Read in July, 2008
Heart of Darkness is an expressive account of the horror perpetrated by Belgium's King Leopold II in the Congo in the late nineteenth century. Conrad himself captained a riverboat in the Congo during this period, so the book is written from first hand knowledge. It's powerfully evocative, heavily metaphoric and beautifully written. The protagonist, Marlow, delves into some of the emotional and moral struggles that Conrad certainly must have experienced, and expresses the turmoil in witnessing im...more
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Read in August, 2008
I read the other day that Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford collaborated on a number of pieces. Now that I've finished Heart of Darkness (1902), I can see how similar their approach to writing was. They both are fascinated with narration, and in particular with the monologue. They create a character who rambles on and on (Conrad gives us Marlow, Ford gives us Dowell in The Good Soldier), telling his tale in a realistic manner, full of asides, inconsistencies, irony, and anacolutha...more
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Has a copy to sell/swap
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Read in June, 2008
recommended to Chris by:
My fellow English majors
The horror! The horror!
Somehow I managed to earn an undergraduate degree in English without reading Heart of Darkness. I think I am the exception. So I decided to pick this up on my own and give it a try. I am glad that I decided to read it, but I won’t read it again. I figured it would not take me long to read, as the story only fills 70 pages. But when I found myself nearly half way through, with Marlow still sitting at the bottom of the river, I began to wonder if anything would...more
Somehow I managed to earn an undergraduate degree in English without reading Heart of Darkness. I think I am the exception. So I decided to pick this up on my own and give it a try. I am glad that I decided to read it, but I won’t read it again. I figured it would not take me long to read, as the story only fills 70 pages. But when I found myself nearly half way through, with Marlow still sitting at the bottom of the river, I began to wonder if anything would...more
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Read in April, 2008
I listened to this book in my car during my daily commute to balance out the fact that I was reading "Outlander" at home. Just to keep my literary karma on an even keel and to prevent the inevitable cognitive dissonance which would occur if I was only reading romantic fluff.
I was surprised by how much I thought this book would be better if I had read it in print, considering that it is meant to be a story the main character is telling aloud to the other people with him. Maybe i...more
I was surprised by how much I thought this book would be better if I had read it in print, considering that it is meant to be a story the main character is telling aloud to the other people with him. Maybe i...more
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Read in June, 2008
This is a short novel of dark substance, representational of the empirical and corporate exploitation of Africa in the mid-19th century, and perhaps especially of HM Stanley's expedition up the Congo river in the 1870s to find David Livingstone. The story is told in the first person by a sailor, recounting his earlier experience as a new, young river boat captain working for a trading company in the depths of the African interior. His maiden journey, to collect his company's most successful and...more
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Read in January, 2006
This was one of the novels I had to read in for one of my English classes. That does not mean that I hate the book because I am foreced to read it. It does mean that it will probably be something in a genre I might not like. I have tried not to hate anything I have read, even if it was for school or pleasure. The thing is that it was very difficult to get through this novel. At one point I decided to listen to an audio version and follow along so I still was sort of reading.
Even thoug...more
Even thoug...more
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Read in March, 2008
This book has been on my to-do list ever since I saw Apocalypse Now. Based on Conrad's own experiences in the Congo, Heart of Darkness is woven around an Englishman hired by an ivory-trading company to pilot a steamship up the Congo and rescue one of it's most successful agents, Kurtz. A lot of people describe the book as racist, but I prefer to look beyond that aspect. It is a brilliant insight into Victorian England at the height of it's power, and of colonial Europe as a whole. I've hardly s...more
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Read in January, 2002
This book was grueling the first several times I read it. It somehow turned up on the syllabus for at least 3 classes that I took, starting in high school and extending throughout college. Like a sucker, I kept re-reading it every time.
It turns out it was worth it. Normally, I'm the type of person who will force myself to finish a book that I don't really like, but will never bother picking it up again. But more than circumstance caused me to keep going at this one. There's something there. ...more
It turns out it was worth it. Normally, I'm the type of person who will force myself to finish a book that I don't really like, but will never bother picking it up again. But more than circumstance caused me to keep going at this one. There's something there. ...more
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Another book that I have read periodically over more than fifty years. Each time I find something new and and evaluate it differently. Since the print on the page stays the same while I have lived, thought about colonialism, reading the great recent book about Belgian King Leopold's horrific hold over the Congo. Thus this book remains a touchstone for my own maturity. A book that does this for me over time is one I place on my "treasure" book shelf.
In Heart of Darkness, Conrad...more
In Heart of Darkness, Conrad...more
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recommends it for:
Those who are ready for a heavy read from a dense writer.
What a thick little book. I have to say when I first started reading this book back in my freshman year of high school, I hated this book and was quickly bored with it after ten pages. I put it down and gave up on it. Part of the reasn is because I read the short story in front of it and that WAS indeed mind-numbingly boring so I didn't expect anything different from Heart of Darkness.
Now five years have passed and I really enjoy this book. It's just as dense as I remember it, but I defini...more
Now five years have passed and I really enjoy this book. It's just as dense as I remember it, but I defini...more
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When Conrad wrote this book, I imagine he asked himself the question, "what does it mean to be civilised?" I read this for school and reread it a couple times later on. My professor called it "belle lettre" 'cause it was written as though Conrad chose every single word for a very exact purpose. Of course, Conrad's context for his study of civilisation, symbolised by light out of darkness, is steeped in all the racism, discrimination, ignorance and general inhumanity that p...more
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Read in August, 2008
I just finished reading this book for the first time and I really liked it. Having seen Apocalypse Now before reading it I couldn't help associating parts of the book with the movie. I think it helped though, because the movie is so excellent in it's own right. It gives you better appreciation for what went into creating the movie and how Stanley Kubrick altered it to give it a different flavor.
There are a lot of differences between the book and the movie. When Marlow goes to visit the wife at...more
There are a lot of differences between the book and the movie. When Marlow goes to visit the wife at...more