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Title: Heart of Darkness: With the Congo Diary (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) by Joseph Conrad, R. G. Hampson ISBN: 0-14-018652-2 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 May, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.99 (315 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Psychological rather than political
Comment: 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.
Rating: 5
Summary: The brooding gloom of an accursed inheritance.
Comment: The words, "brooding" and "gloom" appear in four of the first five paragraphs of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Why this mood? It was the pessimism gripping England late in the 19th century brought on by Darwin's startling revelations and the subsequent realization that perhaps mankind is not God's chosen. Conrad seasons the narrative with images of evolution. The story is told aboard a yacht at anchor, riding out the tide in the Thames, a waterway that led "to the uttermost ends of the earth," even "to the night of the first ages." Scientists speak of early man as if he lived long ago, but Marlow, the narrator, guides the reader to him on a "sea of inexorable time" to the other "end of countless ages . . . to the beginning of time." The journey itself is a voyage to Africa and up the Congo River in search of ivory. There Marlow encounters Kurtz, once the prodigy, now thoroughly corrupted by the horror of an encounter with the "appalling face of a glimpsed truth." Heart of Darkness truly ranks among the greatest of English language novels.
Rating: 3
Summary: Three is not the charm
Comment: This time is my third go at reading Heart of Darkness. The first and second time I was under the pressure of time and grades for high school and later college. As the book is short in length, both teachers only gave one or two days to read the book. At least for me, it's a dense book. The further into the story I get, the harder it is to read. It's as if the writing style mimics the growing darkness of the hinterland as Marlow gets closer to finding Kurtz. Kurtz, now, is, in my humble opinion, a let down. All through the book he's played up as this superhuman man who knows the wilds of Africa better than any one and is of such a character that he has devotees! Yet when he is finally found, he is but a husk of a man, insane from illness and is only in the story in person for a couple of pages. Even after Marlow has met him face to face, he continues to sing the man's praises! Somehow in that brief and uninspiring meeting Marlow is converted?
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Title: CliffsNotes on Conrad's Heart of Darkness & The Secret Sharer by Daniel Moran ISBN: 0764585843 Publisher: Cliffs Notes Pub. Date: 05 June, 2000 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: Things Fall Apart : A Novel by CHINUA ACHEBE ISBN: 0385474547 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 01 September, 1994 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Constance Garnett ISBN: 0553211757 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 June, 1984 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man by James Joyce, Seamus Deane ISBN: 0142437344 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 25 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $9.00 |
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Title: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley ISBN: 0553212478 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 May, 1984 List Price(USD): $4.95 |
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