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Title: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, A. N. Wilson ISBN: 1-84391-008-X Publisher: Hesperus Press Pub. Date: March, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: "The mind of man is capable of anything..."
Comment: I read this book in my advanced English class my senior year and at first I was a bit unethusiastic. The introduction is a bit tedious and long describing in detail how Marlow decides to travel to Africa and how he gets there through his aunt's help. But by the second chapter I was intrigued and by the end of the novel it became my favourite book.
Joseph Conrad is considered one of the greatest, if not the greatest writer of the English language and the funny thing is it is his third language (behind Polish and French). He decided to write "Heart of Darkness" in English because according to him English has words no other language has that he wanted to put in this novel.
The book starts out on a steamboat on the Thames River where the narrarator is talking with a number of other folks on board. Marlow sits (like Buddha) nearby and just starts talking. He then becomes the central speaker and through the narrarator, Marlow's story is told. As a young lad he saw the Congo River and he became transfixed with it and decided one day he would go to Africa. When he becomes an adult his aunt gets him a job in Africa at a Central Station where the head manager manages the smaller stations that are bringing in ivory. Here is where the story hooks the reader. Out in the middle of the jungle is a man by the name of Kurtz. This man is greatly admired and hated at the same time because he is bringing more ivory than all of the stations combined, yet he is the only one out there excluding the Africans he took with him. He sends back any man who has been an assistant to him and the only word out is that he was considering coming back but turned his steamboat around and stayed out in the jungle. Marlow's job is to find him.
The book is amazing and beautifully written. It is almost like a poem with outstanding word images and depth in the words. The theme of the novel is "Absolute power corrupts absolutely." In my opinion the novel is not so much on colonization in Africa as the theory of Conrad's that man is capable of anything and that when a person is out in the middle of nowhere they are capable of anything. Both Kurtz and Marlow are people to be admired, Marlow because he hates lies and the colonization and Kurtz because he always tells the truth. He knows what he did and that is why his last words are "The horror! The horror!" He is the horror.
The novel is a beautifully sculpted nightmare of what man is capable of. It is my favourite book and I think everyone should read it.
Rating: 5
Summary: Into the vacuum poured the primal force of the cosmos.....
Comment: When Kurtz exclaims "The Horror! The Horror!", it is in the same sense that we would also cry out if suddenly faced with the unshielded countenance of God. At the threshhold, just before we were either consumed, or absorbed, this too would be our cry.
This most remarkable of books is a dissection of the Western psyche. We start with the capital city of the living dead in Europe itself. This is a land of sleepwalkers who have never awakened- they live out their lives spinning castles in the air that ultimately mean nothing. This is the state of the modern Western mind. Theory and profit, but no soul. On the journey down the African coast we encounter the European battleship antiseptically shelling the coast. These are tranplanted westerners hiding in the shells of their technological terrors while lobbing shells into the outer world- without really being contaminated by it. Then we reach the coast, where the high ideals preached in Europe are more and more obviously abandoned the farther inland one travels.
When the land and the natives become "difficult", pure force and brutality are used to overcome and destroy. In other words, if they will not be "westernised", turned into copies of us, they must be obliterated. Preferably while making us a profit.
Kurtz was a strong man. He was ambitious and powerful. Perhaps he kept up the charade of "civilising" the natives and the land in the name "progress" longer than anyone else. He kept up these empty lies until he penetraded to the deepest core of the primeval jungle. And then, this hollow shell of ideals and greed imploded. You see, as Conrad points out, Kurtz was fundamentally hollow. Yet Kurtz didn't just die, he was too strong. Instead, into that vacuum rushed the primal force itself. Kurtz became what he hated the most- he became the soul of the jungle- because he had none of his own. He became an "animal" in it's highest sense, a totally natural man. Indeed he became a natural King, as the native tribes recognised. He and the land were truly one.
It is a mistake to judge Kurtz by the standards of the city of the dead. Kurtz and his warriors sweeping across the jungle, taking heads and ivory as trophies, was as natural as lions running down gazelles.... Far more natural than the hypocritical, brutal, soulless, enslavement of the coastal natives in the name of "civilisation".....
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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: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad ISBN: 0486264645 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 01 July, 1990 List Price(USD): $1.50 |
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Title: Lord Jim (Penguin Classics) by Joseph Conrad, Robert Hampson, Cedric P. Watts ISBN: 0140180923 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: October, 1989 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
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Title: All Men Are Brothers: Autobiographical Reflections by Krishna Kripilani, Mahatma Gandhi, Krishna Kripalani, Mohandas Gandhi ISBN: 0826400035 Publisher: Continuum Pub. Date: March, 1980 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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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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