Where do I begin? Alas, Conrad! You break my heart (of darkness). For all your incredible imagery and your mastery of the macabre, I cannot get past your odious racism. Here, there, and everywhere. Hook, line, and sinker.
Some would argue that it is sophomoric to read a hundred-year-old text through a "modern" lens. After all, the characterization of African people as quaint, sub-human creatures with "rolling eyeballs" was commonplace back in the day. None of this PC drivel about how n***er is a bad word. Well, let me tell you, I'm sure people from the Congo reading it back then would not have appreciated Conrad's characterizations. And, as a black person reading this novel now, I admit that I don't consider it brilliant or canonical at all. I consider it an insult.

(here's somebody good to back me up: http://kirbyk.net/hod/image.of.africa...) ( )

Didn't like it the first time. Didn't like it the second time. ( )

Perhaps seminal in its first writing and perhaps influential in the downfall of the Congo Free State as personal property of the King of Belgium, this novella does not stand the test of time. It projects native Africans as less human, promotes colonialism as a way of lifting a continent into a time of revolutionary enlightenment Rome once saw London as the heart of darkness, and according to Marlow, by the Victorian Age, it was clear that Roman colonization could be credited with civilizing England. Apparently there was no thought as to how the Saxons might have developed if left to their own devices .. and no appreciation of how Africa might have developed if its people had been treated with as much (admittedly limited) dignity by traders as, for instance, the powerful Chinese and Japanese were.

Yes, I know I am in the minority, but I fail to see the excellence in a piece of writing based on its dark atmosphere and suggestion of psychological horrors brought on by loneliness, malaria and other diseases. (And, I wish someone would do a historical study on what mental illnesses these fortune hunters actually had when they got to the new world of Africa.) A truly timeless piece of literature stands the test of time and distance. This tale does not, and is redeemable only by its historical socio-political influence, and as a written record of the universal dehumanization and disregard of the African people by the West at the time. ( )

A novel about the destruction of a people and a land at the hands of colonial power. A novel about evil in its most human form. Heart of Darkness is not racist as some have ridiculously suggested. It is a novel that argues against the vile deeds wrought in Europe's colonies. It is a novel that argues the relative nature of morality. I don't necessarily agree with all of its conclusions, but it is brilliant. ( )

Conrad created an interesting character in Kurtz but the novel somehow falls short of being more than "just" a good read. ( )