Heart of Darkness (1899)

I mostly read it because I was in the mood to read something about colonial africa, wilderness, the civilized man facing the nature etc. I had started and given up on it years ago because it seemed boring, but somehow this time I was taken in, I guess because of the state of my mind, and managed to finish it. I liked it. The passages about the jungle were very eerie and omnious without anything much taking place and yet they were very interesting to read, and I was unable to pry my eyes away from the page. ( )

I just couldn't stay with this story. The writing style was like one long rambling paragraph. There were a few interesting images, but I got tired of it and let it go. ( )

I am not disclosing any trade secrets. In fact the manager said afterwards that Mr. Kurtz's methods had ruined the district. I have no opinion on that point, but I want you clearly to understand that thee was nothing profitable in these heads being there. They only showed that Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts, that there was something wanting in him--some small matter which, when the pressing need arose, could not be found under his magnificent eloquence.

My first 'real' job was as a service cashier at a car dealership. Really eye-opening experience, let me tell you. People who would do any damn thing that did not land them in prison for a few more dollars. One of the most horrible things I have ever yet had to do as a human being was take a several thousand dollar payment from a self employed lady (counted out in cash) for second replacement of a transmission she had bought from us two months before, all because our most conniving service adviser had had her parts warranty voided for user abuse. Not a thing I could do about it but take her money a second time. I got out of there as quick as I could, but it left a deep impression. Evil is not some villain holed up in a remote fortress plotting to take over the world. Evil is banal. Mundane. Neighbors. Friends. Family. Me. Us.

Conrad got it. This is my fourth or fifth read through this book, and I knew he got it, but I didn't know how well he got it until Kenneth Branagh read this book to me. Like most, I've always been more than a little disappointed in the reveal of Kurtz. He really is just a voice. A voice once removed. Marlow's voice. My mind just circled around, trying to figure out Kurtz through Marlow, not quite getting it. Then Branagh read it, and I got it. Kurtz isn't the point. Marlow is the point. And Marlow failed. (I knew that too, but I had always excused him for it. Excused us for it. Not this time.)

I'm going to skip right over the feminism issues. They're there, but they didn't matter to me as a reader, and they're mine, so I feel I can skip them if I want. (Short version: yes, Conrad treats women as ancillary to male concerns, does the pedestal thing, etc. Expects his readers to be men, too. Doesn't matter. Wholly immaterial to the point of the book, which is mine as much as any man's.)

There is, however, a famous essay by [a:Chinua Achebe|8051|Chinua Achebe|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1294661664p2/8051.jpg] which finds this to be a racist book. I've not had time to read the essay just yet, but with all due respect to Mr. Achebe, this is not a racist book. The 'n' word appears in a number of places (which Mr. Branagh replaces with 'native' in this reading), but it appears as well in Twain's work and that is not racist either. The cannibals are the most admirable people in this work. Maybe the only admirable people. As to a whole continent serving as a backdrop for one man's descent into darkness, well, that is half of literature, isn't it? Half the literature I read anyway. (I live in the American west, so maybe that's why I think this my-home-as-a-backdrop thing just happens to us all.) Africa does not drive Kurtz evil. Kurtz brought the evil with him to Africa. The book is quite clear on that point.

My mind, faced with these things, goes to the universal wells, or the nearest it can get to them. Goes to older places, and other books:

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? - Jeremiah 17:9 (KJV)

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. - Ecclesiastes 1:9 (NIV)

Read this, if you haven't. If at all possible, have Mr. Branagh read it to you. (I'll leave a little more on that in the comments.) And maybe let's all try to be strong in the dark.

Morituri te salutant.

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12/3/15 initial reaction:
This audio performance lifts the whole book into genius territory. Review to come.
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12/7/15: Sorry for the bump; I'm fighting with GR about which book counts for a challenge. I'm deleting my previous rating of this book under the Project Gutenberg version to see if I can get it to work right. (Just know that the text is in public domain and therefore free from Gutenberg, and that the audio version bumped my rating up two stars to a six star rating.) ( )

I read this in high school and immediately recognized it in Coppola's film, "Apocalypse Now" and have since then recognized the message in real life. The story is about Marlowe traveling deep into the Congo jungle to locate Kurtz who is an ivory trader but is purported to have lost his mind and established himself as a God. One of the book's messages was about how restraint is the thing that allows humans to behave civilly -- a message that has recently become ever more apparent. A shallow read of the book might think that the Africans were the ones needing to be restrained and that they had corrupted Kurtz. But Kurtz himself was not only unrestrained, he represented the European colonists who had been trampling throughout the world for centuries and wreaking havoc of long established cultures. ( )

What else can be said about Heart of Darkness that has not yet been said?

I am adding here a paragraph I wrote while commenting on Adam’s review:

I am rethinking my own review here, as it is at the end a way out of saying anything meaningful or otherwise. But, seriously, what has not yet been said about The Heart of Darkness? Personally though – and my impressions are by no means original – I was struck by the power of “story telling” to question contemporary issues (it was still a contemporary issue in 1899 when it was first published) and to examine human nature. I don’t want to diminish Conrad’s accomplishment in either front by scrutinizing his racism and anti-feminism, and this is not just a cop-out, but a understand that even geniuses are frequently incapable of rising above the mores of their time.
( )