Heart of Darkness

The Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, was one book that I can not say that I particularly liked. I think that for me the book had too strong of a word play for me really to follow what was going on. Conrad does not truly get to the point anywhere throughout the novel. He explains things in so much detail that I am spending more time trying to figure out what exactly he is talking about, and less time truly being able to grasp his story.

Though the book was a hard one for me to read, and not one of my favorites. That does not mean that the novel is not worthy of the credit that is due. Conrad wrote about a great story in history, one that more people need to learn about. There are many through out history who proclaim this to be one of the greatest novels that display the nature of what it was like within the Congo during the time of Kind Leopold. Since I wanted to be fair I found a quote that I would say explains how most see this novel....

"Heart of Darkness has been considered for most of this century not only as a literary classic, but as a powerful indictment of the evils of imperialism. It reflects the savage repressions carried out in the Congo by the Belgians in one of the largest acts of genocide committed up to that time. Conrad's narrator encounters at the end of the story a man named Kurtz, dying, insane, and guilty of unspeakable atrocities. More recently, African critics like Chinua Achebe have pointed out that the story can be read as a racist or colonialist parable in which Africans are depicted as innately irrational and violent, and in which Africa itself is reduced to a metaphor for that which white Europeans fear within themselves. The people of Africa and the land they live in remain inscrutably alien, other. The title, they argue, implies that Africa is the "heart of darkness," where whites who "go native" risk releasing the "savage" within themselves. Defenders of Conrad sometimes argue that the narrator does not speak in Conrad's own voice, and that a layer of irony conceals his true views. "

This quote is a great explanation of the Heart of Darkness, though this is one that I feel that I was able to see for myself. If I was someone who had never attempted to read this novel, this particular quote would surely make me want to read the book. It shows that there is so much going on in the novel, and makes it one of those "must reads". I would advise to anyone who reads Heart of Darkness, to read it more than once and even to get one of the copies with the narrative explanations because it is worth the read, if you can understand it.