Publisher : Hachette Audio
Publication Date : 1995 01 01
>> Pseudointellectual myth
Before reading this book I had just read Conrad s Outcast of the Islands Which was really quite good this book was horrible and yet gets all the praise This book confirms my belief that most authors should retire at a certain point Even more so that the world is full of pseudo intellectuals who see depth in anything abstruse that we dummies can t appreciate Conrad must have have had too much praise go to his head or alcohol or something The story is hard to read you draw nothing deep from it it has none of the beautiful nature descriptions his earlier books had He must have needed rent money or tried some avant garde thing while drug addled How utterly unbelievable that this book is famous Thank God it was short
>> Stumbles but Succeeds
Conrad as a young man dreamed of visiting the Congo He carried out this wish as a steamboat captain chugging deep into the heart of that still mysterious land We are told that his experiences became fodder for this his best known work
Heart of Darkness is told primarily by a secondhand narrator This seemed to be a favorite technique of writers in the late 1800s though it creates a barrier between the fiction reader and the story itself Perhaps that s a good thing as we follow a captain s journey deeper into the jungle further upriver Along the way we see disturbing glimpses of the racism and imperialism that was so predominant at the time The English Dutch and Belgians were pillaging the Dark Continent for their own gain looking down on the natives as uneducated savages The captain is an impassive observer He is a product of his time and social class He is willing to work with the natives to see them as equally human but only in the most visceral sense
Does Conrad promote racism then I think he does the opposite Even as his captain becomes clouded in thinking deluded by the near mythic existence of a man named Kurtz he discovers his own nearness to that heart of darkness He empathizes with eating human flesh and other atrocities only to find that Kurtz has plunged forever into his own narcissistic evil
In conclusion Conrad seems to point fingers at any and all who would exalt themselves over other men and other races If Kurtz is a microcosm of the gross imperialism of his age then Conrad s criticisms are harsh while also remaining immensely personal Probably better understood in its day and more jarring in contrast to other novels of its time Heart of Darkness is one of the first English novels to tackle the psychological aspects of evil in the heart of man For that reason alone it stands as an important literary work even if it stumbles somewhat in its ability to entertain the modern reader
>> heart of darkness
there goes 5 hours of my life i will never get back
what a waste of time who the hech was kuntz anyway
