Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

This novella has one of the highest ratio of meaning per page, the text is only 106 pages long, yet you can get interpretations which are many times longer than the original! Let's look closely at the text without referring to loads of background information and see if we can find out what it is about. Like many novellas (a piece of literature longer than a short-story but shorter than a novel) 'Heart of Darkness' has a frame, in fact it has two ...
...on a pleasure ship lying at anchor in the mouth of the Thames who listens, together with some other men, to Marlow whose business on board isn't quite clear talking about his time as the captain of a steamer on a river in Africa. The function of a frame is twofold: on the one hand the story seems more credible if there's a source that vouches for its being true, on the other hand the frame creates a distance between the reader and what is told, the ...

MALU 26.10.2006 (27.10.2006) · Read full review
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Review of Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

...had to read Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness for my University degree and will admit that I personally found it quite tough going, despite the book being ever so short in length, 111 pages in fact. After writing a 2000 word essay on a particular aspect of the book however I found myself being drawn into the story and have know come to if not like at least respect the book. When Marlow was a young child he would spend hours staring at the blanks ...
...will lead him into the heart of an immense darkness. Like I said earlier I found this book rather tough going when I first read it. The reason for this wasn't language or strange sentence structure but simply the content of the novel. I felt disgusted almost by the way the native population were often described and at times almost angry that the book was still being published. Looking back now, after finishing my essay, I realise why the book is ...

MI9to5 26.01.2009 · Read full review
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Review of Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is one of those works of literature that everyone means to read, but generally never gets round to. Having re-read the book, I’m now asking myself why I’ve not got around to reading any more of Conrad’s work, as he’s a marvellous writer. I suspect that the answer is that I’ve got too much else vying for my attention on my bookshelf at the moment, but I really ought to add some more Conrad to the queue. Surely a standard ...
...For its time (the 1890’s), Heart of Darkness is surprisingly advanced in terms of its attitudes. Through Marlow, Conrad repeatedly questions the predominant attitudes to the African people who have been enslaved, either officially or in practice, by white man’s activities on ‘the dark continent.’ Yet Marlow is not allowed to break completely free of the thought pattern that assets white superiority and ultimately regards his black brothers as inferior, ...

DavidBedford 30.07.2001 · Read full review
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Review of Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

...disturbing. I have read Heart of Darkness a few times, both for pleasure and as a study text. The first time I read it I didn't know what to make of it. At some stages I struggled to get through the descriptive paragraphs and I had no idea what to make of Kurtz or Marlowe. For many readers I can easily imagine that any appreciation of Conrad would end and the book would collect dust having been discarded as overhyped and pretentious. This is a big ...
...by line. I now find Heart of Darkness to be a most fascinating tale of both colonialism and humanity at the turn of the century. I also benefitted from studying the historical context in which Conrad was writing. At the turn of the century there were a number of crises affecting the thoughts of intellectual circles in Europe. The sub-plots of Conrad's work express concerns with many of these issues and explain why Heart of Darkness is discussed ...

temf 05.11.2003 · Read full review
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Review of Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

This book as many people will know was the inspiration for the film 'Apocalypse Now'. It is set in the jungles of Africa in the nineteenth century, Congo specifically. The theme of the book is basically the change wrought on humans by their environment. The transposition to Vietnam in the film is merely a reflection of the different preoccupations of the time. America in the Seventies was involved with its hegemonic empire most manifestly in Vietnam. ...
...deeply in Africa. The novel and the film deal with the obsessions developed by these places. They are seen to be manifestly different and beyond the application of usual western norms nad mores. Things which at home the main characters might never have dreamed of themselves doing they undertake here (whether it be Vietnam or the Congo). This theme is something that cropped up many times in the writings of nineteenth century explorers in Africa. ...

oclumhain 28.02.2001 · Read full review
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Review of Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

I read Heart of Darkness because it was described as an unmissable read, something you have to read if you have any interest in classic literature. Unfortunately I was disappointed. There is no doubt that the novel is well written and the storyline is of significance, but that doesn't make it any easier to read. I couldn't relate to any of the characters so that made it a painful read as I wasn't excited about what might happen. This wasn't helped ...
...novels that are very descriptive, but this one goes into lots of detail. It does help with making the many points that the novel brings to your attention, but to me it reads as something that is interesting to study and will give you good points on any essay you might write about it for school, but as a book to read for fun I wouldn't recommend it. ...

meday 17.08.2001 · Read full review
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Review of Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

...horror' of human nature. Heart of Darkness focuses keenly upon morals, or lack of, and the more unpleasant side to human nature. It confronts the evils of imperialism and questions whether the west has really "progressed" from its atavistic past or whether the same things happen in a different and more socially acceptable way now. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and as a political statement and social critique, it is unparalleled. Conrad is a master ...

bengar 04.02.2006 · Read full review
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Review of Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

...something was rotten at the heart of the European empire building. This isn't just an anti-slavery novel, or a philosophical work on man's inhumanity towards man, it seems to get right into the deepest and most uncomfortable reaches of the human soul. It still makes me feel pretty ill at ease when I read it, though I can't fully explain why. The narrative pulls you in and you feel as though you are travelling down the Congo with Marlow and his crew, ...

stoofer 23.03.2001 · Read full review
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Review of Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

I read this book as part of my first semester at university and have to say that it made a pleasant change from Sylvia Plath. I really enjoyed the depth of the book, and the idea of a gradual progression further into Africa while the narrator gradually probes further into his own unconscious mind. Basically the story goes that a man (called Marlow) is talking to some friends about his past. He tells them about when he went to Africa to be the captain ...
...as a result of having been colonised by the Europeans, and the effects that it has had on the African people. He is told to go along the river to rescue a European called Kurtz who is ill. When he gets there he finds that Kurtz has become savage and kills people merely to please himself. Marlow becomes obsessed with Kurtz even after Kutz's death. It is then up to Marlow to break the news to Kurtz's intended. Although this does seem to have a fairly ...

Zoe.e 28.04.2004 · Read full review
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Review of Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

Heart of Darkness was the inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola's 'Apocolypse Now'. It was written at the turn of the last century and tells the story of Captain Marlow going up a river in to the heart of the jungle. As with the film he is searching for Kurtz, an ivory trader, who has 'turned' in the jungle. Coppola is said to have debated whether to have placed the film either in its original context or in the Great War before deciding on Vietnam. ...

SophieD 19.09.2000 · Read full review
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Review of Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

I read this book as a couple of weeks ago for my course at University. It's the kind of book that you should read because it is alluded to so often in the mainstream media and 'educated' culture. It's also unusual both in style and theme and thought provoking in terms of the issue of collonisation and europe reflected in Africa. It has also been famously attacked for being racist, and although arguably it depicts the white man in a worse state than ...
...If you're going to read anything of Conrads for entertainment value then I would reccomend 'Under Western Eyes' A far superior novel with an elegant flowing style and a conventional plot. In fact any of his later works, or actual short stories (this was supposedly a short story!) are very good. If however, you want something a bit gritty so that you can understand all the intellectual jargon, then it is worth ploughing through. I would say though ...

ickleme_funky 12.03.2004 · Read full review
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Review of Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad