50 Classics: Heart of Darkness
Just polished off Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad in my ongoing 50 Classics project and I have to admit I’m losing steam. It’s awfully hard to read about the dark wild places of the world and not want to put down your reading list and actually go somewhere; not that I want to go anywhere vaguely like Conrad’s Darkness, mind you. Back to subject at hand though. Heart of Darkness was one of the first time read on my list. My only previous exposure to it was in the form of the movie Apocalypse Now. To say the movie was loosely based on the book is an understatement (although I’m certain that highly trained film students will disagree).
The novel is narrated by Charlie Marlow, a former salt water sailor who has signed on to captain a freshwater steamboat navigating the interior of the colonial Congo at the behest of an ivory trading company. The novel’s preface explains that Conrad himself, served the same role and many of the scenes and experiences are drawn firsthand from his disturbing time there.
To say Darkness is the prevalent theme of the novel is putting it lightly. Darkness of every form permeates the writing; natural darkness, cultural darkness, moral darkness, intellectual darkness and so on. It’s tangible to the reader and you can almost feel it choking your breath and clogging your pores. At several points, I just had to stop and go out in the sunshine for a few deep breaths.
While I don’t want to give too much away about Marlow’s experiences, the phenomena that is Kurtz and story in general, I will recommend that sensitive readers be careful to keep the novel in the context of its historical period. The language, ideology and atmosphere are at once racist of the African people and culture but also critical and exposing of European attitudes and practices. At one point I was tempted to draw an analogy between Conrad’s depiction of the European abuse of Africa and a police report’s clinical report of a rape. Conrad (through Marlow) does not remain clinical for long, though.
The language is a bit dated, but by no means inaccessible. I recommend it, particular as a historical pretext to the current dilemmas of Africa such as civil strife, drought & famine, economic distress and enviromental ravages.
One of my favorite ways to think about getting to know people and to describe people comes from this book, from the scene that has Marlow meeting the clerk who insists on wearing a proper collar and shirt.
In all other ways, this book seemed to me to be the readers’ equivalent of Marlowe’s journey. Reading HoD was like hacking my way through dense jungle.
And you’re not really reading Candide, are you? Eeesh. My senior year AP Lit class is haunting you. I hated Candide with an almost unspeakable passion.
Having reviewed your list, I must insist you read Slaughterhouse-Five next. It is my all time favorite novel.
May I recommend adding a few things to your classic reading list?
The following were ones I recall from my AP English class:
The Stranger, Albert Camus
The Stronger, by August Strindberg (a brief play – quite good for discussion)
Death in Venice, Thomas Mann (a novella)
Quick answers…
– Yes, I’m almost finished with Candide and I’m rather liking it. Voltaire get a bit tenacious at points and I find myself having to look up quite a few historical groups, persons and terms but still, enjoying it. Check out the list, more AP haunting is bound to be found. 🙂
– Thanks Tom, I’ll grab a copy of Slaughterhouse and put in my next batch (I tend to read three at at time). Probably bump Brave New World for the time being.
– syn74x, The Stranger made the cut to 50 and honestly your other two recommendation were on the top 100 (I scaled back the project early on). I’ll add them to my general “to read” list though… even if it exceed my projected lifespan at this point. 😉