Heart of Darkness
by Joseph Conrad
List Price:
Our Price: $1.54
You Save: $2.45 (61%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Joseph ConradEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-09
ISBN: 1580495753
Number of pages: 80
Publisher: Prestwick House Inc.
Book Reviews of Heart of Darkness
Book Review: "Mistah Kurtz--he dead." An influential work on five 20th century seminal works
Summary: 5 Stars
I read this book for a graduate Humanities course. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, written in 1899 is a seminal work about the ills of colonialism, as well as a postmodern look at the subject of mankind. Conrad's book had a crucial influence on five important works of the twentieth century: J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough. Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land, Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces, and Francis Ford Coppolla's movie Apocalypse Now, screenplay by John Milius, was based on Conrad's book. Another interesting fact is that this work was read by Orson Welle's Mercury Theater Players on the radio and was to be his first movie. After doing some work on it he abandoned the project to do Citizen Kane! I would have loved to of seen what Welles could have done with this story. Conrad's story is so riveting in part, because he himself served as a riverboat captain. High school teachers and college professors who have discussed this book in thousands of classrooms over the years tend to do so in terms of Freud, Jung, and Nietzsche; of classical myth, Victorian innocence, and original sin; of postmodernism, postcolonialism, and poststructuralism.
Just a taste of the plot reels you in! Marlow, the narrator of Heart of Darkness and Conrad's alter ego, is hired by an ivory-trading company to sail a steamboat up an unnamed river whose shape on the map resembles "an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country and its tail lost in the depths of the land" (8). His destination is a post where the company's brilliant, ambitious star agent, Mr. Kurtz, is stationed. Kurtz has collected legendary quantities of ivory, but, Marlow learns along the way, is also rumored to have sunk into unspecified savagery. Marlow's steamer survives an attack by blacks and picks up a load of ivory and the ill Kurtz; Kurtz, talking of his grandiose plans, dies on board as they travel, downstream.
Sketched with only a few bold strokes, Kurtz's image has nonetheless remained in the memories of millions of readers: the lone white agent far up the great river, with his dreams of grandeur,his great store of precious ivory, and his fiefdom carved out of the African jungle. Perhaps more than anything, we remember Marlow, on the steamboat, looking through binoculars at what he thinks are ornamental knobs atop the fence posts in front of Kurtz's house and then finding that each is "black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids-a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth" (57).
I especially became interested in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness from the movie Apocalypse Now. There is a scene in the movie that shows Colonel Kurtz's nightstand in his cave. T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land is one of three books on the nightstand. The other two are Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, and J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough. Anyone wanting to understand the movie Apocalypse Now, especially the character of Colonel Kurtz, and what Milius and Copolla are trying to tell their audience need to read these three books as well as Conrad's Heart of Darkness!
As a graduate student reading in philosophy and history I recommend this book for anyone interested in literature, myth, history, philosophy, religion and fans of Apocalypse Now.
Classics Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Classics Books
Native sonby Richard Wright
Perennial Library; Published: 1987; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.75
Native Son: And How Bigger Was Bornby Richard Wright
Perennial; Published: 1993-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $60.00
Raphael and the Noble Taskby Catherine Salton
Harper; Published: 2000-10-24; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.49
Price in other shops:
Island (Perennial Classics)by Aldous Huxley
Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Published: 2002-07-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.00
Price in other shops:
A Tree Grows in Brooklynby Betty Smith
Harper; Published: 2001-11-13; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.86
Price in other shops:
The Great Divorce CDby C. S. Lewis
HarperAudio; Published: 2003-11-25; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $12.94
Price in other shops:
Great Expectationsby Charles Dickens
Macmillan Pub Co; Published: 1979-06; Paperback; Book
Price in other shops:
This Side of Paradiseby Fitzgerald
Scribner Paper Fiction; Published: 1988-09-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.95
Price in other shops:
Black Coffee (Poirot)by Agatha Christie
Harper Collins Pb; Published: 2002-12-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $68.32
Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1960s)by Joan Didion
Flamingo; Published: 2001-04-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $22.25
Similar books summaries and other product reviews
Season of Migration to the North (New York Review Books Classics)by Tayeb Salih
NYRB Classics; Published: 2009-04-14; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.14
Price in other shops:
Self-Reliance and Other Essays (Dover Thrift Editions)by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Dover Publications; Published: 1993-10-13; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.53
Price in other shops:
Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day of the Locust (New Edition) (New Directions Paperbook)by Nathanael West
New Directions; Published: 2009-06-23; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.86
Price in other shops:
To the Lighthouseby Virginia Woolf
Harvest Books; Published: 1989-12-27; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.72
Price in other shops:
King Lear (Arden Shakespeare: Third Series)by William Shakespeare
Arden Shakespeare; Published: 1997-05-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.98
Price in other shops:
Bartleby and Benito Cerenoby Herman Melville
Dover Publications; Published: 1990-07-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops:
Death in Veniceby Thomas Mann
Harper Perennial; Published: 2005-05-31; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.99
Price in other shops:
Waiting for the Barbarians: A Novel (Penguin Ink) (The Penguin Ink Series)by J. M. Coetzee
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2010-06-29; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.46
Price in other shops:
Oedipus Rex (Dover Thrift Editions)by Sophocles
Dover Publications; Dover Publications; Published: 1991-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops:
Things Fall Apartby Chinua Achebe
Anchor; Published: 1994-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.19
Price in other shops: