Heart of Darkness
by Joseph Conrad
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Book Summary Information
Author: Joseph ConradEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-11-07
ISBN: 1599869500
Number of pages: 102
Publisher: Filiquarian
Book Reviews of Heart of Darkness
Book Review: "Exterminate all the brutes!"
Summary: 5 Stars
"Heart of Darkness" is Joseph Conrad's nightmare vision of colonialism in the Africa of the 1890's: cynical bureaucrats - callous, incompetent, greedy and stupid to a man - exploiting the locals, spreading death and devastation, squeezing profits from a miserable trade in elephant tusks; while the most "advanced" and idealistic of company agents, a "universal genius" named Kurtz - runs totally amuck, setting himself up as a god among the natives, raiding villages, beheading rebels, practicing "unspeakable" rites, all on the theory that his methods will turn a mere trading post into a "beacon of humanizing, improving and instructing." When his ideals are thwarted, Kurtz has another prescription: "Exterminate all the brutes."
HOD is a great piece of writing, complex and ambiguous enough to support any number of interpretations. But not all of them are well-founded. Chinua Achebe, to take an example, criticizes Conrad's picture of Africa as "racist". This misses the point of the novel, which is not to depict Africans with factual accuracy, but to explore the minds and methods of the colonialists - especially their tendency to be corrupted by isolation, power and moral pretension. Conrad is an 'equal-opportunity pessimist' and one should not expect flattering portraits of Africans in a book filled with scathing portraits of Europeans. Nor would it make sense for Marlow - Conrad's narrator - to describe the Africans - whom he has only observed superficially - with an insider's sophistication and empathy. Marlow is a level-headed fellow of broad sympathies, but not, thankfully, a multiculturalist or a purveyor of politcally correct cliches.
The central character - Kurtz - is prophetic: With his charisma, his extremism, his self-delusion, his gift for spellbinding oratory, his egomania parading itself as humanitarian zeal - he foreshadows the intellectual charlatans and mass-killers of the 20th Century, from Lenin to Jim Jones.
A remarkable work.
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