Heart of Darkness (Dover Thrift Editions) by Joseph Conrad Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $0.01 You Save: $1.49 (99%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Heart of Darkness (Dover Thrift Editions)
Book Review: A classic, spooky, disturbing novel
Summary: 4 Stars
Joseph Conrad's novel about one man's journey into the heart of darkness is considered a classic, and for good reason. This novel has no fear in providing the reader with detailed descriptions of all the horrors that take place throughout its pages.
The novel starts out with Marlow, the main character, sitting down with a few of his ship-mates to tell a story. Normally Marlow's stories aren't ones to stay up for, but he quickly ensnares the listeners with his disturbing tale of madness. Marlow was the captain of a steamboat who ends up at a slave-trading post along the banks of a huge river in Africa. While at the post, not only does Marlow witness some of the most horrible things you can imagine, but he also hears many rumors and stories of a brilliant man, Kurtz, who runs another post farther up the river, and farther into the deep wilderness. Kurtz is supposed to be next in line to run everything with the Company, but the rumors running around the post aren't all good ones, and Marlow is eventually commissioned to take his steamboat upriver and find Kurtz. Once Marlow finally reaches his destination, the book really takes the reader over with its frightening descriptions of Kurtz and his situation that he created being alone out at this post with the natives for the longest time.
Conrad's writing, as most classical writing, is a little hard to follow at moments, and while the book should be appreciated for its elegant, disturbing descriptions, I actually felt that the dialog between the characters, particularly Kurtz and Marlow was the strongest point of the novel. As Marlow comes into contact with more people who actually know Kurtz, the reader is informed again and again what a brilliant man he is, and how just listening to him talk can be the best thing in the world. But when Marlow and Kurtz finally meet, the reader is only given a few snippets of conversation, and the rest goes unmentioned by the author except for a couple parts at the end. While this small criticism of the novel doesn't mean that it isn't still a classic, it just means that in terms of this particular reader, I think it could have been even better and more powerful than it was.
But other than that one small beef, I have nothing bad to say about this novel. Conrad was a gifted writer who seemed to understand the effect that shocking images can have on a reader. The images spoken of in his novel aren't pointlessly graphic at all, they are all engineered so the reader can understand the true nature of everything that was going on in during this time.
On a side note, reading this novel helped me understand Apocalypse Now a whole lot more than I did before.
Book Review: A dark, haunting tale that's hard to forget
Summary: 5 Stars
To shortly summarize, "Heart Of Darkness", by Joseph Conrad, is all about an English man named Marlow. He's a sailor and an explorer who takes command of a steamboat on an African river, during the Age of Imperialism. He takes his ship up the river in hopes of finding a man named Kurtz, who's something of a legend among the Englishmen living in Africa. What he finds along his journey causes him the question the morality of Imperialism, and he finds in the African natives something which resembles evil. And once he finds Kurtz, he realizes that, although the Imperialists may act superior and tough, they are just as savage and immoral as the natives.
"Heart Of Darkness" is a real page turner. It may be short, but I finished it in 4 days (which is fast for me). Marlow is a generally likeable character, and easy to relate to. Kurtz, however, provides the enigma. Conrad's story is excellent, but some characters, Kurtz included, could have used more development. Thus, Kurtz remains something of a mystery to the reader. How he got to be the way he is is never explained. But my, what figure he is... he cuts off the heads of natives and shoves them on posts outside his house. He's a savage man who has a special way with the natives, which is what makes him legendary. But when Marlow gets to him, Kurtz is ill, and his final days appear to be on the horizon.
The mood of this book is extremely bleak, and overall it is depressing. But by the same token, it makes the reader question the moral values of men, and whether those in a position of power have the right to rule over those who are inferior. Marlow really questions this, and in the end, comes to the conclusion that such things are wrong. Personally, I like dark books such as this one, so I highly recommend it.
Book Review: Chilling tales that are open for many interpretations
Summary: 5 Stars
This collection brings together three remarkable novellas by Joseph Conrad: Youth, Heart of Darkness and The End of the Tether. In Youth Charlie Marlow recounts the troublesome voyage of the old ship Judea and its wretched 600-ton cargo of coal. The same Marlow also serves as the narrator in Heart of Darkness, undoubtedly the most famous of the three stories. It details how Marlow takes on a foreign assignment as a ferry boat captain on the Congo River in order to restore communications with Kurtz, an eccentric ivory procurement agent isolated in the secluded midlands. Finally in The End of the Tether Captain Whalley, a former dare-devil skipper, sacrifices his retirement and embarks on a precarious voyage on the steamer Sofala in order to support his distant, beloved daughter.
Like many of Conrad's early novels these three stories are set aboard ships. These stories tell of men who go beyond the normal routine of life to challenge themselves, whether from curiosity or necessity, in order to obtain what they seemingly cannot reach. Conrad depicts these desperate men with a vigor that on its own is already enough reason to dive in these stories. But there is much more. The real power of these masterpieces will only surface after a second read. The first reading is like a voyage into the unknown, not unlike the main characters would have experienced it. Only on a second or third reading do you become more aware of the subliminal power of the words and can you appreciate the full power of the colorful narrative. This way the at first read overly long descriptive passages get more and more significance and surely reveal their significance to the story.
One of the many layers to the stories is the drive to react against the self-proclaimed dominance of the human race: both against his environment as against his fellow man. In Heart of Darkness Marlow even literally proclaims that the unbounded exploitation of the natural resources is a disfigurement to the human conscience. Therefore it is not surprising that theme of alienation was craftily interwoven in John Milius' script for Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now loosely based upon Conrad's novella.
Not everyone will be charmed by the dense narrative and slow pace of these stories. But if you manage to see beyond this dated style, what is left is simply a masterpiece.
Book Review: A Journey We All Must Take
Summary: 5 Stars
When Marlow begins his journey to find the mythical Kurtz in HEART OF DARKNESS, Joseph Conrad dares the reader to accompany Marlow on a voyage less into the physical jungles of darkest Africa and more into the mental labyrinth that human beings erect to protect themselves from the horrors that they themselves build. In this justly famous novella, Conrad depicts a pre-politically correct age when white men thought it only fair and inevitable that they plunder the riches of Africa all the while comforting themselves that they were uplifting the fallen state of a lowly people.
Conrad uses a twin layer of narratives in order to achieve the needed objectivity that he felt required to place the reader at varying distances from the horror that Kurtz cried out at the end. The opening narrator is unnamed, possibly Conrad himself, who sets the stage by placing the reader at a safe distance from the evils which lay squarely ahead. Through this narrator we get a bird'e eyes view of the true narrator Marlow, who is depicted as somehow different from the four other men on the deck of the Nellie. This difference in physical attributes slowly increases to concomitant differences in perspective, attitude, and general authorial reliability. Marlow is a deeply flawed man who has the disadvantage of viewing the unfolding events from the prejudiced eyes of a white colonial civil servant who is sure that the blacks in Africa are little different from his preconceived notion of uncivilized cannibals. Further, Marlow makes numerous errors of judgment along the way, many of them seemingly insignificant, yet the totality of the reader's perspective is twisted through the equally twisted lens of an unreliable narrator. Conrad's purpose in melding the reader to a flawed narrator was to insure that the reader could never trust what he reads, thereby increasing his sense of unease in that the sense of safety that Marlow feels, first on the deck of the Nellie, and later in the jungle itself, is as flimsy as the signposts that guide Marlow toward his goal.
The goal is Kurtz, a trader who set out to civilize the blacks into accepting a white version of civilization, but Marlow finds out that the reverse happened. The true horror that Kurtz sees is the horror that all would be conquerors find when they discover that the philosophy of racial supremacy which led them into conflict with a people whom they deemed unworthy is shown to be built on straw. Kurtz knows that the only difference between his brutal acts toward the natives and their own similar atrocities toward themselves is no difference at all. As corrupt as Kurtz must have been, in his closing cry of horror, he finds a small measure of redemption and closure. Marlow sees what Kurtz saw, knew what Kurtz did, and heard up close and personal Kurtz's swan song of pain, but Marlow learned nothing of lasting value. All he could think of was to maintain the image of the Kurtz that was: "I remained to dream the nightmare out to the end, and to show my loyalty to Kurtz once more." The journey that Kurtz took was a horror only because he became what he sought. The journey that Marlow took became a horror only because he learned nothing from what he sought. As you and I read HEART OF DARKNESS, we must decide which journey has the more meaningful signposts.
Book Review: Exactly what I needed
Summary: 5 Stars
I purchased this book for my 17 year old daughter. She needed it for an assignment at school. The book was exactly what she needed. It shipped fast and is in great condition!