The Bottom Line: Heart of Darkness hasn't survived the canon because of its voice though; it's for its powerful emotional package and conveyance and its cleverly layered development.
lorenmgreen's Full Review: Joseph Conrad, Paul B. Armstrong, R. G. Hampson, P...
Heart of Darkness has survived the ages not solely because of Conrad's writing voice, but moreso because this novella captures a dark and bleak feeling on the experience of human life. (The making of Apocalypse Now hasn't hurt, either.)
Heart of Darkness is Joseph Conrad's travel into the heart of Africa, working for an ivory trading company that is traveling the Nile. As Marlow, the protagonist, gets deeper into the continent, he hears of a mysterious man named Kurtz. Kurtz is a great man--that is all that the common concensus seems to know. How great? We'll just have to go deeper into the jungle to find out. This desire to meet the legend, Kurtz, is the primarily plot tool to progress the book.
Heart of Darkness is of the Naturalist school, with its obvious symbol of the jungle demonstrating how close we, as "civilized" Europeans (Conrad was Polish, wrote in English) are to animals. Like many other naturalist works, Conrad uses the backdrop of a crisis to exemplify our true natures. The "recent" acceptance of evolution clearly influenced Conrad's writing in this book.
Heart of Darkness has a very wordy, slow style. Paragraphs can stretch for pages without break and the storytelling is wrapped up with descriptors, reminiscent of Romantic-era British writing. The novella's highlight is its aura. The story glows with an eerie sense of depression that, though not in words, is the clearest aspect of his adventure by the time Marlow is finished telling his story.
When you hear Kurtz utter his final words, readers have been given a glimpse into the "jungle" of humanity and civilization. Marlow, the narrator, has gone from innocent to knowledgeable.
Another odd movie connection is that of the frequently aired cable movie, Cannibal Women in the Avacado Jungle of Death (starring Bill Maher). If one is familiar with Heart of Darkness, and then watches the movie, you'll see the connection.
A negative note of the novel is that, though the theme denounced British imperialism, Marlow's voice, and thus Conrad's is skewed with racist, white thoughts. The very plot of learning humanity's "dark secret" via traveling through Africa is questionable in its political-correctness, to say the least.
However, I recommend trying to ignore the racism in the work in order to perceive Conrad's well-crafted statement of human darkness.
This new edition of Conrads masterpiece, newly and extensively annotated, together with the earlier work upon which it is based, features more than 70...More at Christianbook.com
Horror awaits Marlow, a seaman assigned by an ivory company to retrieve a cargo boat and one of its employees, Mr. Kurtz who is stranded in the heart ...More at Barnes & Noble.com
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