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Spark Notes Heart of Darkness

By SparkNotes Editors, Joseph Conrad

(648)

| Paperback | 9781586633677

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14 Reviews

4 people find this helpful

Journey into a dark land

Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad could very well be the darkest and most serious book I've read. The story is narrated by a fictional character named Marlow to the author and others resting on a yawl. Marlow talks of his past journey on a steamboat up a river in a dark continent to bring back an i ... (continue)

Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad could very well be the darkest and most serious book I've read. The story is narrated by a fictional character named Marlow to the author and others resting on a yawl. Marlow talks of his past journey on a steamboat up a river in a dark continent to bring back an ivory trader named Kurtz whom everyone reveres for his achievements. He reaches the colonial station after a risky adventure through the tropical land and finds Kurtz in a near death state. Also, his image of greatness falls after Marlow discovers the real activities of Kurtz in his colonial trading post. He sees Kurtz as a reprehensible being. Kurtz dies a while later on the journey back downstream. His last words indicate his probable realization of the havoc he has caused in his life. Back in Europe, Marlow faces Kurtz's widow and gives her his last words.
This novella by Conrad draws inspiration from his actual journey on the Congo river in Africa. The narration from the start is strongly evocative of darkness. Everything from the descriptions of the European towns, the Congo river, the African continent, the color of the inhabitant savages, their ways of life, the colonies of the Europeans, the cannibalistic Africans who form a part of his steamboat crew and ultimately Kurtz himself. The language drips heavily with vividness. I almost felt like being in Marlow's shoes journeying slowly up the Congo through the primeval continent. Though Marlow grows to hate Kurtz, in the end he is forced to leave him with a good name in this world. Like Life Of Pi, this book feels great since it left me with more than one meaning of its narration. Is Conrad talking of the dark continent or the darkness inside us?
Heart Of Darkness is short (hence called a novella) at just 112 pages. I read the Penguin Classics version edited by Robert Hampson. It has Hampson's long and boring introduction which would interest only those studying the book rather than reading it. It also has Conrad's actual Congo Diary in which he noted the happenings of his actual journey in Africa. This book has a detailed notes section at the end of the story.
Published in 1902, the book is available now at Project Gutenberg freely for everyone.

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Ashwin Nanjappa said on Jun 25, 2007 | Add your feedback

2 people find this helpful

This was first assigned to me as summer reading before my senior year in high school. I got enough out my premier pass at it to be able to ace the test, but unaccompanied reading is NOT the way to experience this amazing work by Conrad. My sophomore year at university, we went through this again in ... (continue)

This was first assigned to me as summer reading before my senior year in high school. I got enough out my premier pass at it to be able to ace the test, but unaccompanied reading is NOT the way to experience this amazing work by Conrad. My sophomore year at university, we went through this again in Brit Lit II - the experience was totally different. And I've loved this novel ever since. From the journey through its influence into modern literature (like T.S. Eliot's superb "Hollow Men"), this book is iconic.

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guaddess said on May 13, 2007 | Add your feedback

1 person find this helpful

In 1890 the scramble for Africa was well underway. After a sojourn in the Belgian Congo, a seaman canceled his contract, returned to Europe, and became a writer. Atrocities seen in these six months (Ten millions Congolese withered under Belgium’s rule. ) would be transformed into a novella, a scathi ... (continue)

In 1890 the scramble for Africa was well underway. After a sojourn in the Belgian Congo, a seaman canceled his contract, returned to Europe, and became a writer. Atrocities seen in these six months (Ten millions Congolese withered under Belgium’s rule. ) would be transformed into a novella, a scathing indictment of imperialism and “civilization”. Following Marlow’s voyage in search of Kurtz, a notable but mysterious trading agent, Joseph Conrad (1875-1924) questioned human values and nature in Heart of Darkness (1899). “It is an experience pushed a little (and only very little beyond the actual facts of the case.” He said in the preface.
Heart of Darkness is a powerful disclosure of the methods and effects of colonialism. To satisfy financial needs and boyhood hankering for adventure, Marlow accepts a trading company’s offer as a steamboat pilot. Along the Congo River, bloody scenes and absurd behavior unfold before him: the outer trading station has a “grove of death” full of dying natives, an undersized railway truck lying on its back with its wheels in the air, and imported drainage pipes discarded before use. The native Africans are marked as criminals and rebels for servitude. While ivory keeps trickling out from the jungle, village after village is being cleansed. The supposed emissary of light is actually the devil of darkness. Becoming increasingly sensitive to and doubtful about the hidden side of human instinct, Marlow finally meets Kurtz at his trading station and gets the answer.
Mr. Kurtz is one of the most occult evil geniuses created in literary history. Unlike writers famous for creating vivid characters of absolute virtue or vice, such as Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, Conrad obfuscated the line between good and evil. Kurtz is as ordinary as all those coming to Africa for wealth. “All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz.” Europe channeled this ambitious man to different remarkable, careers. When this aspiration for material gain is set loose in Africa, he becomes a savage. Following the same route to the “centre of the earth”, Marlow notices similarity with Kurtz, seeing him as a possible outcome if he also succumbs to the hidden part of soul. Using Marlow as his mouthpiece, Conrad reconstructs the process of depravation to let readers experience the same. He presents a common upshot (Kurtz) rather than a character detached from reality.
A fierce argument was ignited by the Nigerian Writer Chinua Achebe. In his lecture “Racism in Conrad’s: Heart of Darkness (1975), the novella was criticized as a biased account of Africa written by a “thoroughgoing racist” . Africa was devoid of humanity and set as a foil to show western superiority. The whites, like Kurtz, were corrupted by this primordial continent.
Part of Achebe’s criticism, although it was expressed with indignation, was well-found. Recounting his feeling of meeting the tribesmen, Marlow says, “The prehistoric man was cursing us, praying to us. Welcoming us - who could tell. We were cut off from the comprehension of our surrounding.” The natives are presented as barbarians. Also, readers would meet cannibals on his boat. However Conrad does not intend to use this Victorian stereotype for praising civilization. A common ancestry between Africa and Europe is suggested through Marlow, “...what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity-like yours-the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly.” Marlow mentions his meeting with Kurtz’ Intend before finishing the story. To this lady, who represents those Europeans naively living in illusions, he has to tell a white lie to cover up Kurtz’s last words as “it is too dark.” Different from the contemporary writers like Rudyard Kipling, Conrad disapproved empire building as a noble enterprise.
Despite meeting the shadowy face of imperialism firsthand, Conrad held a different view to that of Britain. As shown by the historian Adam Hochschild in his book King Leopold’s Ghost, Conrad was an investor in a gold mine near Johannesburg. “…because one knows that some real work is done in there.” Marlow speaks like that. Was that gratitude Conrad showed to his adopted country, or he really thought like that? One would never know.
Further reading:
1.King Leopold’s Ghost for those who want to know more about the Belgian exploitations in Congo and how Conrad's life in Africa helped shape his novella.
2.Conrad in the nineteenth century by Ian Watt for those studying the book. Quite dry and academic honestly.

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worrywalt said on Jun 17, 2008 | Add your feedback

Life

"Droll thing life is - that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself - that comes to late - a crop of unextinguishable regrets"
J. Conrad

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CapitanCarlo said on Jul 12, 2011 | Add your feedback

Definitely a "livre de chevet".

One of the most powerful book I ever read. Highly incisive, very strong, very brave and revolutionary, both for content and style. An amazing nightmare that reaches "your" heart of darkness and my first book Europe meets Africa. Simply great!

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Clara Mazzi said on Oct 25, 2010 | Add your feedback

An important novel that touches several themes. Marlow, a young seaman, travels through Congo during the first years of Belgian colonial penetration and closely observes the wilderness, the distance from our civilization, the greed and brutality of the colonists, the effects of darkness, intended as ... (continue)

An important novel that touches several themes. Marlow, a young seaman, travels through Congo during the first years of Belgian colonial penetration and closely observes the wilderness, the distance from our civilization, the greed and brutality of the colonists, the effects of darkness, intended as the primeval wilderness, on the mind of men. Civilization and darkness clash, the frontier where the hurt takes place is the stage of events out of the ordinary played by actors out of the ordinary. Kurtz, agent of a trading company in search for ivory, has built his own kingdom in the middle of the jungle. Wilderness has digested Kurtz, the bringer of civilization is now a tyrant and a god obeying no rule out of its own. Marlow's expedition is an attempt to bring him back and re-establish the company's rule and methods. The questions implicitly posed on civilization, darkness and hypocrisy are in my opinion surpassed by the portrait of the man Kurtz, and by his ancestral relation to the hidden origins of the human soul. Strong parallel to Lord of the flies by Golding.

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minomataio said on Sep 4, 2010 | Add your feedback