Cripes, I don’t know. After finishing this I went back to the front of the book to glance through 50 pages of accolades for Conrad by such notables as Hemingway, Trilling, Woolf, Forster. Somehow I think I’ve missed something in my own reading of this novel.
Yes, the writing was good, in my humble estimation, but was it outstanding? I didn’t think so. There were at least six or seven different mentions of “heart of darkness” or some semblance of it, that I can’t imagine any other title being chosen for this book. The social implications of the story have changed drastically over the century but do still hold value as historical commentary as well as insight into human nature as well.
The concept of the narration being taken over by one of the characters as he tells the story is unusual and works well, as it gives the reader a more rounded picture of the storyteller, Marlow, than could have been gained by restricting this to a first person narrative alone.
Here’s where I might have a problem and why I didn’t catch half the depth of story and meaning that the other comments lay out. The references to Kurtz throughout the books gives us dribs and drabs of insight into the man who Marlow is looking forward to meeting. However, when he finally does meet him, it is so brief, so distant, with such little actual dialogue but made up more of the movings of a very sick man who is still holding onto his little kingdom, that I didn’t really grasp that this was the main focus of the story. Yes, I did get the fact that Kurtz is both loved and hated, that he was both a wonder and an evil man, that the change is all due to his placement in the wilds of Africa, and that Conrad is giving us a glimpse into the nature of man’s interaction with man on both a savage and sophisticated level. But I didn’t grant Kurtz the importance that I evidently should have, focusing instead on Marlow and reading the changes he was undergoing rather than the example of Kurtz.
Why? For two reasons. First, I don’t personally take anyone’s word as anything more than opinion on someone else. I spent the whole book waiting for Kurtz to reveal himself. He barely did, then he died. Secondly, for me, when you start a book out with five or so men gathered together and one begins to tell a story in such a way that it is like unburdening his soul, then I looked to him to provide the drama, the changes to character, the story, as I would look to any I considered the protagonist. While Marlow was obviously affected by the whole adventure, I’m still not quite sure why he was so affected by Kurtz. It seemed almost a man-crush, such as the Russian harlequin definitely had on Kurtz.
I’m glad I did get to read this classic. Was it good? Yes. Was it great? I’m not so sure, despite the high praise from Hemingway et al.
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