4 reasons why you should read "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad (and 2 reasons why you shouldn't)
Recently I read the book Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. This book is about a whole bunch of sailors on a ship. One of the sailors named Marlow was a captain of a steamship when he was younger, and he tells his story about his experiences as the captain of the steamship. The steamship was a ship that would go to Africa and trade. At the time Africa was not the most well-documented place, so he wanted to learn more about it. The chance he got really invigorated his childhood dream of documenting the "blank space". This trip to Africa shapes how he sees his home country of Britain, and sees how badly they treated the people in Africa. He talks about his crazy experiences while he's in Africa. It revolves around a man named Kurtz that is supposed to be very nice and a wonderful person. However he starts to learn more about this man and his abuse of power in Africa.
Overall I enjoyed the book and here are some reasons why I think you should read it.
1. It's message and take on certain subjects. I found that the book had a lot of underlying messages about imperialism in Britain. As you know at some point Britain had control of a lot of countries around the world. However they took these places over in a way that was not so nice called Imperialism. They would use military force in order to take over these places and spread their influence across the globe. While Marlow was stationed in Africa he saw the horrible conditions the British had them in. They were close to being slaves, being tortured and being treated terribly. He realizes the hypocrisy in this. People who justify imperialism try to just claim it as civilizing them, however Kurtz is open about his suppression and oppression of these "lesser beings". On top of this these native Africans are dehumanized throughout the book, almost used as machines.
Another lesson is of karma, as Kurtz' corrupt ways eventually backfires on him.
2. The interesting format. In the book the story is told from a different sailors perspective. However, it's basically just reciting the story that Marlow was telling. I'm finding this fairly common in older books, as the last book I did, The Time Machine also has this format. This format allows for a bit of discussion and a description of the body language of Marlow as he tells the story, which gives us a cool visual. It makes us feel like we are in the story that Marlow is telling, but brings us back to reality with a couple interjections.
3. Plot twists. Because I cannot tell you any spoilers I will say there are a lot of good plot twists toward the end. I'll explain this later, but the book starts of pretty slow, and stays like this for a while, but when it gets to the end I promise you a lot of interesting things will begin to happen, and you'll want to keep reading.
4. Short length. This is pretty self explanatory, the book is only around 150 pages so it's a really quick read and you can't really go wrong with it.
However there were some flaws with the book, and I thought I should point this out.
1. It is boring at the beginning, and it takes a while to get good. Like I said before the first part of the book is kind of boring. It is where Marlow shares his thoughts on Imperialism for the most part, so it's not very action packed by any means. However over time it gets more and more interesting.
2. The English is a bit hard to understand. For me personally I thought it was a bit hard to understand. This book was written a while ago so some of the English is not used very much today. I also noticed a lot of boat terms at the beginning of the book which I didn't know as well.
However I did find this book pretty good overall. If your looking for an action packed book that keeps you on the edge of your seat the entire time, I wouldn't read this book. But, if you are looking for something that you can think about, and take time to dig deep and find underlying messages and such, I would highly recommend this book. However, because of its short length, you can't really go wrong with it.
-Teo Chemla
Overall I enjoyed the book and here are some reasons why I think you should read it.
1. It's message and take on certain subjects. I found that the book had a lot of underlying messages about imperialism in Britain. As you know at some point Britain had control of a lot of countries around the world. However they took these places over in a way that was not so nice called Imperialism. They would use military force in order to take over these places and spread their influence across the globe. While Marlow was stationed in Africa he saw the horrible conditions the British had them in. They were close to being slaves, being tortured and being treated terribly. He realizes the hypocrisy in this. People who justify imperialism try to just claim it as civilizing them, however Kurtz is open about his suppression and oppression of these "lesser beings". On top of this these native Africans are dehumanized throughout the book, almost used as machines.
Another lesson is of karma, as Kurtz' corrupt ways eventually backfires on him.
2. The interesting format. In the book the story is told from a different sailors perspective. However, it's basically just reciting the story that Marlow was telling. I'm finding this fairly common in older books, as the last book I did, The Time Machine also has this format. This format allows for a bit of discussion and a description of the body language of Marlow as he tells the story, which gives us a cool visual. It makes us feel like we are in the story that Marlow is telling, but brings us back to reality with a couple interjections.
3. Plot twists. Because I cannot tell you any spoilers I will say there are a lot of good plot twists toward the end. I'll explain this later, but the book starts of pretty slow, and stays like this for a while, but when it gets to the end I promise you a lot of interesting things will begin to happen, and you'll want to keep reading.
4. Short length. This is pretty self explanatory, the book is only around 150 pages so it's a really quick read and you can't really go wrong with it.
However there were some flaws with the book, and I thought I should point this out.
1. It is boring at the beginning, and it takes a while to get good. Like I said before the first part of the book is kind of boring. It is where Marlow shares his thoughts on Imperialism for the most part, so it's not very action packed by any means. However over time it gets more and more interesting.
2. The English is a bit hard to understand. For me personally I thought it was a bit hard to understand. This book was written a while ago so some of the English is not used very much today. I also noticed a lot of boat terms at the beginning of the book which I didn't know as well.
However I did find this book pretty good overall. If your looking for an action packed book that keeps you on the edge of your seat the entire time, I wouldn't read this book. But, if you are looking for something that you can think about, and take time to dig deep and find underlying messages and such, I would highly recommend this book. However, because of its short length, you can't really go wrong with it.
-Teo Chemla
Before I get started on the actual comment, I want to say that when I opened the blog, the cover of this book popped up and it scared me for a second. Those eyes look really creepy if they just pop up in the middle of your screen. Anyway, nice review. This book sounds intriguing, and the topic is very unique. However, I also appreciate the negatives you gave so I can decide for myself whether or not I should read this book. Good job.
ReplyDeleteGood job. I think this book has an interesting plot and seems to connect with important topics today. I like how you pointed out how Kurtz feels towards imperialism because it helps me better decide whether or not the characters are good enough to read the book. The ideas you pointed out were also good, such as the interesting format and the plot twists. The interesting format seems to make the story more unique and thus gives me incentive to read it. And, I appreciated how you said that the book starts out slow but has a lot of interesting plot twists at the end because I might have just quit the book if I didn't know that.
ReplyDeleteI think the picture you chose really encapsulates the horrific actions that some characters in this book do. The format of the story sounds really interesting. The book, however, just doesn't appeal to me especially because you mention that it is short but takes a while to develop. Still, good job on the blog post!
ReplyDeleteI really like how you take both the positive and negative parts of the book to give us the whole picture of what it's like. This seems like a kind of revolutionary book because it goes against what the English were doing at the time. I think you did a great job of describing this book!
ReplyDelete