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Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Historically accurate
Reviewed in the United States on August 25, 2018
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The title says it all. It's a very dark look at how humans can rationalize anything, but still struggle with their buried consciences. It's quite sobering to realize that all of the atrocities Conrad describes in HOD really occurred - he witnessed them when he was a steamboat captain in the Belgian Congo.

I actually got the idea to read this book while I was reading King Leopold's Ghost, which is a historical account of his (he was The king of Belgium) formation and rule over the Belgian Congo colony. In this book, it was explained how Joseph Conrad witnessed and corroborated the widespread atrocities the Belgian (and other European and American commissioners) committed on a routine basis. For me, that gave this book added impact - but it's also interesting to note that this story was used as the basic storyline for the film Apocalypse Now. Same scary trip up a river, even the name of the commissioner to be brought back by the boat captain was the same: Mr. Kurtz instead of Colonel Kurtz.

All that aside, HOD is a very dark look into the human psyche and worth reading on that basis alone. The fact that Conrad basically just described what he had himself witnessed certainly raises the importance of this book a hundredfold.
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Alex Bush
5.0 out of 5 stars Brutal, dry, refreshing, moving. I book you'll remember forever, but only want to read 2-3 pages of at a time.
Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2017
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Like most of "Great" novels of the 18th century that I've braved opening, I found Heart of Darkness to be both exhilaratingly badass and desperately dry and boring. If you're used to breezing through novels in a week or two, expect to slow your pace significantly. If it's true that some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested, HoD is some prime beef jerky: delicious and infuriatingly slow to masticate.

Forget the whole "50 pages a night before bed" deal, I had to push myself to get through 2-3 pages a night (and then I slept like a baby). However, in return I was rewarded with one of the most epic, dark, and rewarding stories I've ever encountered, and two of my all-time favorite literary passages:

“I don't like work--no man does--but I like what is in the work--the chance to find yourself. Your own reality--for yourself not for others--what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.”

“Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of overschadowed distances. [...] And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect.”

I come from a very liberal area, where sentiments like needing to love your work and the inherently peaceful goodness of nature are accepted without too much questioning, so I found these two passages to be both brutally and blessedly refreshing. The quote about no man liking to work is something that I try to remember every day and have found both realistic and fortifying for the grind.

PS. I'd be remiss if I went through a review of Heart of Darkness without mentioning Apocalypse Now, one of my favorite movies of all time, and nearly as exhausting as the book (if such a thing were possible). I'm not sure if I'd love the book as much as I do if I hadn't seen Apocalypse Now first. Make sure to watch it if you're thinking about reading HoD, you'll thank me later.
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Luke R.
2.0 out of 5 stars Overrated
Reviewed in the United States on July 28, 2018
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A long journey with no payoff. We spend the whole book waiting to meet the profound, genius, great man Mr. Kurtz, who has the amazing power to influence people with words, who emanates greatness, gets more ivory than everybody else combined etc. etc. etc. When we meet him in the last 10% of the book, Kurtz speaks about two un-profound lines and dies, and then the rest is a long, vague, angst-ridden retrospective about how profound the meeting with Mr Kurtz was, how powerful their (untold) conversations were, how the narrator loved him like no other man, but how he went to the dark side of darkness of human shadowy dark-dark and that we're all essentially evil in our dark misty hearts. So much abstract pontification about Kurtz with so little actual appearance of him in the story and dialogue - oy. Any profoundness here must have been supplied by the subsequent academic overanalysis of it.
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BumblebeeBailey
5.0 out of 5 stars A Brief, Very Brief, Description WITHOUT Spoilers.
Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2015
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For everyone that is not familiar with this classic you may know the adaptation into film, Apocalypse Now. Originally published in 1902 as a novella Conrad uses the story as a critique of imperialism. "Heart of Darkness" can either be read as an adventure story of a young man's exploits in a foreign mysterious continent or a physiological thriller of another man's descent into madness.
The majority of the story is told by a seaman as he sits aboard a yawl moored in the river Thames. The foundation of the novella is an European employer has hired Marlow to find rogue ivory trader Mr Kurtz who has absconded into the jungle with the company's money and ivory. Marlow begins the story naive and idealistic yet as he ventures deeper and deeper down the unnamed river into the continent he begins to suspect that corruption and madness has overcome Kurtz. Kurtz himself is not seen until later in he story but the foreshadowing of his introduction builds the suspense and climaxes with Marlow's decision to indeed bring Kurtz out of the jungle.
Although a much deeper plot synopsis could be given and spoilers included, I believe the reader will enjoy discovering the poety like prose of Conrad's novella themselves. Readers for generations have enjoyed, contemplated and been fascinated with the imagery and story of "Heart of Darkness".
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M. Dowden
5.0 out of 5 stars A Powerful Read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 9, 2015
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As a yacht anchors in the Thames and the crew settle down one of them, Charles Marlow, recites an experience he had when he took to sailing on freshwater. And so we have here one of Conrad’s most read and studied works, although this is only a novella. First published in serial form in Blackwood’s Magazine this tale still has the power to provoke and stimulate discussion.

Obviously inspired by and based in part on the author’s own experiences this is a story that really grips you. As Marlow takes a job to captain a steamboat up and down the river between trading posts in Africa, he is employed by an ivory business. As Marlow keeps hearing of the genius Mr Kurtz, he is intrigued. But when he actually meets Kurtz things are not what they seem.

Taking in Imperialism and the rapacious way of companies to drain areas of natural resources for their own profits this is something that we are still dealing with today. With the native Africans treated like dirt and looked down upon we also see how the Europeans employed by the company come in different guises, from lazy incompetents to those greedy for profit and gain, all backstabbing each other for their own personal advancement.

We see that Kurtz is from a new way of thought, with the idea of suppressing the native religions and superstitions and trying to make them more like ‘civilised’ Europeans. This novella has come under attack at different times due to such things as supposed racism and so on, but personally I along with many others have found this to be slightly erroneous. Conrad firstly was writing in the language and prejudices of his time, and he does portray the inhumanity shown towards the native population quite graphically. His story also makes us think and question what right we have to change a whole people’s ideas and beliefs just to make them the same as ours. In all Conrad shows us here the cruelty and greed that we can show to one another, and how the real world is, which makes this so powerful and intense a read.
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Wordsmith
3.0 out of 5 stars Not A Classic For Me
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 22, 2021
Verified Purchase
Having heard the hype surrounding this so-called masterpiece, I finally thought I would read it. For the most part I felt as if I had stepped inside an opium den and was listening to the smoke-filled ramblings of its inhabitants. The story was incoherent, and I now see why Apocalypse Now (based on this story) was such a sprawling mess of a movie. At least the film deviated sufficiently to provide the viewer with a gem or two. As for the book, I can only say I had to continually reread passages of it in order for it to make a semblance of sense. If it had been any longer I would have given up the ghost.
I consider three stars to be generous!
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M. Dowden
5.0 out of 5 stars A Powerful Read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 6, 2016
Verified Purchase
As a yacht anchors in the Thames and the crew settle down one of them, Charles Marlow, recites an experience he had when he took to sailing on freshwater. And so we have here one of Conrad’s most read and studied works, although this is only a novella. First published in serial form in Blackwood’s Magazine this tale still has the power to provoke and stimulate discussion.

Obviously inspired by and based in part on the author’s own experiences this is a story that really grips you. As Marlow takes a job to captain a steamboat up and down the river between trading posts in Africa, he is employed by an ivory business. As Marlow keeps hearing of the genius Mr Kurtz, he is intrigued. But when he actually meets Kurtz things are not what they seem.

Taking in Imperialism and the rapacious way of companies to drain areas of natural resources for their own profits this is something that we are still dealing with today. With the native Africans treated like dirt and looked down upon we also see how the Europeans employed by the company come in different guises, from lazy incompetents to those greedy for profit and gain, all backstabbing each other for their own personal advancement.

We see that Kurtz is from a new way of thought, with the idea of suppressing the native religions and superstitions and trying to make them more like ‘civilised’ Europeans. This novella has come under attack at different times due to such things as supposed racism and so on, but personally I along with many others have found this to be slightly erroneous. Conrad firstly was writing in the language and prejudices of his time, and he does portray the inhumanity shown towards the native population quite graphically. His story also makes us think and question what right we have to change a whole people’s ideas and beliefs just to make them the same as ours. In all Conrad shows us here the cruelty and greed that we can show to one another, and how the real world is, which makes this so powerful and intense a read.
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M. Dowden
5.0 out of 5 stars A Powerful Read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 11, 2015
Verified Purchase
As a yacht anchors in the Thames and the crew settle down one of them, Charles Marlow, recites an experience he had when he took to sailing on freshwater. And so we have here one of Conrad’s most read and studied works, although this is only a novella. First published in serial form in Blackwood’s Magazine this tale still has the power to provoke and stimulate discussion.

Obviously inspired by and based in part on the author’s own experiences this is a story that really grips you. As Marlow takes a job to captain a steamboat up and down the river between trading posts in Africa, he is employed by an ivory business. As Marlow keeps hearing of the genius Mr Kurtz, he is intrigued. But when he actually meets Kurtz things are not what they seem.

Taking in Imperialism and the rapacious way of companies to drain areas of natural resources for their own profits this is something that we are still dealing with today. With the native Africans treated like dirt and looked down upon we also see how the Europeans employed by the company come in different guises, from lazy incompetents to those greedy for profit and gain, all backstabbing each other for their own personal advancement.

We see that Kurtz is from a new way of thought, with the idea of suppressing the native religions and superstitions and trying to make them more like ‘civilised’ Europeans. This novella has come under attack at different times due to such things as supposed racism and so on, but personally I along with many others have found this to be slightly erroneous. Conrad firstly was writing in the language and prejudices of his time, and he does portray the inhumanity shown towards the native population quite graphically. His story also makes us think and question what right we have to change a whole people’s ideas and beliefs just to make them the same as ours. In all Conrad shows us here the cruelty and greed that we can show to one another, and how the real world is, which makes this so powerful and intense a read.
Read more
M. Dowden
5.0 out of 5 stars A Powerful Read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 12, 2016
Verified Purchase
As a yacht anchors in the Thames and the crew settle down one of them, Charles Marlow, recites an experience he had when he took to sailing on freshwater. And so we have here one of Conrad’s most read and studied works, although this is only a novella. First published in serial form in Blackwood’s Magazine this tale still has the power to provoke and stimulate discussion.

Obviously inspired by and based in part on the author’s own experiences this is a story that really grips you. As Marlow takes a job to captain a steamboat up and down the river between trading posts in Africa, he is employed by an ivory business. As Marlow keeps hearing of the genius Mr Kurtz, he is intrigued. But when he actually meets Kurtz things are not what they seem.

Taking in Imperialism and the rapacious way of companies to drain areas of natural resources for their own profits this is something that we are still dealing with today. With the native Africans treated like dirt and looked down upon we also see how the Europeans employed by the company come in different guises, from lazy incompetents to those greedy for profit and gain, all backstabbing each other for their own personal advancement.

We see that Kurtz is from a new way of thought, with the idea of suppressing the native religions and superstitions and trying to make them more like ‘civilised’ Europeans. This novella has come under attack at different times due to such things as supposed racism and so on, but personally I along with many others have found this to be slightly erroneous. Conrad firstly was writing in the language and prejudices of his time, and he does portray the inhumanity shown towards the native population quite graphically. His story also makes us think and question what right we have to change a whole people’s ideas and beliefs just to make them the same as ours. In all Conrad shows us here the cruelty and greed that we can show to one another, and how the real world is, which makes this so powerful and intense a read.
Read more
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