I finished reading Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness last night, and, frankly, I thought it was terrible- badly written, difficult to follow, and just Not Very Good.
The actual idea behind the story was great, but I think Apocalypse Now did a much better job of exploring the themes Conrad was trying to get across.
Of course, the Literati will no doubt be in to try and convince me how Worthy and Great this book is, but I was extremely disappointed with it…
Anyone else have the same experience? I can’t be the only person who’s read this (or another Classic piece of Literature) and basically said “WTF? This is terrible!”…
I was profoundly disappointed by it. I didn’t find it emotionally engaging. The horror I was meant to feel didn’t move me at all, either. Maybe if I hadn’t seen Apocalypse Now already? The themes were indeed groundbreaking - which is why I think it is so highly regarded - but as a piece of literature… not so much.
I understand (but don’t agree) with the aesthetic arguments, but difficult to follow?
Guy travels up a river, he meets this other guy who says “The Horror! The Horror!” then dies.
The End.
Maybe you really have to partake of the colonial experience to see what he was getting at?
It was difficult to follow in the sense that it was very disjointed and didn’t make a lot of sense in parts- for example, Marlow spends some time lamenting his inability to obtain rivets to fix the steam-boat with (despite the fact there are heaps of them back at the port he arrived at), and no matter how often he asks for them, none are forthcoming. This goes on for a couple of pages, and then, suddenly, without further explanation, they’re sailing upriver on their way to meet Kurtz as if it turned out there was actually a crate full of rivets in one of the huts that had conveniently slipped everyone’s mind. Conrad doesn’t even mention fixing the boat or the arrival of rivets or anything- almost literally one sentence it’s “There I was, stuck in this crappy mud-hut village in the Congo, stranded by the lack of a readily available staple of the industrial world” and the next its “So, we were sailing up the river with a bunch of people you, the reader, have never been introduced to…”
That particular sequence caused me to re-read the last couple of pages (including an irrelevant digression about an expedition that passed through the village) in case I’d missed something, but no, it was as if Conrad just got sick of that particular train of thought and wanted to move onto something else.
As for Kurtz:
By the time Marlow et al arrive at his village, he’s dying of Malaria or some other exotic Tropical Disease and doesn’t do or say anything that would explain why the Natives hold him in such esteem.
As a result of this sort of thing, I found the book very difficult to follow (complicated by Conrad’s writing style), and- as I said in the OP- just Not Very Good.
I still think there’s a good story there, but it needs to be re-written, cleaned up, and given a better exposition, IMHO…
I read the book for a course in existentialist literature, and while I found the book itself kind of dull, I enjoyed the discussion of it. My general interpretation of why Kurtz was held in ‘‘such high esteem’’ is because he was a terrifying tyrant. I guess I figured that was clear enough by
The head on a post outside his lair.
One thing about the book I think is ‘‘great’’ is that it challenges the idea of what it means to be savage and uncivilized. Historically it had a lot to say about imperialism. But to be perfectly frank, it was kind of a dull read. It’s the ideas that have merit more than the writing itself IMHO.
I too found the book to be a big fat “meh,” probably, again, because I’d already seen Apocalypse Now. Being that the ideas are the important thing in it anyway, as other posters have said, they were free to be taken and dealt with more effectively.
IIRC, English was something like Conrad’s fourth language, and it shows. I felt like the writing style was a serious barrier to engagement.
I wish y’all could tell me these things sooner. All I ever heard was what a great classic it was, so I gave it a shot…and threw it down just a few pages away from the end. I figured nothing could save it by that point.
I read it in 9th grade, before seeing Apocalypse Now, and remember really enjoying it. I also remember being the only one in my class that did (and this was not a class of stupid people), so I guess I’m just weird. I haven’t picked it up since, so I don’t remember all that much about it.
I read it, if by “read” you mean “looked at the words on the page”. I remember nothing about that book except for the deep and abiding hate and boredom it inspired in me. Oh yes, that was one to throw down the hallway.
I read it well before Apocalypse Now was filmed, and I found it to be a fascinating study of “civilization” versus “savagery” and how thin the line actually was. By not being specific on Kurtz’s actions it allows the reader to fill in his own atrocities.
I think it may have helped to have read several of Conrad’s other Marlowe stories, so as to know the protagonist better.
I was ready to write this big post about imperialism, and Ms. Olives here beat me to it, and in fewer words. It really is the ideas in the novella that set it apart, not the writing. Literature is a sometimes thing: sometimes it’s the ideas that make it great, sometimes it’s the writing, and sometimes it’s a combination of both. When it’s the last case, it’s very rare. Heart of Darkness is the first case, unfortunately. It has all the quirks of 19th century writing and none of the saving graces.
Apocalypse Now is based on Heart of Darkness, and I think it would be a lesser movie if it didn’t have the book to draw on. (Apart from not having a plot, OK? If anything, people today think Apocalypse Now explores the themes better because it’s modern – surprise, a modern audience relates better to a modern portrayal.) As much as you may detest the book, it’s a very heavy contemporary criticism of imperialism, and one of very few stories of 19th-century literature about Africa where imperialism isn’t shown as shiny-happy.
I remember finding the ending, when Marlow is back in Whateversburg delivering the news of Marlow’s death and weirdness to his woman, to be especially chilling. Here is the gatekeeper of Western civilization, an upper middle-classed woman, and he is unable to sully that. Instead he has to subvert the truth.
You think that was bad? Heart of Darkness Redux really sucked, especially when they spent forever having dinner at the plantation house with all those saucy daguerreotype models.