Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness

The first time I read this was my senior year of high school two years ago, and I could feel the words flowing in a consistent stream over my head. I don't know what the problem was, because I understood it a lot better this time and I'm not much smarter. I really like the dark, vaguely creepy tone of this book. I'm not a big fan of horror movies, but sometimes I want to feel a little creeped out and this really hit the spot.

I liked Marlow as a narrator because he was flawed, but his flaws were such that I might have had them in similar circumstances. He isn't necessarily kind to the Africans, but he doesn't want them beaten and worked to death either. He remains distant from his companions, which is a problem that I feel I have had before and I wasn't even in Africa. The devices Conrad uses to keep us separate from the story were also appreciated, because I can become uncomfortably emotionally involved sometimes. I'm not kidding. A few months ago I read the book Blade Dancer by S.L. Viehl (I'm pretty sure that's right), and after one character's death scene I just exploded. I shocked myself with how violent my reaction was. I don't tend to explode often, but I do cry a lot. And often unnecessarily.

Good Quotes:

"The water shone pacifically; the sky, without a speck, was a benign immensity of unstained light; the very mist on the Essex marches was like a gauzy and radiant fabric, hung from the wooded rises inland, and draping the low shores in diaphanous folds. Only the gloom to the west, brooding over the upper reaches, became more sombre every minute, as if angered by the approach of the sun.
And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low, and from glowing white changed to a dull red without rays and without heat, as if about to go out suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of that gloom brooding over a crowd of men" (p. 1 in our version).

I still remember this from high school. I thought it was one of the most poetic prose passages I had ever come across.

"The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much." (p. 7)

"Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is the very essence of dreams...no, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream--alone..." (p. 23)

"...Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts [...] there was something wanting in him--some small matter which, when the pressing need arose, could not be found under his magnificent eloquence. Whether he knew of this deficiency himself I can't say. I think the knowledge came to him at last--only at the very last. But the wilderness found him out early, and had taken vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude--and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core..." (p. 51)

"'The horror! The horror!" (p. 69)