This is one of those books I hear about a lot. It seems its on all the lists of best books and is usually required reading in English literature programs. I can see why it’s considered so great, but, by Jove! it is dark… I imagine this is also frequently banned. The horror! The horror!
Heart of Darkness
Author: Joseph Conrad
Pages: 144
Format: Paperback
Published: January 1, 1899
Publisher: Penguin Classics
View on Goodreads
Date Completed: January 12, 2025
My rating: 
Thoughts
I was watching YouTuber Benjamin McEvoy and came across his video about how to get an Oxford English Lit education for free. He basically went through what his program looked like, including types of courses and reading lists for those courses. The first list he went through was Modern Literature, which starts around 1910. While this book was published in 1899, it was included in Modern Lit probably because it doesn’t quite fit the classification of Victorian.
The introduction to this book was helpful since I was going into it blind. Even still, Marlowe’s rambling nature made for a tougher read than I was expecting. This is a very short book, but somehow it feels epic in its prose. About halfway through, I had ChatGPT give me a brief overview of each of the three parts and that was extremely helpful. Think Cliff’s Notes or SparkNotes, but AI. After that, the rest of the book really did fly right by. Also, Part III is kind of intense; so there’s that.
The historical significance of this book cannot be denied. It deals with the exploitation and murder of Africans in the ivory trade. Trade? Pillage? Anyway, on the search for Kurtz, Marlowe (i.e., Conrad) witnesses atrocities and eventually sees what greed and corruption have done to Kurtz. But in the end, it’s yet another story of Africa told by a white (Ukrainian) author.
When it really comes down to it, this book was hard to follow without some guidance. As I mentioned above, the narrator, or the narrator’s retelling of Marlowe’s story (or something like that), rambled on and on and on. Long, unbroken paragraphs. Dialogue not written as it traditionally is today. It was tough to get some of the visuals of the story.
I understand why this is a classic and why it should be read. But I gave it 3 out of 5 stars mainly because it just didn’t pique my interest. I’ll read some others on Benjamin McEvoy’s lists and report back.
