Heart of Darkness

I just read Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness for one of my classes at uni and the more I think about it the more I like it. When I first read it I was a little let down because I was expecting something quite different. The title 'Heart of Darkness' made me think it was going to be a dramatic, gothic novel which, of course, it isn't! It's typical Modernism in the way that the deeper you delve the more there is to discover and I just keep discovering more themes and ideas that it's almost overwhelming.

The thing that really stood out to me though was the narrative framing. It begins with a seaman on a boat with three other people, one of which begins telling a story about an expedition he was a part of on the Congo River in Africa and the majority of the remaining novel is this retelling. Numerous critcs have labelled Conrad as racist for his depiction of the native Africans in the novel, but I think the subjectivity of the story being told far overrides these suggestions. Heart of Darkness is a story about the unknown and the difficulty in ascertaining truth in a world of such vast knowledge that it is impossible to unconver it all.

I suggest you read it. And then read it again.