Heart of Darkness

By Joseph Conrad

Heart of Darkness is a novella written in 1899 by Anglo-Polish novelist Joseph Conrad. It is about a voyage into the Congo Free State in the heart of Africa, by the story's narrator Marlow, an introspective sailor who takes a job as a riverboat captain with the Company, a Belgian concern organized to trade in the Congo.

Marlow, aboard a boat anchored on the River Thames in London, recounts to his friends the story of his assignment to journey up the Congo to retrieve and return Kurtz, an ivory hunter reputed to be an idealistic man of great abilities enjoying a reverenced effect on the natives, who delivers more ivory than all other stations combined.

As Marlow travels to Africa and then up the Congo on the steamer ship, he encounters widespread inefficiency and brutality in the Company’s stations. The native inhabitants of the region have been forced into the Company’s service, and suffer terribly from overwork and ill treatment at the hands of the Company’s agents. This setting provides the framework for Marlow's story of his obsession with Kurtz, and enables Conrad to create a parallel between London and Africa as places of darkness.

Central to the book is the idea that there is little difference between so-called civilized people and those described as savages. Conrad raises important questions about imperialism and racism. The cruelty and squalor of this imperial enterprise contrasts sharply with the majestic jungle that surrounds the white man’s settlements, making them appear to be tiny islands amidst a vast darkness.

Heart of Darkness is a novella written in 1899 by Anglo-Polish novelist Joseph Conrad. It is about a voyage into the Congo Free State in the heart of Africa, by the story's narrator Marlow, an introspective sailor who takes a job as a riverboat captain with the Company, a Belgian concern organized to trade in the Congo.

Marlow, aboard a boat anchored on the River Thames in London, recounts to his friends the story of his assignment to journey up the Congo to retrieve and return Kurtz, an ivory hunter reputed to be an idealistic man of great abilities enjoying a reverenced effect on the natives, who delivers more ivory than all other stations combined.

As Marlow travels to Africa and then up the Congo on the steamer ship, he encounters widespread inefficiency and brutality in the Company’s stations. The native inhabitants of the region have been forced into the Company’s service, and suffer terribly from overwork and ill treatment at the hands of the Company’s agents. This setting provides the framework for Marlow's story of his obsession with Kurtz, and enables Conrad to create a parallel between London and Africa as places of darkness.

Central to the book is the idea that there is little difference between so-called civilized people and those described as savages. Conrad raises important questions about imperialism and racism. The cruelty and squalor of this imperial enterprise contrasts sharply with the majestic jungle that surrounds the white man’s settlements, making them appear to be tiny islands amidst a vast darkness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: G&D Media
• Release date: May 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781722524067

Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad was born to Polish parents in the Ukraine on 3rd December 1857. He grew up surrounded by upheaval. His father was exiled to northern Russia for political activities and although they eventually returned to Poland, Conrad was orphaned by the age of 11. Subsequently he was taught by his uncle, a great influence and mentor. Leaving for Marseilles in 1874, Conrad began his training as a seaman. After an attempt at suicide, Conrad joined the British merchant navy and became a British subject in 1886. After his first novel, Almayer's Folly was published in 1895 he left the sea behind and settled down to a life of writing. Indeed, as his wife wrote in 1927, he would move only "from his table to his bed, for days and days on end". Troubled financially for many years, he faced uncomplimentary critics and an indifferent public. He finally became a popular success with Chance (1913). By the end of his life on 3rd August 1924 his status as one of the great writers of his time was assured.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide.

The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth.

The Director of Companies was our captain and our host. We four affectionately watched his back as he stood in the bows looking to seaward. On the whole river there was nothing that looked half so nautical. He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness personified. It was difficult to realize his work was not out there in the luminous estuary, but behind him, within the brooding gloom.

Between us there was, as I have already said somewhere, the bond of the sea. Besides holding our hearts together through long periods of separation, it had the effect of making us tolerant of each other’s yarns—and even convictions. The Lawyer—the best of old fellows—had, because of his many years and many virtues, the only cushion on deck, and was lying on the only rug. The Accountant had brought out already a box of dominoes, and was toying architecturally with the bones. Marlow sat cross-legged right aft, leaning against the mizzen-mast. He had sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a straight back, an ascetic aspect, and, with his arms dropped, the palms of hands outwards, resembled an idol. The director, satisfied the anchor had good hold, made his way aft and sat down amongst us. We exchanged a few words lazily. Afterwards there was silence on board the yacht. For some reason or other we did not begin that game of dominoes. We felt meditative, and fit for nothing but placid staring. The day was ending in a serenity of still and exquisite brilliance. The water shone pacifically; the sky, without a speck, was a benign immensity of unstained light; the very mist on the Essex marsh 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.

Forthwith a change came over the waters, and the serenity became less brilliant but more profound. The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth. We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs for ever, but in the august light of abiding memories. And indeed nothing is easier for a man who has, as the phrase goes, followed the sea with reverence and affection, than to evoke the great spirit of the past upon the lower reaches of the Thames. The tidal current runs to and fro in its unceasing service, crowded with memories of men and ships it had borne to the rest of home or to the battles of the sea. It had known and served all the men of whom the nation is proud, from Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin, knights all, titled and untitled—the great knights-errant of the sea. It had borne all the ships whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of time, from the Golden Hind returning with her rotund flanks full of treasure, to be visited by the Queen’s Highness and thus pass out of the gigantic tale, to the Erebus and Terror, bound on other conquests—and that never returned. It had known the ships and the men. They had sailed from Deptford, from Greenwich, from Erith—the adventurers and the settlers; kings’ ships and the ships of men on ‘Change; captains, admirals, the dark interlopers of the Eastern trade, and the commissioned generals of East India fleets. Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth! … The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires.

The sun set; the dusk fell on the stream, and lights began to appear along the shore. The Chapman light-house, a three-legged thing erect on a mud-flat, shone strongly. Lights of ships moved in the fairway—a great stir of lights going up and going down. And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.

And this also, said Marlow suddenly, has been one of the dark places of the earth.

He was the only man of us who still followed the sea. The worst that could be said of him was that he did not represent his class. He was a seaman, but he was a wanderer, too, while most seamen lead, if one may so express it, a sedentary life. Their minds are of the stay-at-home order, and their home is always with them—the ship; and so is their country—the sea. One ship is very much like another, and the sea is always the same. In the immutability of their surroundings the foreign shores, the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life, glide past, veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance; for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny. For the rest, after his hours of work, a casual stroll or a casual spree on shore suffices to unfold for him the secret of a whole continent, and generally he finds the secret not worth knowing. The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical (if his propensity to spin yarns be excepted), and to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine.

His remark did not seem at all surprising. It was just like Marlow. It was accepted in silence. No one took the trouble to grunt even; and presently he said, very slow:

I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came here, nineteen hundred years ago—the other day…. Light came out of this river since—you say Knights? Yes; but it is like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker—may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday. Imagine the feelings of a commander of a fine—what d’ye call ’em?—trireme in the Mediterranean, ordered suddenly to the north; run overland across the Gauls in a hurry; put in charge of one of these craft the legionaries—a wonderful lot of handy men they must have been, too—used to build, apparently by the hundred, in a month or two, if we may believe what we read. Imagine him here—the very end of the world, a sea the colour of lead, a sky the colour of smoke, a kind of ship about as rigid as a concertina—and going up this river with stores, or orders, or what you like. Sand-banks, marshes, forests, savages—precious little to eat fit for a civilized man, nothing but Thames water to drink. No Falernian wine here, no going ashore. Here and there a military camp lost in a wilderness, like a needle in a bundle of hay—cold, fog, tempests, disease, exile, and death—death skulking in the air, in the water, in the bush. They must have been dying like flies here. Oh, yes—he did it. Did it very well, too, no doubt, and without thinking much about it either, except afterwards to brag of what he had gone through in his time, perhaps. They were men enough to face the darkness. And perhaps he was cheered by keeping his eye on a chance of promotion to the fleet at Ravenna by and by, if he had good friends in Rome and survived the awful climate. Or think of a decent young citizen in a toga—perhaps too much dice, you know—coming out here in the train of some prefect, or tax-gatherer, or trader even, to mend his fortunes. Land in a swamp, march through the woods, and in some inland post feel the savagery, the utter savagery, had closed round him—all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men. There’s no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable. And it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination—you know, imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate.

He paused.

Mind, he began again, lifting one arm from the elbow, the palm of the hand outwards, so that, with his legs folded before him, he had the pose of a Buddha preaching in European clothes and without a lotus-flower—"Mind, none of us would feel exactly like this. What saves us is efficiency—the devotion to efficiency. But these chaps were not much account, really. They were no colonists; their administration was merely a squeeze, and nothing more, I suspect. They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force—nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind—as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. 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

Reviews for Heart of Darkness

[thewestwing-864351 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Having just read a history of the belgian Congo I think I appreciated this book far more than I would have if I didn't know the full history of the subject dealt with in the book. As I could identify characters and situations within the book I was able to relate to it more.

[coach_of_alva · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I read this thirty-five years and didn’t get much out of it. After hearing Branagh’s reading, I think what I missed was not the obvious message, but the art. There is nothing like a great actor giving a great reading to bring a great work of literature to life.

[charrlygirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In an effort to class up the joint, I listened to this audio book performed by Kenneth Branagh.

I say performed, because it wasn't just a plain reading of the story. He added depth to the observations and took what I might have found to be a boring story and breathed life into it.

I enjoyed this quite a bit and would recommend this audio version to anyone interested in this classic tale.

[kathleen586 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This classic book is very intriguing and well-written. Kenneth Branagh's phenomenal narration made this one of the best audiobooks I have ever listened to (thus the five-star review). The book itself would probably get 4 stars, despite its unfortunate racist overtones.

[bookomaniac-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Uiteraard een klassieker, maar desondanks zeer intrigerend. Sterk accent op stemming en sfeerschepping: duister, mysterieus.Maar stilistisch meestal grote omhaal van woorden en daardoor niet helemaal geslaagd.Te lezen als ultieme explorie van het innerlijk van de mens in extreme omstandigheden

[worldincolour · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Quite difficult to read, had it's charms but in the end not really a book I'd like to read again some day.

[eilonwy_anne · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is so very well written that many aspects of it seem to me to verge on perfection. It springs to mind a hundred times in discussing writing craft, in discussing what a story should do, how framing can work, or indeed, when contemplating John Gardner's theory that novellas at their best have a "glassy perfection". This book manages to be an experience as well as a literary work, and the effect of its final pages is profound, worthwhile, and haunting.

[unionhawk_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Definitely a dense book. Don't be fooled by its relative shortness. The Heart of Darkness packs a whole lot into a small package. Not light reading by any means.I enjoyed it. I had a little bit of a hard time understanding it at points, but it was fun to read.

[vikz.richards · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A beautifully, descriptive work. The descriptions of place are outstanding. The slow pace of the work mirrors the leisurely, lazy flow of the river and the slow lives of the characters. The darkness that inhabits the place and the human soul is always at the heart of this work. But, it didn't have the emotional pull on me. Therefore its a three for this book.

[joetivy · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Only really read it because of Apocalypse Now and found it rather hard going. Interesting the old descriptions of an ancient jungle race (savages etc) and the contrast and shock that it had on the 'sopisticated' European narrator from the developed world.

[mikalina_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

"He was alone - his soul was mad - being alone in the wilderness""She talked as thirsty men drink".Conrad shows us that in the heart of darkness you find both the man that does not believe in mankind, the self-made man, the man that acts like everyone is an island to himself, the man that treats words as separate beings, as if his utterances is of no concequence to his act, his behaviour, and the tale of the woman who builds a life around an illusion of the unquestionable good, of the trust in words, the belief in the un-falling man. (the knitting aunt / Kurt´s fiance).Humanity cannot be built or sustained on neither.Conrad´s pen goes like a dissecting knife to the heart at hand, both sharp, precise and delicate. The rhytm of the language is mesmerizing (Conrad-Branagh is a formidable match), moving the whole experience close to a Homerian tale.

[geraldlange · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Damn good catalyst.

[ted_newell-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Apocalypse Then -- the original one. He puts you into it.

[rsubber · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I just finished re-reading “Heart of Darkness,” it’s short, very readable, very dark of course, the protagonist Marlowe (picture Mickey Rourke in a Panama hat) dives pretty deep into the abyss of human nature, give it a shot if you’re not looking for light reading…..

[raggedprince · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Reading Conrad sentences is a bit like pulling teeth. But he really hits the spot sometimes.

[theoclarke · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lush language is the key differentiator of this remarkable polemic against atrocity. The framed narrative distances the author from the views expressed so it is hard to know whether Conrad shared the racism and sexism of Marlow, his protagonist. Taken at face value, the account of white colonists going to collect ivory from a white manager who has ruthlessly suppressed his black suppliers endorses white supremacy but not the ill-treatment of the lesser beings. Marlow objects to Kurtz's abuse of the 'savages' in much the same way that the English of the time protected dogs and horses.

[solitaryfossil · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I finished Joseph Conrad’s novella, “Heart of Darkness” this morning. I’m really a bit Ho-hum about it, can’t really recommend it.

[br77rino · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A tale within a tale, like so much of Conrad. The inner tale describes a man who sets out as an employee of a trading company with "outlets" in Africa, along the Congo River, around 1900. The trade is in ivory, and some traders are better at getting it than others. The man describes one trader in particular, the best trader, Kurtz. It's a dark tale.

[blenny_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

In order to read and understand this book, I found a little bit of knowledge about art and writing in the modernist age would be greatly beneficial to the reader. The vagueness of the text is very similar to that of impressionist painting in art, i.e making 'impressions' of something, 'suggesting' rather than saying 'This is what it is'. Conrad starts out telling a story within a story, within a story....like we all do in conversation...(a friend of a friend, of a friend). The story starts off as a fairly light and bright scene and gets darker and darker as the story progresses, journeying further into the depths of the jungle (the film Seven uses this same method). He turns what is perceived as racism today completely on it's head, for example, one of the African characters says that all white people look the same to him. As for the term 'savages', it's the white man, Kurtz who is written as the most savage of all. The journey into the dark jungle is a metaphor for journeying deep down to the depths of the human heart to find that inner animal where we first came from, which Kurtz found in himself. Hence the title being 'Heart Of Darkness'. Conrad seems to be commenting on his main character Marlow's realisation that races are no different to one another and we are all savages at heart...just look at the way we treated the animals in the ivory trade. Contrary to some beliefs, Heart of Darkness is an anti-imperialist and anti-racist book, after all Conrad writes about how horrendous slavery and the ivory trade is. Even the quotation 'The horror, the horror', is surely a reflection of this.

[texascheeseman · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Heart of DarknessBy Joseph ConradPublisher: Knopf Everyman’s LibraryPublished In: New York City, NY, USADate: 1902/1967/1993Pgs: 110REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERSSummary:Marlow on a journey into the Congo works a riverboat for a Belgian company trading upriver. His travelogue shows the company up as imperial in its attitudes and actions toward the natives. The ivory must flow. The Congo must pay for herself and swell the coffers of her European masters. How it is done doesn’t matter. It only matters that it is done.Genre:fiction, the classics, africa, colonialismWhy this book:It was next to another book that I was looking at...and it jumped into my cart and came home with me.This Story is About:questing for a chimera, the failure of that most wanted to live up to expectations built up in the quester’s eyes/mind.Favorite Character:The exposition kept me from becoming attached to any of these characters.Least Favorite Character: Kurtz. He comes across through the exposition of the other characters as a modern cult leader. One wonders if this story and the character of Kurtz was an inspiration to the likes of Jim Jones in Jonestown.Character I Most Identified With:We’re supposed to identify with Marlow, to see him as us questing for a goal, but the attachment doesn’t communicate.The Feel:The early part of the book when the narrator is describing the meeting of Marlow with his compatriots is very much a portrait of the book’s age. The descriptions of the Thames and London and their reaching backward through time is a classic paradigm used in much period pieces. The heavy exposition colors the narrative.Favorite Scene:The scene where, as his first act in Africa, Marlow recovers the bones of his predecessor captain from the native village where he was struck dead after assaulting the village chieftain and left to molder as the village lies deserted.Marlow’s discovery of Kurtz having gone native and Godhead all at once.Settings:London waterfront; the River Congo; the upriver stations, villages, and shantiesPacing:The pace is fairly classic through the opening, very pretentious, not in a bad way, but in the classic sense of all writing of that period. Marlow’s voyage to the Congo picks up the pace a bit, but the prose.Plot Holes/Out of Character:Do those caught in his orbit love Kurtz or fear him? Seems a little bit of both.Last Page Sound:Woof.Author Assessment:His writing is definitely a product of his time. I say that not in a good way or a bad way, it just is. The exposition is thick here. Case by case basis.Editorial Assessment:Would have liked the exposition of the story to have been put on a diet, but as I’ve stated before, I believe this was more a function of the times and styles in which it was written than an indictment of the author or editor. The story with half as much exposition would have been roughly half its, already short, length.Did the Book Cover Reflect the Story:The book has a felt cover and no illustrated dust jacket.Song the Story Reminds me of or That Plays in my Head While Reading:Illustrations:NoHmm Moments:That moment when Marlow commented on having to recover his predecessor’s bones from the abandoned native village.Knee Jerk Reaction:real classicDisposition of Book:Irving Public Library, Irving, TXWhy isn’t there a screenplay?There have been. Heart of Darkness has made it to the screen a few times, once as a Vietnam War era tale, Apocalypse Now. It also appeared as a 1993 TV movie with John Malkovich and Tim Roth in lead roles. There is another version in development that MIGHT see the light of day in 2015.Casting call:I would have loved to have seen Sean Connery in one of the roles, either, when he was younger, as Marlow or, before his current virtual retirement, as Kurtz.Would recommend to:fans of the classics, people who are wanting to read the “must reads” of literature

[gmillar_8 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

If I hadn't seen "Apocalypse Now" I might have absorbed this book differently. For me, the "stream of thought" style of narration by Marlow was a little too bumpy to read. I can appreciate that it was modern and adventurous writing for its time and might even be considered as "literary" by some, but I have enjoyed other Conrad offerings better.

[tmaslyk_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I read it over a long span of time because I was busy with school, so by the end a lot wasn't making sense to me. I'd like to read it again. But all in all pretty good book. Need to give it a second chance though.

[mikemillertime · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This book lacks any subtlety in its transparent meditation on morality and purpose. Perhaps this book was a bold, groundbreaking novel in its heyday for its bleak observations about human nature and the ways men abuse each other. But the novel reads more as a philosophy dissertation than as the jungle river expedition of its premise. There are numerous scenes where the narrator is so involved with his longwinded diatribes about the way the world works, that the actual world of the book becomes impossibly imperceptible to decipher what is actually happening to the characters. This story is certainly a overhyped classic, and deserves to be best remembered at this point as just the brilliant "Apocalypse Now."

[sarah_rubyred · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The copy I read had a fantastic introduction, and contained footnotes referring to Conrad's own trip to the Congo, showing how much of this is autobiographical. I would recommend this version to anyone who, like me, read it own a whim with no real knowledge of how influential this writing was at the time.In fact, my fictional reading of this subject is quite expansive, but my factual knowledge is poor. Reading this copy enabled me to be whisked away on a story and yet pad out my limited knowledge.Marlowe is a sympathetic character, born of his time and yet forward-thinking, as is, I guess, Conrad. The images of unexplored Africa as a blank area on maps is exciting, and goes some way to explaining the intrepidation and fear that led these very male explorers to give the impressions that they did of such a peaceful, country.Highly recommended.

[a.j.b.-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Heart of Darkness is an unusually well-written tale; and (of course) Conrad is a true word-smith. The characters' psychological depths are extraordinary, although the adventure spoken of could have been more exciting.

[deltaqueen50 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad is an icon of a book, and one that up to now I have avoided as my thinking was that it would be too high-brow, too literate for me. Due to encouragement from fellow Lters, I decided to give the audio version, read by Kenneth Branagh, a try. What I found was a moving, hauntingly troubled story that is as defining today as it was when first published in 1899. On the surface a simple story, but there are plenty of hidden meanings and allegories to be found on these pages. This journey into the heart of darkness is rife with themes about the evils of colonialism along with the corruption that comes with greed and power. Rich with symbolism, yet surprisingly readable, I was quite taken with Heart of Darkness. I can now understand why there has been such an abundance of “borrowing” from this story in many other forms of art and literature. There have been many who find Joseph Conrad a racist, and perhaps, by today’s definition he was. I prefer to think of him as more of a product of his time. Kenneth Branagh was an excellent reader, putting enough emphasis into his reading without over selling the work. His light tough and slight nuances help to bring the book alive. I can see why this classic book is considered a masterpiece revealing as it does the dark side of human nature, and it is a story that I will remember.

[frozenplums · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I have never hated a book more. It was just. Awful. Plain and simple. I've never encountered a less accessible text where nothing happens. One star is generous.

[lisa.johnson.james · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is the tale of a man who's itchy feet & wanderlust lead him on a mission as a steamboat captain to a position in "the Company" along what I'm presuming is the Congo river in Africa. The clues are there, but the name is never given, so you have to infer it. In those days, the continent was rife with conflicts between the natives & the white men who came down to exploit the ivory trade. For a short book, & my shorter edition only had 72 pages, it's a deep book, the "darkness" in the title not only speaks of the interior of the at the time as a just being explored area, & not just the color of the skin of the natives, some of whom were fabled cannibals, but it speaks of the absolute darkness of the skies after nightfall, & the darkness inside a man's soul in conditions like that.....Not an "easy" read.....but one worth the time

[jessiadams · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I get annoyed at people who call this book racist for 2 reasons.1) The things said by the characters in this book were the truth of how people spoke during that time. If we start trying to erase our past bad behavior, we'll never learn anything in the future. 2) Anyone who's read more than just the book description on the back cover knows that this is a very snarky, very ironic book. Conrad obviously felt exactly the opposite of how the characters treated the Africans in the story. This book tells a story about European colonialism, but its very obvious that the author was showing great condemnation and contempt for it, not supporting it at all.

[monapropertygirl · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This book definitely put forth some very interesting notions, and Conrad clearly can deftly weave his words and create well-crafted sentences. But I found some parts... a lot of parts, something of a chore to read, and despite my careful reading, I still ended up with only a rough sketch of what I supposed it was about. Perhaps that's what's the charm, perhaps I have a limited understanding, I don't know. Perhaps I should pick this back up in a few years and see if it clicks for me then, but for the moment, I can't hold a very high opinion of this novella and can only thank Conrad for making it 100 pages.