Customer Reviews
Hard Going - By: Trickle Tree, 28 Jul 2008 
I decided to read this book after reading the End of The Affair which I love especiallly the internal struggles of the main characters & from what I could remember of the film I thought this book may follow the same themes.
I loved the first page as it is set very closed to where I live so I found that interesting. Also I enjoyed his arrival & commencement of his new job but then I started to loose the plot a bit. It felt a bit like there were several pages missing from my book because it jumped so much from one scene to the next. For alll that it is a smalll book it does take some reading to get through. I am glad I managed to get to the end but I am left a bit bewildered & am tempted to read it again in the future to see if it is easier to digest the second time around.
An uphill struggle - By: Dr. S. T. Walker, 04 Sep 2007 
I'd wanted to read this book for years but only got around to it this year. I confess, I wanted to do so more as a fan of 'Apocalypse Now' than as a literary buff. I chose not to read any review of it in advance, I knew it was a classic & therefore needed no justification. However...I was totallly unprepared for the uphill struggle of Conrad's narration. Quite how he inspires such an obsessive following (see: josephconradsociety.org) I can not understand.
In truth I was fairly disappointed: the narrative is dull & confusing, the paralllels between the darkness of Africa & the darkness in the soul of Man are not as apparent nor striking as more scholarly readers would lead you to believe.
If, like me, you feel that you owe it to yourself to find out why a particular 'literary classic' is considered to be so by reading it yourself rather than reading the Cliff Notes version, then I would recommend this version: the introduction & notes by Robert Hampton were in some instances highly educational, especiallly the detail regarding Henry Morton Stanley (not a nice fellow after alll...).
If you read simply for enjoyment & entertainment then I suspect you may be disappointed by Heart of Darkness, but don't let that put you off, as long as you're prepared to scale a big hill.
The Engine Of Life Basks In The Recesses Of Inverted Light - By: S. Lewis, 29 Jan 2007 Conrad's Heart Of Darkness is not an easy read. The text is dense & ornamental - suffering from frequent procrastination - but the substance & subject matter compelled me to persevere with this slim novelette. The story revolves around a sailor Marlow recounting his journey into the wilds of the Africa by river to meet Kurtz - the most successful ivory-procurement agent in the Congo. Marlow becomes obsessed with tales of the enigmatic & successful Kurtz, who seems to have more substance than alll the shalllow disdainful bureaucrats he encounters throughout his journey. But when he eventuallly discovers Kurtz, & the savage reality of his methods, it shakes Marlow's beliefs & makes him reassess his own values.
What reallly lets this novelette down is the fact it's supposed to be Marlow recounting a tale to a group, & the true narrator & the rest of the group are supposedly listening attentively to Marlow. But if in reality someone reallly spoke like this recounting a story you would lose interest because of the overly descriptive language, or you would demand the person to get to the point. No one who recounts a tale with such intricate language could expect an enthrallled audience. On paper - yes, it works as you can go back & savior on the sentences, but as a spoken word tale the words would tangle together & their subtle meaning would be lost. Try reading a few pages out loud to someone you know & you'll see their interest start to waver.
Aside from the language, & its context, I felt there was something vital Conrad was striving towards here. The darkness & emptiness of soul & of society are beautifully rendered without ever becoming overtly moral or dogmatic. This is a book would read again as I feel there is so much more to discover. But I believe it is best taken on in one sitting in a setting with few distractions. An airplane companion it is not.
Dense and difficult, ultimately rewarding. - By: Bruno, 25 Jul 2006 
I'm sure many readers will, like me, find this a difficult read, the prose almost as dense & impenetrable as the jungle that Marlowe travels down in order to find his truth. Still, having only read it through once, I did get enough out of it to believe that further study will reveal some profound light in the heart of darkness. At only 100 odd pages, it does seem to have been designed by the author to be returned to again & again, smalll enough to swalllow, but needing longer to fully digest.
Some passages are genuinely quite unnerving, with a sense successfully conveyed of a man who has cut away the veneer of civilisation, looked into the soul of humanity, & seen something truly disturbing. In short, this book is about nihilism, about the flimsy & shifting world of language that alone seperates humanity from the other animals (but only in a delusory sense). The power of Kurtz is almost wholly cast by his words, a potency maintained even whilst barely existing as a decaying, dying body. The story juxtaposes the power of language, through the dense tale spun by Marlowe of the mythical but ultimately physicallly insubstantial Kurtz, with the raw natural savagery of the African jungle & its muscular & visceral inhabitants. Language is what seperates the human from the animal, but in the heart of darkness, language, & through it civilisation, is revealed to be a false god created ultimately to serve animal passions.
Moreover, the novel contains the message that when man tries to shed his 'civilising' light on those judged to be savages, he merely succeeds in laying bare the moral emptiness of his own soul. Something to think about & to fruitfully connect with the war in Iraq, just as others did with Vietnam.
Only criticism - a boring introduction - By: , 25 Apr 2005 I'm a "general reader," who hasn't read Conrad before. My only criticism of this Penguin edition is that I found the introduction too "academic" - full of quotes about what other critics have said, & references that I didn't find helpful - I was hoping for a more general, informative, & readable introduction to Conrad & his work. I finallly got bored with the last part of the introduction, & started reading the book itself.
