"'The horror!' He was a remarkable man. After all, this was the expression of some sort of belief; it had candour, it had conviction, it had a vibrating note of revolt in its whisper, it had the appalling face of a glimpsed truth -- the strange commingling of desire and hate." : an excerpt from my favorite passage which I believe satisfactorily sums up the book.

It was a tedious read for me, and is requiring a lengthy digestion; however, I think I'll return to it in the future when I read The Secret Sharer.

I would categorize these classic novellas as interesting rather than enjoyable. In them, Conrad displays his usual bleak view of human nature and society.

Heart of Darkness records a barely fictionalized account of Conrad’s own experience piloting a steamer in the Belgian Congo. It pairs well with King Leopold’s Ghost (which discusses it at some length). Unlike King Leopold’s Ghost, which reflects current attitudes toward racism and colonialism, Heart of Darkness is loaded with product-of-its-era prejudices. The narrative deplores the dark and horrifying nature of the European characters while at the same time showing a general contempt for the Africans who are on the receiving end of their cruelty.

Our narrator’s response to “what evil lurks in the hearts of men” is complex. He is disgusted by the pettiness, greed, and violence of the Belgian traders but fascinated by the charismatic Kurtz who started out with seemingly higher ideals but has done far more horrifying things. His feelings for Kurtz teeter between sympathetic defense and disgusted horror. Trying to untangle the message of this bleak classic provides an interesting challenge.

The Secret Sharer features another narrator who sympathizes with a dark-hearted character. In this tale, a young captain hides a fugitive aboard his new ship. He becomes oddly obsessed with the idea that this self-confessed murderer (“justifiable homicide” of course) is his double. Tensions escalate between the captain and his new crew due to the secretive, bizarre behavior required to keep the “secret sharer” of his cabin hidden. While quite different in tone from Heart of Darkness, it includes the same tangled message of a sort of sympathy for a cruel person paired with a cynicism toward society.

This was a good great book that i should have read more then once to understand it. There are many things that the book focuses on. The book is mainly about the journey of Marlow into the Heart of Africa(Congo).Marlow is traveling down the river to find Kurtz. But the deeper he went into the Congo the deeper the darkness consumed him. I think the darkness refers to the way people start changing whitin the Congo. For example Marlow was already showing signs of his madness when he first saw the dead bodies of African people. It was real confusing at first. It was because the vocabulary was a little bit more advanced then what i ahd used before. Overall the book was alright,its not my type of book so i didnt really enjoy reading it.

I feel that I am out of my depth with this book. I'm not sure exactly what Conrad was intending. On a surface level it may be some commentary about imperialism but I doubt that was where he wanted the reader to stop. The title itself encourages us to go beyond the physical darkness that is in the heart of the Congo. Kurtz is obviously the key. We find a man that seems to have the propensity toward extremism who finds himself in a place where the encouragement of social custom and morality is removed and what is found in Kurtz is an evil within himself that takes full possession. Actually we see the evil building from the shores of Africa inward with the utter disregard for human life. Kurtz seems to be the pinnacle of what the release of man's primal nature can look like, and it's not pretty.

"The horror, the horror!"

The Secret Sharer: 4 stars;
Heart of Darkness: 2 stars

i have never so thoroughly disliked the experience of reading in my life. i hope to never touch this book again.

The Mind of Man Is Capable of Anything
The narrator Marlow and others from his shipping company are sitting in a boat on the Thames waiting for the tide to turn. He looks back at the huge darkness that is London and remembers when the Romans arrived as conquerors and some “decent young citizen in a toga” would have to live with “all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in…the hearts of wild men…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…the hate” (8). This reflection reminds him of his own experiences in Africa, where Kurtz, agent for an ivory-trading company, lost his moorings in “civilized” behavior and allowed his ego, greed and vanity as a “universal genius,” already acclaimed in Europe, to seek greater renown in Africa.

Conrad’s novel is not just about a European trader who “goes native” and engages in bloody tribal warfare to snatch ivory for his employers. Nor is it just about how Kurtz enjoys his position as possibly divine ruler over his isolated tribe, the natives’ submission feeding his need for power. Misdirected idealism is also not the novel’s main focus. Early in the novel Conrad explains that for Marlow “the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out as a glow brings out a haze” (7). A “hero” doesn’t arise in isolation but from the social web that encourages and sanctions his endeavors.

In the narrative’s final moments the broader context that created Kurtz is identified: first, the heartfelt idolization of Kurtz by his forlorn, mourning fiancée, who had suffered family scorn for her choice of a man based on her belief in his “universal genius” and grand plan for civilizing savage nations. Out of one of those “ironic necessities that lurk in the facts of human existence” (124), Marlow will lie about Kurtz’ final words and say that he had uttered her name, a deception that salvages the desolate woman’s confidence she had loved and known the real man, “that great and saving illusion” (129), which enabled her to bear her loss, but was also fundamental to Kurtz’ destruction. Widespread, uncritical idolization supported his grandiose plans, as did the over-weening pride of the decadent society that thought impressing its culture on another culture not only appropriate but also divinely sanctioned. The reality that profit was the primary motive is deceptively concealed behind lofty, hypocritical pretenses.

Back in the “sepulchral city” (120), some speak glowingly of Kurtz’ talents, though no one knew his profession (122), and a youthful journalist friend claims if he had remained in Europe his powerful oratory would have made him a great leader of an extremist party. “He electrified large meetings…He could get himself to believe anything--anything” (123). But perhaps the most important evidence of external factors is indicated by Marlow’s decision when the company’s mercenary manager decides Kurtz has outlived his usefulness and become a liability, so he’s willing to toss the sick man overboard, a self-serving idea since Kurtz’ arrival and success had imperiled the manager’s position. Of the two evils, Marlow would rather align with Kurtz, even though guilty of reprehensible acts, who had started “with moral ideas of some sort” (51), and at his life’s end was struggling to understand what had happened and why. Such moral dilemmas are absent from the manager’s modern, soulless, mercenary concern.

These philosophical issues are brilliantly enclosed in an adventure story that moves quickly in fascinating detail to immerse the reader along with Marlow in the impenetrable jungle that borders the dangerous river leading up to isolated, dilapidated trading stations clinging to the river’s edge, showing faint signs of vanished white occupants. Even before leaving Europe, the ambivalent comments of the trading company’s employees make clear that those who take on the task often don’t come back or come back with severely altered mental states. Only fools would choose to go. But Marlow’s aunt thinks he’ll be engaged in “weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways” (19), forgetting the company’s main purpose was profit. Along the way the ship encounters men dying of fever or ships maniacally shelling the shore where “enemies” are supposedly hidden, all engaged in the “merry dance of death and trade…It was like a weary pilgrimage amongst hints for nightmares” (22).

Once at the main settlement, Marlow is appalled to see numerous blacks who have been criminalized under laws they neither understand nor created, but which allow their brutal exploitation and starvation. He immediately thinks he “had stepped into the gloomy circle of some Inferno” (26), and watches in horror as an emaciated black crawls on all-fours to get water from the river. Meanwhile, the company’s accountant maintains his civilized veneer by training native women to properly clean his white garments and by keeping fastidious books, which document the great work done by Kurtz in supplying ivory, “a remarkable person…He will be a somebody in the Administration before long. They, above--the Council in Europe, you know---mean him to be” (30). When Marlow meets the manager he feels uneasy about him, because that’s a trait that can be used to manipulate others. “It was impossible to tell what could control such a man…Perhaps there was nothing within him…for out there there were no external checks” (35). The sense of mystery and omnipresent danger from the river or from the unseen inhabitants of the bordering jungle make the so-called “pilgrims” who populate the white settlement fearful and ready to shoot at any possible danger. “The silent wilderness…struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion” (37). Everything about the station seems unreal, especially their pretense of a great cause that will be furthered by Kurtz, “an emissary of pity and science and progress, and devil knows what else” (41), but a man equally detested because he threatens their own mercenary positions. Marlow is eager to get to work fixing up the steamer because “in the work…[you] have the chance to find yourself. Your own reality--for yourself, not for others--what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means” (47).

Marlowe’s interest in Kurtz is peaked when he learns that instead of coming downriver with the ivory, he had inexplicably returned, “setting his face towards the depths of the wilderness” (53), but the manager is only concerned about monopolizing the ivory trade, covering his true motives by claiming the trading posts will be used “for humanizing, improving, instructing” (54). As Marlowe begins traveling up the river, in his romantic imagination he seems to be going back to the beginning of the world when “vegetation rioted on the earth” (55)…It [had] the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect” (56), but this imaginative reality fades because he is forced to think about the surface of things, such as collecting dead wood to prevent crashes and to provide fuel. At night the sound of drumming fills the air, and by day they pass native settlements with masses of people they cannot understand “because we were too far and could not remember because we were travelling in the night of first ages, of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign--and no memories…They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity--like yours--the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar (59)….The mind of man is capable of anything--because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future” (60). To accept this truth, man must meet it “with his own inborn strength. Principles won’t do…you want a deliberate belief” (60).

They find an abandoned white-man’s hut with a cryptic message to hurry but be cautious; inside is a technical book on the physics of ships’ chains and tackle, with strange writing in it. Marlowe finds this appealing as evidence of man’s “honest concern for the right way of going to work….something unmistakably real” (63), as opposed to the wild imaginations that the jungle provokes in the Europeans. The disgruntled manager thinks it’s evidence of an ivory competitor. The blinding fog, the stillness and sudden noises of the jungle discomfort the whites who fearfully anticipate an attack, while the starving black crew looks forward to a meal out of their adversaries (67). Marlowe wonders why they don’t just attack and eat them. “Something restraining, one of those human secrets that baffle probability, had come into play there..Was it superstition, disgust, patience, fear--or some kind of primitive honour? (69)…It takes a man all his inborn strength to fight hunger properly” (70). While the white invaders seem to lack all restraint in their relations with the Africans, conversely the Africans demonstrate a moral code inexplicable to the whites. Marlow senses an “irresistible impression of sorrow” (72) in the natives lingering on the river’s dense edges and feels their danger lies in “our proximity to a great human passion let loose. Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence” (72). The “attack” that follows is really an attempt to repulse them, that he later learns Kurtz had ordered.When arrows start to fly, the men on the ship fire back furiously; Marlowe makes out that “the bush was swarming with human limbs in movement” (75). His black helmsman, who had incautiously opened a window, is suddenly speared, and he hears a cry from the jungle that seemed like the “flight of the last hope from the earth” (77). As the helmsman silently dies, “he frowned heavily” (78), and Marlowe fears that Kurtz too is dead from the onslaught, removing any chance for a talk and feeling a sorrow as strong as that coming from the attackers (79). Marlow’s extreme romantic sensitivity is key to his reaction to the jungle, which he fantasizes is like that at the beginning of time, as well as to the fates of Kurtz, the helmsman and even Kurtz’ benighted fiancee locked into her hyperbolic vision of him as civilization’s savior.

Abruptly the narrative switches back to the London dockside and the listening men who think Marlow’s story is absurd, but they are comfortably surrounded by “normal” life. However, Kurtz isn’t dead. He’s surrounded by his mounds of ivory, “He was its spoiled and pampered favourite” (81). He deliriously muttered, “My Intended, my ivory, my station, my river, my---’ everything belonged to him…The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him…He had taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land--I mean literally” (82). Amid the silence of the land, “where no warning voice of a kind neighbour can be heard whispering of public opinion. These little things make all the great difference. When they’re gone, you must fall back upon your own innate strength, upon your own capacity for faithfulness (82)….Mind, I am not trying to excuse or even explain…All of Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz” (83). He was entrusted with writing a report for the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs, which he had finished, a lengthy, eloquent, “high-strung” document. Then his nerves failed “and caused him to preside at certain midnight dances ending with unspeakable rites…offered up to him” (84).

Reading the report, which he thinks belongs in “the dust-bin of progress” (85), Marlow deduces that Kurtz thought blacks viewed whites as “supernatural beings--we approach them with the might as of a deity,” which would enable us to “exert a power for good practically unbounded.” The “ominous” report gives Marlow “the notion of an exotic Immensity ruled by an august Benevolence… This was the unbounded power of eloquence--of words--of burning noble words. There were no practical hints to interrupt the magic current of phrases” (84), for Marlow an indication of the report’s hollowness. At the end of its moving appeal to altruistic sentiments in a tremulously written postscript is the hideous warning, “Exterminate all the brutes!” (84). Kurtz inexplicably wants Marlow to preserve the document, and as he had made a powerful impact on others, Marlow dutifully returns the report to the European culture that commanded it. Now he’s unsure that Kurtz’ life was worth the lost life of his helmsman because the latter “had done something, he had steered; for months I had him at my back” (85) and a bond had been established. “The intimate profundity of that look he gave me when he received his hurt remains to this day in my memory--like a claim of distant kinship affirmed in a supreme moment” (86).
...Kurtz struggles with his emotional paradox: “both the diabolic love and the unearthly hate of the mysteries it had penetrated fought for the possession of that soul satiated with primitive emotions, avid of lying fame, of sham distinction, of all the appearances of success and power” (116). Idolized and encouraged by European culture, but uprooted from normal cultural restraints and thrown into another where he can indulge any behavior as long as he secures the prized ivory, the result is the horror Kurtz finally acknowledges. He knows that his fame in Europe depends ultimately on his venture’s profit, as long as it’s coated with the “right motives” (116). and Marlow reflects cynically upon Kurtz’ success as “the forerunner of change, of conquest, of trade, of massacres, of blessings” (116), of ultimate hypocrisy. Even on the boat, Kurtz feels a duty to write for the papers “for the furthering of my ideas” (117). One night as he lies dying, Marlow visits him and watches in fascination as Kurtz’ face reveals “sombre pride, ruthless power, craven terror, an intense and hopeless despair…a supreme moment of complete knowledge” and at some vision breathes out, “The horror! The horror!…the unexpressed depths of his meanness” (118). After expressing “a judgment on the adventures of his soul on this earth” (118), he had died and was promptly buried in a muddy hole. Marlow’s own near-death experience was a “most unexciting contest” (119), which left him convinced “life is a greater riddle” about which he has nothing to say. However, Kurtz was remarkable because he had something to say, his final whisper “had the appalling face of a glimpsed truth, the strange commingling of desire and hate” with a “vibrating note of revolt (119)…It was an affirmation, a moral victory paid for by innumerable defeats, by abominable terrors, by abominable satisfactions. But it was a victory!” (120), and this caused Marlow’s loyalty to him.
...

I'm trying to give this book the most fair/neutral rating I can give, which is a 2.5/5. Both of the stories in here are pretty meh, IMHO, especially heart of Darkness. I've heard plenty about it, but the actual read, especially the ending, was a major letdown. The Secret Sharer is better, though. Both stories are relatively short, but even then I couldn't help but feel that both stories dragged on longer than they needed to.

There is a reason I am giving this a four instead of something higher and that is simply because I don't like how the story is told. I like how it is told from the white man's perspective but Marlow is such a horrible story teller that it makes it very hard to understand. But on the other hand, it didn't get lower because I like the meaning of the book. When I read it I felt like the Heart of Darkness was the human race. Like in this book, the Company is stationed out of London so London is the heart f darkness and in our case, living in America, it would probably have to be DC because of the government. Overall, this was an okay book. I won't read it again unless I HAVE to but it is nice to say that I have read it and I don't regret it.

Conrad n'est pas le plus connus des écrivains Anglais chez les Francais. Ca vaudrait bien la peine pour un francophone qui a des amis Anglophones de lire "A Cœur des ténèbres" afin de bien s'armer pour les conversations littéraires à avenir. Les professeurs faisait lire Conrad durant mes années de jeunesse. J'ai du lire "À Cœur des ténèbres" pour un cours à l'école secondaire et une deuxième fois pour un cours au deuxième cycle. A l'époque c'était un très grands classiques de notre littérature.
Le roman qui est bien court traine en longueur. Le capitaine d'un cargo qui appartiennent a un une compagnie londonienne de commerce monte le fleuve Congo. Il est chargé d'enquêter sur le chef bureau loin dans l'intérieur du Congo un nommé Kurtz dont les chiffres de ventes battent tous les records. Ce qui inquiète la direction de la compagnie, ce sont les bruits qui commence à circuler voulant que les méthodes de Kurtz sont peu orthodoxes.
Le capitaine arrive. Il fait des macabres découvertes et trouve des indices d'atrocités. Le mystérieux Kurtz, atteint mortellement d'une maladie tropicale, est sur son lit de mort. Son dernier mot lâché, c'est "Horreur!"
Quand le capitaine reviennent en Angleterre il est trop discret pour raconteur la vérité à la fiancée du défunt Kurtz.
Depuis son lancement en 1899, on considère ce roman comme étant une critique magistrale du colonialisme.
On trouve aussi dans ce volume, la petite nouvelle "Le compagnon secret". Le lien avec "A Cœur des ténèbres" n'est pas évident. Les événements du "Compagnon secret" se passent dans un contexte colonial. Le protagoniste est un jeune capitaine qui fait son premier voyage sur le "Cutty Sark" un navire commercial britannique. L'accueil du l'équipage pour le jeune capitaine est très froid. Dans son isolation, l'héros va commettre un crime contre sa profession.
Dans le golfe du Siam, on découvre un nageur que l'on fait monter sur l'embarcation. Le capitaine constate que le nageur est son doppelgänger. Le nageur avoue qu'il avait tué un homme sur son navire. Le devoir professionnelle du jeune capitaine est remettre le fugitif aux main des autorités . Cependant entouré d'un équipage ou il n'a pas d'amis le capitaine choisit d'aider l'assassin dans sa fuite.
Dans son isolement, loin de ses proches, Kurtz choisit le mal dans "À Cœur des ténèbres". Dans "Le compagnon", par contre, le jeune capitaine aux yeux de Conrad choisit le bien.

I definitely liked it/understood it better the second time around. Especially when read in the "psychological novel" perspective. The Secret Sharer was hardly the "piece of crap" I had pegged it for back in 12th grade. It's actually a very insightful story about a man who learns who he really is by watching and admiring the actions of another man, a stranger, a mirror-image of himself. He is motivated to change his own life by watching and wishing he could be like his mirror-self. He saves the stranger, and that stranger, in turn, saves him!

As for Heart of Darkness, it's still that creepy story about Marlow and his journey to find Kurtz keep in the jungle, crazy, emaciated and on the verge of death. "The horror, the horror!" and all that jazz.

The Secret Sharer is worth reading... and if you feel like it, you can try Heart of Darkness, but it's not exactly my favorite. 4 stars for the former, 2-3 stars for the latter.

What a miserable read.

The Secret Sharer was kinda boring, but at least it was less problematic than its partner.

Heart of Darkness was some racist, misogynist hot garbage. Nothing redeeming about it, just a nasty mess. I truly hope high schoolers aren't still being subjected to this book. There are way better and less harmful reads that explore the darkness of mankind, imperialism, and the interconnectedness of the human experience.

Also, who decided this belonged on the Great American Reads list? Ugh. No thanks.