3 stars ✨

The horror, the horror!

Joseph Conrad makes me think of a Edgar Allen Poe on serotonin re-uptake inhibitors. (Although he is said to have attempted suicide in his late teens so he couldn't have been all that jolly) Most say his writing is dark but I find it funny. Bless my soul! By jove!

What makes me think of Poe is the narrative which is like a constant paranoid obsessive-compulsive interior chatter. But I love the way the characters are outwardly totally in control and collected.

"I smiled urbanely"
Yes he smiled urbanely while hiding a murderer in his cabin not four feet from where he entertained the visiting Skipper!!!!!

"I think I had come creeping quietly as near insanity as any man who has not actually gone over the border...."
Joseph would know.

The horror! The horror!

YES Joseph Conrad is very funny. Marlow can't seem to get any rivets to fix his steamboat as the weeks go past on the Congo, but gets plenty of cheap cotton fabric and plastic beads, while boxes and boxes of rivets sit split open downstream. Military and organizational dysfunction. Or is it the humidity?

"You could fill your pockets with rivets for the trouble of stooping down—and there wasn't one rivet to be found where it was wanted.....And several times a week a coast caravan came in with trade goods—ghastly glazed calico that made you shudder only to look at it, glass beads value about a penny a quart, confounded spotted cotton handkerchiefs. And no rivets. Three carriers could have brought all that was wanted to set that steamboat afloat. "

He gets shot at by arrows, ( "They might have been poisoned, but they looked as though they wouldn't kill a cat.") meets a harlequin, sees shrunken heads on spikes through his binoculars, goes through the dark forest and confronts the escaping Kurtz:
"I had immense plans," he ( Kurtz ) muttered irresolutely.
"Yes," said I, "but if you try to shout I'll smash your head with—" There was not a stick or a stone near. "I will throttle you for good," I corrected myself.

This blew my expectations out of the water simply because I had often heard it was just a piece of colonialist propaganda but it wasn’t.

It’s got that raw, bare-bones perspective of man that breaks him down to a near-animal state while never losing sight of his soul.

The “heart of darkness” in this novel is also one of the best examples I’ve encountered of a central symbol that ties a whole story together both literally and figuratively—while still leaving things off with an open-ended question ripe for study at the end.

storytellers have a selfish desire in imposing their narrative on those who are willing to listen. it's not meant to be that way, but good storytelling - whether truthful or not - is selfish. heart of darkness is where i draw the line however. marlow's (or joseph conrad's idk) wordiness might be an attempt of being convictive. but colonialism and exploitation are both concepts that do not need dense prose to convey their dark impact. tldr: too wordy; read chinua achebe's heart of darkness instead :)

« and if all the truth must be told, I was somewhat of a stranger to myself. »

You cannot read this book one time. If you do, you are denying yourself a deeper communion with one of the most talented writer/story tellers who has ever picked up a quill. Those confusing meandering mumbles that may have frustrated readers previously can magically resurface and resonate. They jar and frighten. Don’t take my words. Take Conrad’s.

“I remained to dream the nightmare out to the end, and to show my loyalty to Kurtz once more. Destiny. My destiny! Droll thing life is—that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself—that comes too late—a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid skepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary.”

And there is more where that came from. Conrad’s writing is wrought with pain, doubt and suffering. That is another reason to re-read and relive this incredible book. If your life is perfect and you wake up each day with a welded smile bolstered by positive conditions and orthodoxies, and the lights are always on, you might give it a pass.

How far will a man go to protect the dark side of his soul? This is the primary concern of The Secret Sharer, the shorter, and better of these two novellas. Conrad is adept at waxing eloquent, providing journeys into man's dark nature loaded with symbolism and a broad linguistic knowledge.
*****semi-spolier alert***** What caught me off-guard with Heart of Darkness was its sentimental conclusion, particularly after such a dark journey of mind, body and spirit.

Ngl this book sucked ass hence why it took like a month to read

Personal response: I enjoyed the book. I was never bored of it because the plot unfolded so quickly. I think I will read more by Joseph Conrad.

Plot summary: The story is told in first person by an unnamed narrator. The narrator is the captain of a sailing ship filled with cargo. He doesn't know his ship or crew because he was only recently made the captain. The ship was towed to a few barren islands off shore to wait for the right wind to begin its' journey. The captain was restless, so he took watch at night. While on watch a man from another ship swam over and climbed up. The man introduced himself as Leggatt, and explained he was the first mate of the other ship and escaped after being accused of murder. After hearing this, the captain got Leggatt some pajamas to wear. Instead of arresting Leggatt, the captain took Leggatt to his room and hid him there. The captain changed the ships course had Leggatt jump over board to swim to an island.

Recommendation: This book has a high reading level that is hard to follow at times. Because of that, I would only recommend this book to high schoolers of a higher reading level. I recommend this book to someone who likes the challenge of reading difficult, uninteresting books.

Characterization: At the beginning of the book, the narrator is very unsure of his abilities as a captain. He is always worried because doesn't know or his crew very well. When the story develops, the captain becomes a little bit more confident in his abilities as a captain, but he is always nervous. He is nervous because he is hiding a murderer on his ship. Hiding the murderer makes the captain more assertive of his power so the crew doesn't get suspicious of him. In the end of the book, when the murderer swims to the island, the captain finally relaxes.

Lately I've been reading more works that have been classified as "classics." Unfortunately many of them I just could not enjoy in the least. I'll spare specific titles so that I don't offend anyone who actually enjoys them, but I just couldn't. However, this one etched above these others to become actually enjoyable to read for the most part.

Now, I would've appreciated if my version of the text had been more generous with paragraph breaks and general spacing. I think it would've read more clearly and flowed more easily.

But as the stories go (there are two of them in this book), these two tales were decently intriguing. There was certainly a simplicity to their narrative. Both had a relatively straightforward storyline that kept you more interested in the inner workings of the main characters than in the action necessarily.

There was something so human about the stories and the character's foolhardy decisions that felt appropriate and right. These were no heroic tales. These were men reckoning with themselves. And the way Conrad illustrates those struggles was enjoyable to read.

The Secret Sharer should get more attention than it does. Short but very compelling story.

I really felt as if this book was a bad experience. It was to hard for me to understand with all of the old english words in the beginning and the very high vocabulary throughout the book. At certain points it gets intresting to me and easier to understand like Marlow having to lie to Kurtz girlfriend wasn't really a shock. It was also nice to see the changes people go through in the Congo while they go through "The Darkness". But to me it was very hard to get into because it wasn't my type. There wasn't alot of things to read seeing that it was 75 pages but I never really got into what was going on, maybe if I was to be more open-minded to the book I may have got alittle more out of it.

I would more recommend the movie more than the book. The movie isn't the exact same thing but you get a good idea of all the people.