Heart of Darkness: 'As Powerful a Condemnation of Imperialism as Has Ever Been Written'

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CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, May 18, 2015 - Fiction - 48 pages
Heart of Darkness follows one man's nightmarish journey into the interior of Africa-but don't worry. No one's going to get eaten by a lion. It all takes place in the past, because what we have here is a frame story. Aboard a British ship called the Nellie, three men listen to a dude named Marlow recount his journey into Africa as an agent for the Company, a Belgian ivory trading firm. (Mercifully, he doesn't force them to look through 1000 of his trip photos on Facebook.) Along the way, he witnesses brutality and hate between colonizers and the native African people, becomes entangled in a power struggle within the Company, and finally learns the truth about the mysterious Kurtz, a mad agent who has become both a god and a prisoner of the "native Africans." It's more exciting than it sounds, we promise. After "rescuing" Kurtz from the native African people, Marlow watches in horror as Kurtz succumbs to madness, disease, and finally death. In the end, Marlow decides to support Kurtz rather than his company, which is possibly morally dubious and definitely a bad career move. The novel closes with Marlow's guilt-ridden visit to Kurtz's fiancée to return the man's personal letters, and, on that ambiguous note, we end.

About the author (2015)

Joseph Conrad is recognized as one of the 20th century's greatest English language novelists. He was born Jozef Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski on December 3, 1857, in the Polish Ukraine. His father, a writer and translator, was from Polish nobility, but political activity against Russian oppression led to his exile. Conrad was orphaned at a young age and subsequently raised by his uncle. At 17 he went to sea, an experience that shaped the bleak view of human nature which he expressed in his fiction. In such works as Lord Jim (1900), Youth (1902), and Nostromo (1904), Conrad depicts individuals thrust by circumstances beyond their control into moral and emotional dilemmas. His novel Heart of Darkness (1902), perhaps his best known and most influential work, narrates a literal journey to the center of the African jungle. This novel inspired the acclaimed motion picture Apocalypse Now. After the publication of his first novel, Almayer's Folly (1895), Conrad gave up the sea. He produced thirteen novels, two volumes of memoirs, and twenty-eight short stories. He died on August 3, 1924, in England.

Bibliographic information

TitleHeart of Darkness: 'As Powerful a Condemnation of Imperialism as Has Ever Been Written'
AuthorsJoseph Conrad, Editorial International
PublisherCreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015
ISBN1512266701, 9781512266702
Length48 pages
Subjects › 

Fiction / General
Fiction / Literary
  
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