Heart of Darkness

"No, I don't like work.  I had rather laze about and think of all the fine things that can be done.  I don't like work- no man does- but I like what is in work, -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." (Conrad 51)

Spring break is over and so is lazing about without anything productive to do.  The spring term of my college has started and to kick it off we have started with reading Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.  This is one of the few books that I have read this year and can honestly say I enjoyed it.   Not sure how much of the enjoyment came from the book being good piece of literature and how much of it was just the fact that it is literature. (Literature is some of the easiest pieces of writing that we read at my school, compared to philosophy, theology, and etc.)

"'The other shoe went flying unto the devil-god of the river.  I thought, By Jove! it's all over.  We are to late; he has vanished - the gift has vanished, by means of some spear, arrow, or club.  I will never hear that chap speak after all,- and my sorrow had a startling extravagance of emotion, even such as I had noticed in the howling sorrow of these savages in the bush.  I couldn't have felt more of lonely desolation somehow, had I been robbed of a belief or had missed my destiny in life.... Why do you sigh in this beastly way, somebody?  Absurd?  Well, absurd.  Good Lord! mustn't a man ever - Here, give me some tobacco'..." (Conrad 87)

As someone who gains a small amount of pleasure from writing stories, I find myself amazed by the way Conrad wrote Heart of Darkness.  He puts a distance between the reader and everything that happens in the story.  While reading the book I was completely emotionless, which I often frown upon in a book of this kind because it usually means the author lacks talent to write.  But in this book it is what I find so amazing because he did it on propose.  Things Conrad was writing about needed his reads to have a distance from what they were reading.  Making them get emotional as Marlowe (the main character)  gets emotional would have made them feel close to Marlowe which was not wanted in this story.  So I stand amazed by the beautiful piece of art Conrad has constructed and published, even though it is not the type of art that usually draws my attention.

If you are considering reading it I say, stop considering and read it!!  If you have never read it before, maybe  never even heard of it before I say find a copy and read it!  It is written beautifully and it shows some of the ideas that were starting to be expressed during the early 20th century.  If you are in a reading group, suggest this book to the group. So if you haven't gotten the hint yet, get off you computer, go to the library or bookstore and Read This Book!!!!