Book Seven- Heart of Darkness

When I read this book the first time I only underlined one sentence.

"And this also," Marlow said suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth."

I think that pretty much sums it up. When I read this book the first time it was for school and I was racing to get it done so I could go out or watch TV or write an essay or something, and when I read very very fast I don't really remember specifics, just a general impression, and in my memory this book was dark tangled trees and white teeth and silence and a snatches  of conversation that got nowhere and served no purpose. Now that I am finally free of finals and home for a little while, I could curl up with this book and read it properly, no rush.

What can you say about Heart of Darkness that hasn't been said a thousand times in a thousand high school English classes? The nature of savagery and civilization, the racism, the insanity, the "horror?" There is no question that it is a brilliant book and deserves to be a classic. Conrad deftly conveys the idea that modern man is a stranger to his own Earth, and although the book can get a little too long-winded or clever for its own good, you do walk away with a vague sense of dread at the end, and I think that's what Conrad wanted all along. It is this sense of fear that is the true strength of the book, and what I related to the most in it.

Now, I'm a pretty well traveled person, I've slept in my car or in the dirt more times than I'd care to admit, and I've been to places I consider pretty remote (though definitely not as remote as colonization-era Africa). And I will tell you, there is nothing like walking in a silent, dark forest at night to destroy any ideas that nature has been tamed. There is some....I don't know. Some kind of presence there, that makes you feel so small and uneasy. Something force that has been operating far longer than you could ever imagine and is utterly indifferent to you.

I felt that again, reading this book, especially the part where Marlow follows Kurtz into the forest, with the drumming and fires and dark shapes in the foliage, "the heavy, mute spell of the wilderness.....the awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts...the memory of gratified and monstrous passions." "You will be lost," Marlow says to Kurtz, trying to keep him from going farther. "Utterly lost." But I think both men understand that Kurtz wants to be lost, that he has already gone over the precipice, and now there is no coming back.

In summary: If Joseph Conrad can make me afraid of the dark when I am sitting on an comfortable armchair in my living room with a bright winter day outside, then I consider that a job well done.