|
(I've also earned a living as a non-fiction writer of training and ad copy). I work in tech and haven't had time to read as much fiction as I would like. There are writers that are a level above the others, Conrad is one of them. I feel that 'Heart of Darkness' is a masterpiece of the English language. I found myself re-reading many individual sentences multiple times just to appreciate the pure beauty of Conrad's construction and choice of words. I said writer instead of author because this is indeed a wonderful example of the writer's craft, not simple authorship. Now, off to 'Secret Agent' and 'Lord Jim'.
When Conrad first wrote and published this work, it was on the cutting edge of literature, but today is would be considered boring. While this is based on a true story, it is less interesting than giants of today.
With this in mind, Conrad writes a masterful work on the corruption of the human soul by the greed of colonization. I had trouble understanding the purpose and fanfare of Conrad's dual works until I realized he was making a political and social statement.
I found it intriguing and well written, but not the triumph Heart of Darkness is. This work is beneficial to English teachers as well as history teachers as it presents the darkness of greed in a relevant setting.
The Secret Sharer on the other hand is less influential. The historical context makes this book valuable.
Joseph Conrad is an amazing writer; he uses the English language of the late 19th and early 20th centuries beautifully, he describes the colonial world at its apogee, he tells engrossing stories but even his seemingly potboiler plots (such as The Secret Sharer) raise disturbingly serious moral issues. All of these qualities are epitomized in The Heart of Darkness. Can anyone read the Heart of Darkness without thinking of Apocalypse Now. I believe the movie is one of the best adaptations of literature to film but the impact of Conrad's story is as vivid as the movie.
Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer by Joseph ConradUnspeakably beautiful prose. Conrad is an amazing writer. "Heart of Darkness" is a literary masterpiece.
Conrad's story is so riveting in part, because he himself served as a riverboat captain. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough. I would have loved to of seen what Welles could have done with this story. Anyone wanting to understand the movie Apocalypse Now, especially the character of Colonel Kurtz, and what Milius and Copolla are trying to tell their audience need to read these three books as well as Conrad's Heart of Darkness. T. Elliott's poem the Waste Land, Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces, and Francis Ford Coppolla's movie Apocalypse Now, screenplay by John Milius, was based on Conrad's book. Kurtz, is stationed.
Kurtz has collected legendary quantities of ivory, but, Marlow learns along the way, is also rumored to have sunk into unspecified savagery. Perhaps more than anything, we remember Marlow, on the steamboat, looking through binoculars at what he thinks are ornamental knobs atop the fence posts in front of Kurtz's house and then finding that each is "black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids-a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth" (57). G. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, T.
After doing some work on it he abandoned the project to do Citizen Kane. S. Conrad's book had a crucial influence on five important works of the twentieth century: J. Sketched with only a few bold strokes, Kurtz's image has nonetheless remained in the memories of millions of readers: the lone white agent far up the great river, with his dreams of grandeur,his great store of precious ivory, and his fiefdom carved out of the African jungle. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, written in 1899 is a seminal work about the ills of colonialism, as well as a postmodern look at the subject of mankind. Marlow's steamer survives an attack by blacks and picks up a load of ivory and the ill Kurtz; Kurtz, talking of his grandiose plans, dies on board as they travel, downstream. Another interesting fact is that this work was read by Orson Welle's Mercury Theater Players on the radio and was to be his first movie.
Just a taste of the plot reels you in. S. I read this book for a graduate Humanities course. I especially became interested in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness from the movie Apocalypse Now. There is a scene in the movie that shows Colonel Kurtz's nightstand in his cave. Elliott's poem the Waste Land is one of three books on the nightstand.
Marlow, the narrator of Heart of Darkness and Conrad's alter ego, is hired by an ivory-trading company to sail a steamboat up an unnamed river whose shape on the map resembles "an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country and its tail lost in the depths of the land" (8). Frazier's book The Golden Bough. Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, and J. High school teachers and college professors who have discussed this book in thousands of classrooms over the years tend to do so in terms of Freud, Jung, and Nietzsche; of classical myth, Victorian innocence, and original sin; of postmodernism, postcolonialism, and poststructuralism. His destination is a post where the company's brilliant, ambitious star agent, Mr.
The other two are Jessie L. As a graduate student reading in philosophy and history I recommend this book for anyone interested in literature, myth, history, philosophy, religion and fans of Apocalypse Now.
|
