On Heart Of Darkness

[davesmusictank]

I found this on You Tube concerning the novel Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. It gives another aspect to the novel to help me come to terms of what it is about.

Click to view

Is Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" a masterpiece of art? Or is it, as Chinua Achebe persuasively argues, a racist and deplorable book? What are we to make of Kurtz's dying words, "The

Comments

[swordznsorcery]

Chinua Achebe was in a far better position than me to judge, but I've never seen it as a racist book per se. More a reflection of attitudes of the time; a very believeable and real recreation of a particular time, and particular set of character types, that existed there. I would have to know more about Conrad's own beliefs to make any more definite decision, I think.

He was quite the writer though, at any rate. To write the way that he did, in a language not his own, is remarkable. Have you ever read "Nostromo"? Glorious world-building. I read it when I was at university studying history, and his fictional land fitted so well amongst the real ones on the syllabus!

[davesmusictank]

To my utter shame this is the first book i have read of his.

[swordznsorcery]

I don't know that that's really to your shame - there's a heck of a lot of books out there!

[xolo]

Conrad lived in the Congo in 1890. I can't say the same for Chinua Achebe.

[msstacy13]

Good point.

[a_phoenixdragon]

So many sides to every set of words. Sometimes they are exactly as they seem, other times they require examination: not only of the words you have read or heard, but of yourself as well. How you hear words or interpret them reveals layers about ones' self.

[cmcmck]

OFFS! God save us from people who try to place today's values on a work written so long ago.

Heart of Darkness is a work of true genius.

That was then and this is now- get over it!

We're getting the same deplorable stateside rhetoric over how 'racist' CH is- usually from people that have never read it an don't begin to understand French left republican/Jacobin/laique discourse.

Gah!

[maxauburn]

I had to read the book in college. Not my cup of hot chocolate, but it was very well written.