Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Mood: goofin' Playing: Fatal by Pearl Jam

The only other Joseph Conrad book I've read is Almayer's Folly. Which was a good story. It had adventure and romance and betrayal and violence and conspiracy and even a bit of women's rights thrown in..
anyways.

This one was a much much much more difficult read than Almayer's Folly.

Heart of Darkness was written almost fully in narrative form. That means having to read everything, even dialogues, in.. well.. narration.
I found it difficult to imagine tones and attitudes when it is told like this. Furthermore, the language was pretty flowery and 'advanced' for me. After reading a straightforward book like 'Lovely Bones', reading Joseph Conrad proved to be a chore. I had to use too much of my brains.. lol!
However, the story was intriguing enough to make me keep on reading.
A guy was telling a story about when he was manning a steamer up a river in Africa. He kept hearing about a Mr Kurtz, who everybody idolized and said he was great and stuff. So he goes on a journey to meet this MrKurtz and found him sick/dying and living with natives, sort-of. They bring Mr. Kurts out and he dies.
Well, there's actually alot more going on in the story.. basically he described the jungle and the natives a lot, and how the 'white people' were behaving over there and stuff. But half of the time it was people describing how great MrKurtz is, how inspiring, how brave etc etc.. that kept me reading the book coz as much as the protagonist, I wanted to meet and see what MrKurtz is really like.
Maybe I was too sleepy, maybe the bombastic words took a toll on my brains, but I thought meeting Mr.Kurtz was an anti-climax.

However, I think this book would make a good action-adventure movie. If they do make it, I'd definitely go watch.. just so that I could digest the book better. After watching the movie, I might even give it another read if it still intrigues me.

now on to Updike...

---

Blog COmments

Posted by: zack_
Date: 9/28/04 at 10:51PM (1M3w ago)
if only i was interested on books as i am with paddle pop pelangi.

*sigh*

have a nice day elisa.


Posted by: elisataufik (Offline)
Date: 9/28/04 at 11:03PM (1M3w ago)

i was trying to search if there was a movie ever made out of this book and stumbled upon the reviews made in Amazon.com.

Though some views I tend to agree with, some made me think: Was I reading a different book or what?



"we were but stones, ... your light made us stars"


Posted by: Anuar Fariz
Date: 9/29/04 at 3:33AM (1M3w ago)
What CD was it? This reminds me of being in my brother's car and listening to Old Macdonald, as requested by the Princesses. After 20m, I was ready to bang my head on the dashboard and kill myself after 50m.


Posted by: didee
Date: 9/29/04 at 12:40PM (1M3w ago)
Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" is based on Heart of Darkness. It's a very difficult read, yeah? Tapi cool la in some parts.


Posted by: elisataufik (Offline)
Date: 9/29/04 at 8:16PM (1M3w ago)

really?? didnt know that. but Apocalypse now is SO different..

"we were but stones, ... your light made us stars"


Posted by: Yasmin
Date: 9/29/04 at 9:25PM (1M3w ago)
Hi elisa,

My first posting here, hope you don't mind me trespassing.

The book you want to read which has been compared to da vinci's code.. i think it's called 'the rule of four', written by a harvard grad & his friend.