REVIEW: Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness
Author: Joseph Conrad

Charlie Marlow is a sailor. He's looking for some adventure, so he signs up to be a steamboat captain in Africa. He struggles to understand the native culture, and is annoyed at the difficulties they face to get supplies for boat repair and other items essential to his job. Marlow is hired by a Belgian ivory exporter to travel down the Congo river to check on one of their traders whose name is Kurtz. There are rumors about Kurtz. Some say he is a very powerful man and others whisper that he might have gone native, keeping some of the company's ivory for himself. It's a job, however...and Marlow heads off down the Congo with his native crew and some company officials. As they near Kurtz's camp they are warned of danger, survive a native attack and Marlow is given an eyewitness account about Kurtz from an associate. The man almost worships Kurtz even though his life has been threatened on a regular basis. So is the man a hero....or evil? Or can a man be both? Marlow learns some dark lessons on this voyage down the Congo. And in the end has to decide to keep secrets or reveal the truth about Kurtz.

It is amazing that Conrad managed such an interesting and deeply philsophical story in less than 100 pages. He touches on the problems with imperialism, racism against indigenous people, the clash of cultures, the wildness of the jungle and how power and greed can corrupt. Then he has some life-altering decisions to make....should he do what is right, or go down the same road as Kurtz did, taking wealth and power to benefit himself. At some point, I think we are all faced with similar decisions. Can a person be good...but do evil things? Can a good person really be corrupted....or was the person really corrupt inside all along?

I listened to the audiobook version of this novel. Narrated by Scott Brick, the audio is a bit over 4.5 hours. Brick reads the story at a steady pace with emotion in all the proper places. I think I enjoyed this particular book much more on audio than I would have just reading it myself. The entire story is really the main character's inner monologue and a re-telling of events. I got sucked into the story because with the audio it really sounded like a sailor telling his story.  Joseph Conrad wrote several other books including Under Western Eyes and Lord Jim.

A very dark tale, but I'm glad I finally read this book! Somehow in all my studies this is one classic I never read. Heart of Darkness is part of the 100 book list for The Great American Read. The list can be found here: https://www.pbs.org/the-great-american-read/books/#/  This is the sixth book from the list that I have read or re-read in my quest to work my way through the whole list.