Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Readability :

Although it is only about 100 pages long, this is probably not a book you'll finish in a day or even a week. I certainly didn't. Darkness isn't hard to read, it's just slow - dense paragraphs, embedded dialogue, and lots of metaphor and symbolism. You will need breaks (and maybe naps) along the way.

Enjoyability :

This is not a book anyone is going to describe by saying "oh my god I loved it so much!" That said, it's very well written and confronts immense topics like colonization, evil, and madness in a way that made me really think about them. This is a book I think would be most enjoyable reading with a class or bookgroup or at least another person - there's so much packed into it that you can't help but miss something if you're reading it alone.

Favorite quote(s):

"They were no colonists; their administration was merely a squeeze, and nothing more, I suspect. They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force - nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what could be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind - as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much."

"[The heads on stakes] only showed that Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts, that there was something wanting in him - some small matter which, when the pressing need arose, could not be found under his magnificent eloquence. Whether he knew of this deficiency himself I can't say. I think the knowledge came to him at the last - only at the very last. But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion."

"The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness."

Favorite character : I gotta say I didn't really like most of the characters in Darkness . So I will say who I was most intrigued by: The "wild and gorgeous apparition of a woman," a native, who does not interact with Marlow or the other invaders but holds significant and mysterious power of her own. What this is, however, we never learn.

"And in the hush that had fallen suddenly upon the whole sorrowful land, the immense winderness, the colossal body of the fecund and mysterious life seemed to look at her, pensive, as thought it had been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul." Oooo.

Least favorite character : Kurtz, obviously. As a representative from "the Company" who once recommended "exterminate all the brutes," Kurtz is representative of the West and of the destructive power that it had on the cultures it conquered. He is presented as "mad," but instead of this madness being redeeming, we see it as the final result of power and corruption.

Recommended for : People interested in colonialism and Africa, people who aren't offended by racism in a historical context (let's be real, Marlow is kinda racist), people who won't be off-put by some heavy symbolism and metaphors.