heart of darkness Options

[shadowcat]

have you read or heard of heart of darkness by josheph conrad? if yes lets talk about it!

[*CowerPointyObjects*]

So f**king awful. I couldn't make it past page 10. I highly recommend the Sparknotes, though.

[MissHygienic]

I HATE THIS GOD DAMNED BOOK.

Not only was it horrible that it was regarded as classic literature in my class, I had to write upwards to 5 papers on it, this book is excessively pretentious, overly wordy, too vague to capture any real meaning, and the author half the time appeared as if he were trying to impress an English professor by using all of the words he can find in a thesaurus.

[*CowerPointyObjects*]

Well, he may plausibly have gone out of his way to demonstrate an extensive vocabulary, as English was his third or fourth language. I appreciate his talents, but it was too wordy, it wasn't nearly as interesting as it could have been, and I don't like it when books beat me over the head with symbolism. I'm sure his use of structuralism and decomposition was cool and all, but the novel was not.

[MissHygienic]

Well, he may plausibly have gone out of his way to demonstrate an extensive vocabulary, as English was his third or fourth language. I appreciate his talents, but it was too wordy, it wasn't nearly as interesting as it could have been, and I don't like it when books beat me over the head with symbolism. I'm sure his use of structuralism and decomposition was cool and all, but the novel was not.

But while he was at it, he cheapened all of the jumbled figurative language in his book because we were all too busy trying to absorb his descriptions about the Congo and the lake and how the sun rose.

The pages were crammed, and the book was short. He was effectively trying to hammer in at least 8 motifs in an already short book. And the shit wasn't even direct. It didn't work out, and I do not regard this as "good writing."

[*CowerPointyObjects*]

Oh, I completely agree. That's why it works as a movie and it even reads better as Sparknotes; if you cut out all the unnecessary drivel, he might have almost had something. People might think that making it through says something about their literary prowess, but that really isn't the case. Telling oneself that you enjoy something bursting with pretentiousness is pretentiousness as well.

[shadowcat]

I hated the book at first but then once I understood the meaning and the metaphor its awesome I must tell ... The book is full of dark and light imageries and its mainly about how marlow's transformation to Kurtz after his trip to the jungle (Darkness of the human soul)

[MissHygienic]

What I really could not stand was the abruptness of the whole book. A lot of his ideas were sort of dangling in the air for me. Nothing was ever conclusive.

I liked the dark/light themes, as well. First with the two women simply staring at Kurtz when he was, like, applying to work for the Company, I think. Other than that, I felt as if a lot of it was lost due to how much he tried to cram into, like, 100 pages?