Heart of Darkness

It’s rather fitting that I post about Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness amidst the swirling winds of Hurricane Irene, for nothing seems more uncertain and dangerous than the combination of Conrad’s style and 70mph wind gusts. No really, the sky is the color of ink that’s seeped out of its well and been smeared around on an old scrap of parchment, and the perfect shade to represent the entire novel of Heart of Darkness, with its gritty detail, sweeping plot and unique take on how one tells a story.

            The novel opens with a group of men sitting on the deck of a ship, sailing silently down the Thames as nightfall approaches. Thus far, Conrad is not making a radical departure from his usual nautical formula. However, the narrator, upon introducing each of the men and their surroundings briefly, takes a backseat to Marlowe, who begins to tell the story. I thought that it would just be a little bit of a story, something to wet the reader’s appetite to the rest of the novel, and a means with which Conrad decided where he was actually going plot wise. Instead, Marlowe’s story actually spans the entirety of the novel, creating an element of meta-story telling and an atmosphere that is only broken by the true narrator a couple times in order to harshly jolt the reader out of the African colonies and back into the civilized world they know. This method is startling and wonderful, for the fantastic world of Africa and the savagery of the story is in such stark contrast with Conrad’s calm nautical world that the emphasis on the darkness that the characters encounter within humanity is that much stronger.

            When I say emphasis, I’m not joking. Conrad grabs hold of a certain phrase in each of his novels and wears it to pieces the same way a child does a favorite toy. The words heart of darkness are littered throughout the novel, just in case anyone forgot that traveling into the jungle in the middle of Africa and encountering savage whites and not so savage natives might be anything but strange and dark. I managed to get over this sense of being beaten over the head with a theme and tried to focus on Conrad’s style, which is the true beauty of the novel.

            Ah, Conrad’s style. Let’s face it, I could really take or leave the plot of this one, but I fell in love with the way the words were put together. He manages to describe things so simply but still capturing exactly what makes a scene or a person unique or haunting. There are moments of humor created simply by a turn of phrase or a particularly apt description, and passages that cause a chill up the spine at the depravity of the human condition. Conrad’s mastery of each end of the emotional spectrum is triumphant and makes his novels grand things, worthy of the praise time has heaped upon them. Humor me for the moment as I share several bits that grabbed me for some reason or another.

“It’s queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there has never been anything like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset.” (pg 76)

“The mind of man is capable of anything-because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valour, rage-who can tell?-but truth-truth stripped of its clock of time. Let the fool gape and shudder-the man knows, and can look on without a wink.” (pg 106)

Only two examples, and interestingly enough both two different takes on gender (an exploration of which I will spare you for the moment) but both breathtaking with their simplicity that belies the depth to which Conrad is speaking about humanity. So go, pick up Heart of Darkness and immerse yourself in a sea of language whose swells will easily pack the same punch as the ones Hurricane Irene seems set upon delivering right now.