joerollins5 's review for:

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

3.5

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I'm familiar with the debates around this one and I do think it's a mistake to conflate Conrad's voice with Marlow's, though regardless the language and viewpoint of the novel is uncomfortably retrograde, even if superficially Conrad's eye is clearly critical of colonialism. Bracketing all that, for me a bigger problem was how much the novel insisted on telling, not showing, that Kurtz was a monster. It might be the point (Marlow's "staying true" to Kurtz), but you never get beyond Marlow's description of Kurtz - he's a kind of impenetrable barrier that precludes any actual connection to the character himself. Which would be a fine bit of modernist play, but it takes the sting out of the actual critique supposedly at the centre of the text. The writing is great and the sense of dread is so oppressive it's almost unbearable at times, but ultimately I struggled to connect with this one.