/lit/ - Literature

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>>15863950
On my read list for the year, but the goodread reviews are worth checking out

>>15863950
Seek and ye shall find - but don't expect to like it

>>15863950
The prose is so winding and thick it was a satire experiment by Conrad to recreate the environment of the Congo jungle. It's less a work of fiction than an archaic form of virtual reality.

>>15863950
That violent savages need the strong heel of a white man to tame them, even if it makes the white man feel bad.

>>15863950

Turgid prose, on par with Jane Austen's except at least a little damp instead of Sahara-dry.

Borefest, skip it, watch Apocalypse Now and call it good

>>15866386

cool interpretation, pretty true

>>15863950

that napalm somehow smells like victory

>>15866386
really interesting interpretation

>>15863950
Its got a lot of themes, stuff about colonialism etc., but one thing it does is demonstrate how much an individual's personality and beliefs depend upon environment. We are only ever a certain amount of isolation away from losing the social and cultural frameworks that prop up our reality and identity. When the reinforcing chatter of society is left behind and the mind is left to silence, much of what we are becomes vulnerable to change and interpretation.

>>15867627
Interesting.im curious how u view Kurtz

White people can be niggers too.

>>15867840
The defining parts of his character stems from his uniquely extreme exposure to isolation, which, while driving him mad, also grants him a supreme understanding of the fundamental role society, culture, and beliefs play in the human psyche. Wielding this understanding and the god-like tool of technology, he constructs a reality of his own with which he controls the natives. This isn't fresh in my mind and I'm having to skim of notes i made for a class, but going back over it with a new perspective is revealing things to me. This books is pretty pog ngl.

>>15867880
this

more like Joseph Comrade am I right gentlemen?

>>15863950
It is all contained in the line that the narrator uses to describe Marlowe early in the book, as a "purveyor of inconclusive experiences". The jungle swallowing up french cannons, civilization and people alike is a reification of liminal space, between civilization and savagery, life and death, white and black, terra incognita and cognita. There's a point when, describing Kurtz, he considers that the man must have been hollowed out from the inside long before he arrived at his station. Kurtz capitulates quickly to an absolute commitment - to madness - and Marlowe can hardly refrain from following him into the darkness, which is the source of horror for the both of them

>>15863950
Man goes into the jungle expecting a well-run organisation and finds out that everything is run like shit and it's every man for himself in a hellhole where nobody should be.