Joseph Conrad Books

After reading "A Secret Agent," read Tim Ryan's "Who Pushed Humpty Dumpty?" for a bit of light reading. I am convinced that the latter is a parody of the former.

this is not a novel in the traditional sense of the word; the book is not about anyone in particular and the plot doesn't really lead to a conclusive, cohesive end. rather the book descibes a series of events and situations, depicting characters from various classes of society. and it does so quite humorously sometimes. most notorious / memorable character no doubt is the professor, but every character has its interesting sides. i haven't read any other work by conrad, but this book is supposed to be relatively straightforward (in language) compared to his other work. nonetheless it does take him a lot of paper sometimes to get the message across. that being said, it's an interesting snapshot of the period in which it was written, and, mostly, a pleasant read.

The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad is an extremely well written book. He masters the English language brilliantly, even though he grew up in Poland and not in an English speaking country. It is a difficult book to read, but once you get into it, there is no problem. The author's way of describing several situations at the same time, is done very well. Conrad's way of describing the characters makes them come alive.

The prose in this book is not actually very difficult. I suspect that what people tend to find difficult is the singularly unpleasant nature of the characters taken together with a very different look at terrorism than is popular in literature and film today.

"You anarchists should make it clear that you are perfectly determined to make a clean sweep of the whole social creation. But how to get that appallingly absurd notion into the heads of the middle classes so that there should be no mistake?"

The Secret Agent was one of the first novels to address issues of terrorism and espionage. The way that Conrad approaches it is brilliant-- these are not wild-eyed men, driven by passion. The main character in The Secret Agent, Verloc, is just doing his job-- in the end, he commits the central atrocity in the book out of fear of being sacked. There is virtually nobody likable in this book with the exception of Stephen, Verloc's gentle and retarded brother in law.

The book is best seen as a dark comedy with an ensemble cast. The complacent British police who think it best to leave the anarchists alone, the motley crew of would-be terrorists-- each with their foibles and weaknesses. It feels at times like watching a clockwork unfolding-- one that you know will take its toll on the most innocent participants.

This is one of Conrad's most important works, but not one of his most likable. I thought it was a very good read. I certainly think that it is a thought-provoking book, particularly considering the times. Highly recommended.

The plot of this story would be perhaps too sardonic, too morose, for today's mystery novel. This is not a running-full-of-action agent who gooses the reds and chases after or is chased by the bad guys. This is not Fleming, this is not Clancy, this is not today's secret agent. Instead, it delves into the introspection and seriously saddened life of the protagonist - Mr. Verloc, the secret agent.

Verloc may be an agent - but he is not sauvoir d'affaire. He is laughed at by his peers, is thought of as harmless by the police, and is being used by both. When provoked to do something substantial, he sets about to blow up an observatory. It fails. Instead, his accomplice is blown to smithereens and that sets about the chase and his unreproachable demise.

Eventually, we learn he has not only failed with explosives, but his failure has alienated him from the reds and the police. But, there is worse yet - his failure alienates him from his wife of 7 years and her family. This is a failure of mammoth proportions, as he not only ends up dying for his failures, but takes down his brother-in-law and wife with him.

Conrad's writing style may be out of date. It is difficult for today's reader as his book was written 100 years ago. Conrad's use of the English language often entails his deliberate overuse so that you know that he knows more of it than you know. Polish born boy, and forced to speak Russian by the occupiers, he eventually moved to England to write in its language. He is a foreigner who writes in a foreign language -- a deficit he well overcame.

In one passage he acknowledges foreigners' fluency when he writes, "Verloc . . . had come to the conclusion that some foreigners speak better English than the native." But, Conrad's syrupy use of English can effectively ruin some of the dialogue - for instance when Verloc is interrogated by the police, a low officer laughs at Verloc, the alleged anarchist, for being married as the concept of marriage to anarchists is an "apostasy." Apostasy? Name one of today's cops who uses the word! Name anyone!

Reagrdless of the writing style being dated, this book is well worth reading.

Heart of Darkness is encapsulated in a time of human history when exploitation, murder and mayhem was brought onto Africa and its peoples by besotted power-hungry brutally callous buccaneering white men from Europe. The riches of Africa were raped and plundered and its peoples humiliated, murdered, displaced and treated as animals. Africa was butchered like a wild animal and the carcass divided amongst the colonial powers.

Marlow, the narrator, during that sad epoch, tells his story of a mission to the Congo to pilot a steamboat on the Congo River for `the Company'. On arrival at the decrepit sham of a Central Station on the River where suspicion and decay and corruption hangs over everything Marlow learned that a very important trading station was in jeopardy and that it's chief, Mr. Kurtz was ill at a deserted trading post 300 miles down stream.

The manager of the Central Station, a sordid, greedy, cruel and bloated insecure white man live a life of uncertainty amongst filth and decaying bodies of chained and starving indigenous black people and idle suspicious white workers. And Kurtz is piped to succeed him. And he hates Kurtz with a vengeance. And Kurtz hates and despises him.

Kurtz a man "of greatness, of generous mind, of noble heart, a great musician, and a man of magnificent eloquence" is a man of great influence with the Council in Europe. Kurtz asked to be sent to the outpost. His self declared mission "each station should be like a beacon on the road towards better things, a center for trade of course, but also humanizing, improving, instructing"

Kurtz send large hoards of ivory to the Central Station with his assistant and returned alone in a dugout canoe to his trading post. And Kurtz disappeared for nine months; wild rumors reached the Central Station; and the ivory from Kurtz dries up to the consternation of the manager of the Central Station.

Going up the river to Kurtz's trading post Marlow experienced the great silence and spookiness of the impenetrable tropical rainforest and the boat followed by angry indigenous people hiding in the thickets. Finding Kurtz, metamorphose has happened, the refined man turned into a maniac, adoring his fence posts with black, dried human heads. The wilderness has found him and crept into his being. His weary brain was haunted by shadowy images - images of wealth and fame - and turbulent angst tormented his soul. He transformed into a heart of darkness. He hoarded all the ivory he could find and claim it as his; he raised an impi of naked spear carrying indigenous black men lead by a black warrior woman and he died lonely and frightened and his body was slid into the turbulent waters of the Congo River.

Set in the Belgian Congo during the 19th century Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, is a journey to the darkest corners of the wilderness and the human heart. The story is told by Marlow, a sailor, who journeys to the Congo to captain a river steamer and ends up on a expedition to save an extrodinary ivory trader by the name of Mr. Kurtz.

Throughout this journey he encounters the raw brutality of colonialism in all its horror and greed. Conrad brings the reader to the frontier where men do savage things all for the spoils of conquest. This is in sharp contrast with other African adventure classics, such as King Solomon's Mines, which take a much more amiable view of the conquest of Africa.

Conrad shows all this barbarism with vivid imagery. His description of the Congo wilderness brings it life with all the mystery and majesty it is due. Conrad's prose is magnificent; you feel like you are at Marlow's side throughout the whole story. However anyone thinking this is a fast paced thriller is mistaken. It plot moves at a leisurely pace and isn't as rushed as novels today.

Another one of the beauties of this book is its re-readability. I first read it through without reading the introduction and I am glad I did. It let me interperet the meaning of the book without anyone else's influences and when I read the introduction at the end I found that there was a myraid of other themes that could be drawn from the story that I had not thought of. I am now reading it a second time in a new light. I suggest anyone reading it the first time to skip the intro and the footnotes until you've read it once. It will definetly make it a more enjoyable read.

Not that it is not already an excellent book. Heart of Darkness is a literature masterpiece that shows the raw repungent character of colonialism and human nature with haunting power.

I read this book for a graduate Humanities course. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, written in 1899 is a seminal work about the ills of colonialism, as well as a postmodern look at the subject of mankind. Conrad's book had a crucial influence on five important works of the twentieth century: J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough. Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land, Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces, and Francis Ford Coppolla's movie Apocalypse Now, screenplay by John Milius, was based on Conrad's book. Another interesting fact is that this work was read by Orson Welle's Mercury Theater Players on the radio and was to be his first movie. After doing some work on it he abandoned the project to do Citizen Kane! I would have loved to of seen what Welles could have done with this story. Conrad's story is so riveting in part, because he himself served as a riverboat captain. High school teachers and college professors who have discussed this book in thousands of classrooms over the years tend to do so in terms of Freud, Jung, and Nietzsche; of classical myth, Victorian innocence, and original sin; of postmodernism, postcolonialism, and poststructuralism.

Just a taste of the plot reels you in! Marlow, the narrator of Heart of Darkness and Conrad's alter ego, is hired by an ivory-trading company to sail a steamboat up an unnamed river whose shape on the map resembles "an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country and its tail lost in the depths of the land" (8). His destination is a post where the company's brilliant, ambitious star agent, Mr. Kurtz, is stationed. Kurtz has collected legendary quantities of ivory, but, Marlow learns along the way, is also rumored to have sunk into unspecified savagery. Marlow's steamer survives an attack by blacks and picks up a load of ivory and the ill Kurtz; Kurtz, talking of his grandiose plans, dies on board as they travel, downstream.

Sketched with only a few bold strokes, Kurtz's image has nonetheless remained in the memories of millions of readers: the lone white agent far up the great river, with his dreams of grandeur,his great store of precious ivory, and his fiefdom carved out of the African jungle. Perhaps more than anything, we remember Marlow, on the steamboat, looking through binoculars at what he thinks are ornamental knobs atop the fence posts in front of Kurtz's house and then finding that each is "black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids-a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth" (57).

I especially became interested in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness from the movie Apocalypse Now. There is a scene in the movie that shows Colonel Kurtz's nightstand in his cave. T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land is one of three books on the nightstand. The other two are Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, and J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough. Anyone wanting to understand the movie Apocalypse Now, especially the character of Colonel Kurtz, and what Milius and Copolla are trying to tell their audience need to read these three books as well as Conrad's Heart of Darkness!

As a graduate student reading in philosophy and history I recommend this book for anyone interested in literature, myth, history, philosophy, religion and fans of Apocalypse Now.

Being that it is only about 90 pages long, I was able to finish this story in one afternoon. It is easy to see why Whites and Blacks get such different messages from the book.

The reader is encouraged, throughout the story, to be sympathetic to the White characters. Since most Whites, even in the 21st century, have yet to shed their racist garments, they will naturally emphathize with the plight of these poor White guys who, unfortunately, are "forced" to put up with the strangeness of this strange land in order to steal the resources from that land's inhabitants. After all, White guys are having to put up with similar trials even today in order to steal the resources from, yeah, that's right, the same country, the Congo. Oh, pity those poor French military advisors who are forced to go into the "Heart of Darkness" to keep the natives fighting each other, to make sure they don't turn on the real theives of their abundant mineral resources. The horror! The horror!

By contrast, Conrad's treatment of his black characters is non-existent. They are soul-less beasts of burden. Conrad doesn't even bother to give them names. They are just referred to as niggers. When they are described as being beaten, or left alone to die, or forced to work on Marlow's ship for over a month with no food except rotten hippo meat (Marlow's only concern was that the smell of the rotted meat was annoying the White guys), Conrad writes of these incidents with no more sympathy than what you would expect from a description of an ant being stepped on by our poor embattled protagonist. Only a Black fool would not be offended by Conrad's work and Barak Obama is anything but that.

To get some idea of just how bad Conrad's character development is, compare it to that of one of his contemporaries who actually had talent ... Mark Twain. It is a sign of Twain's genius that he could suck Whites in by using the word "nigger", but at the same time get them to see his black characters as human beings. His black characters had names, families, they could even feel love and pain. Just like White people. Imagine that.

The story is that of a group of men aboard the Nellie, among them the anonymous narrator, who are told Marlow's experience in the Congo in the 1890s. Marlow's career, like Conrad's, spans an important period in the history of relations between Europe and Africa. The author's purpose is to show that the "civilising" mission actually reveals the "darkness" at its own heart instead of bringing light into the darkness as it claims.
In 1890 Conrad was appointed to the Congo by the Societe Anonyme Belge pour le Commerce and in June that year he reached Kinshasa, the Central Station in "Heart of Darkness". But soon the idealised realities of a boy's dreams were replaced by "the distasteful knowledge of the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience and geographical exploration" (in "Last Essays").
Thus Marlow's journey to the Congo becomes a moral journey in which he confronts the workings of colonialism and his account is a frame-tale with inset stories, a so-called "oblique narration" - a tale within another tale. The darkness of Marlow's expedition is enhanced by the fact that his quest for Kurz contains repeated references to the latter's "eloquence" and "gift of expression" thus promising to articulate the solution to the moral and philosophical problems that the journey has created. Marlow's encounter with Kurz is a bitter disappointment with its "desolate exclamations, shrugs, hints ending in sighs".
Although Conrad shows the criminality of inefficiency and selfishness of Europeans when dealing with the civilising work of Africa, the narrative is not gloomy. Kurz himself is merely a victim of the discourse of imperialism and his break-up shows how damaging it is for both Africans and Europeans.
Another aspect in Conrad's novel is the stereotypical representation of women and the exclusion of the female reader. This is shown in Kurz's last words before dying: "The horror! The horror!" which refer to his Intended!

This excellent short novel is very representative for Joseph Conrad's work. Its main theme of the foolish, dangerous and deadly dreams of colonialists was also treated in his short story `An Outpost of Progress' (in 'Tales of Unrest') and in his masterpiece `Heart of Darkness'.

The main character in this story dreams of finding a mysterious treasure in order to be able to return to his homeland and live for the rest of his life in `untold wealth'.
For the indigenous, he is not more than another `white man that comes to us to trade, with prayers on his lips and loaded guns in his hands.' He shows `the same manifestations of love and hate and of sordid greed chasing the uncertain dollar in all its multifarious and vanishing shapes.'
He is bitterly confronted with `the savage mood which civilization could never destroy'.

For Conrad, `no two beings understand each other', so certainly not the `savage' and the `white man'.
More, the `uncompromising sincerity of Malay kinsmen' stands in sharp contrast with `the sleek hypocrisy of white people with their vivid but foolish dreams'.

This novel has not the same high standard as `Heart of Darkness', but should not be missed.

Almayer's Folly was Joseph Conrad's first novel. I have nothing to compare it to, as I have not read his signature work, Heart of Darkness, nor any of his other lesser known stories and novels. I came into the possession of Almayer's Folly by chance; one of my friend's mothers had taken the book from the DISCARD pile in the library and urged me to take it from her.

I'm glad that fate has brought me this book. It's the story of Almayer-- a Dutchman who has been born and raised in Colonial Indonesia. He spends his life idolizing Europe and Western ideals, scorning his homeland. Yet he never once ventures to Europe. In fact, most of his interactions with Europeans often find him the butt of their jokes. He doesn't fare much better with the Malay natives and Arab merchants--while often treated as a superior by virtue of his race, they still regard him as a fool.

Almayer has nothing but haughty contempt for the native Malay culture of Borneo. Even with his Malay wife and half-Malay daughter, he keeps a Imperialist's distance from the culture which surrounds him. Feeling no true kinship with his European heritage, and scorning the one with which he is most familiar, he's a case study in the pathologies which arise from Colonialism.

Essentially, Almayer is a semi-sympathetic buffoon. His life is full of grandiose wishes and little reward. He yearns for great treasure, yet is no warrior and a mediocre businessman. He lacks the cunning and courage of many other characters--A Malay Rajah, a slave, an Arab trader, and a swashbuckling British compatriot, are just a few of the characters who outshine Almayer.

Yet, its his weaknesses which make his placement as the central character one of the most endearing aspects of the book. Because he is such a fragile, inept person, we become more comfortable with the savageness, intelligence, and verve in the other principal characters.

Almayer's undramatic life serves as the backdrop for the love story between his daughter and a handsome Balinese Prince. Her choice to eschew a comfortable European upbringing and to align herself with the romantic, savage culture of her Malay mother is the emotional keystone in the novel.

I was often astounded by Conrad's rich evocation of the setting and characters in colonial Indonesia. I'm not much for florid, lush descriptions, but Conrad sets himself above the heap of dilettantes and impostors: his ornate narrative holds together, forming a monumental, often breathtaking vision of Colonial Indonesia. The dynamic characters, expansive forests, and socio-political themes all receive the same rigorous, beautiful treatment.

One drawback is that, because Conrad's talents are so visible and easy to explain, the mystery and magic in great pieces of art is obscured in this work. Furthermore, his characters seem to vacillate unnaturally between mythical, cliched representations of themes and truly organic, dynamic beings. That being said, the novel was a thoroughly enjoyable read and I am excited to soon discover some of Conrad's more well known works.

This book by Conrad is a love story and a tragedy. The tragedy of Nina's father, Almayer--and the love story of Dain and Nina.

But Almayer's Folly is not as great a book as Lord Jim or Nigger of the 'Narcissus,' which are among the great masterpieces of literature.

There are several problems with Conrad's novel. For one thing, Almayer is not sympathetic enough to be a tragic hero. He just comes across as a real jerk. For another, the love story of Dain and Nina is so overblown and romantic as to be almost laughable, comic, and ridiculous. The characters and settings are hard to keep straight, as are the motivations of some of the doings.

Frankly, I found it quite difficult to take any of it seriously. It may be that we are just too distant from Conrad's Borneo in time and place, but this is not a problem in some of Conrad's other novels.

This is an inferior piece of literature. (Why the three stars in that case, you ask. Conrad's writing is so skilled in detail, and the setting and some of the other details so interesting, that the novel is absorbing--and mercifully short.)

An alternative title for this novel could be Amayer's rut.
For that is the situation that the main protagonist in this novel finds himself in. Almayer is a European trader living in a
trading post somewhere in Indonesia or Malaysia with his daughter,a product of mixed marriage.
Almayer dreams of escaping to Europe after making himself wealthy and bringing his daughter with him also.
But as time drags on it becomes obvious that he is going nowhere with his life. He is not getting richer nor is he getting any younger. His own daughter ends up deserting him by eloping with a native who takes her to his own village.
Not being a pure European by blood she realizes that she would never be accepted as an equal among Europeans or the whites.
For this reason she chooses instead to live with the natives.
As for Almayer he remains as he was.
He is an example that one can find everywhere in the world.
Someone stuck in a situation going nowhere but always dreaming of getting out and changing his life.

Almayer's folly is a powerful beginning to Conrad's second profession, writing. Since the story was written so close to Conrad's adventurous youth (the spring for his most powerful works), it provides the rawest expression of Conrad's views. Almayer, the prototype of Tuan Jim, takes the "leap" when he marries the Malay captive for promised wealth. This transgression drops his character into contact with the cold truths of nature; truths which dispel any artificial illusions or meanings. For Almayer, these illusions entailed sucess and fame in Europe, a place that he had never visited but only heard about from his mother. Superficially, this journey towards inner truth involves a journey into the wilds of Borneo, but,like in future Conrad works, we quickly realize that the journey is inward into the pysche of Almayer. Overall, an excellent introduction to Conrad.

This book was one of three Conrad books I had ordered for my daughter who is in the U.S. Coast Guard. This was her absolute favorite. It arrived well before Christmas and was in excellent condition. Thank you. Che & Lawrence Martini

I came across Narcissus as a reference to one of Faulkner's inspirations in writing As I Lay Dying. As the latter book was superb, I suspected the former would perhaps shine as brightly. I was definately wrong.

It's not that the book is bad--certainly not. But the book, as a story, isn't all that riveting, and as a social commentary is not anything that most haven't seen time and again (that Conrad's work came before much of what we've seen is, of course, of some merit).

From an academic standpoint the book is probably worth a read. Historically, it's clearly important as it effectively captures the mood of an era long past. As a study in literature I found Conrad's employment of seamless shifts between the first and thrid person as subtle and deceptively powerful--clearly this is where Faulkner borrowed style from the work.

The nautical setting is interesting: Recognizable to those familiar with sailing, a learning experience for those of us who are not. One star.

The characters are interesting: Ranging from hardend sailors with strong work ethics to unpricipled slackers, with a mysterious black shipmate (who may or may not be faking illness) thrown in to shake them all up. One star.

What I didn't find interesting was Conrad's writing style. His descriptions contained far too many confusing similes, his run-on sentences and three-page paragraphs were tiresome, and his sudden switch from third-person to first-person narration was a bit bewildering. No stars.

This is the first Conrad novel I've disliked for its racism. "Lord Jim" and "Nostromo" were also about the struggle of racial empire, but more complex and rich in feeling. This one, like "The Secret Agent," seems propelled mainly by resentment. Here the "Nigger" of the title, and his white ally on the ship, are despised by the true-hearted English sailors yet have somehow learned to make the modern world work for them. The message seems to be that weak manipulators, racially corrupt, are taking over the empire. The action of the plot is more allegorical then consequential and lacks internal logic.

However the "Nigger" has the seeds of an interesting character, if we could only get to know him -- maybe on shore, and in good health.

In my opinion, Nigger of the 'Narcissus' by Joseph Conrad is one of the truly great novels in English. It goes on the list with such works as The Great Gatsby, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Passage to India, and Moby Dick. It is fascinating, gripping, deep, and entertaining. It defies description, analysis, or summary. (Nevertheless Doug Anderson in his review has done a pretty good job, so I won't even try.)

I don't feel competent to write reviews of great literary works, but not everyone may be familiar with Conrad's Nigger of the 'Narcissus' and what a wonderful novel it is. ... I had no expectations about it and was taken completely by surprise. Nigger of the 'Narcissus' is not just another good novel. It is a masterpiece of literature.

Just to clarify: English was Conrad's third language. Polish and French preceded it.

I'm sorry, but this book is much too full of description and symbolism. If you juxtapose it to other short stories, I'm sure you will notice the negative difference. My advice is: Do not buy this book!! Find another one - you will enjoy it more! When you unpack the story, you'll find that the first paragraph is full of description about an empty ocean, all mysterious and strnage. Other settings are a ship deck and an L-shaped cabin. I think I need not say any more - this book is dreadful!

I am being a bit too harsh with the title to my review, but I really did not enjoy this short (but it seems so, so long) story. Just as Conrad's other novel, Heart of Darkness, has symbolism and deeper meanings- so follows the Secret Sharer. Simply, I did not like this book. I would have been completely lost if it were not for the helpful introduction written by Albert Guerard. I read the introduction after reading the story, and it shed a lot of light on the book. Though I did not enjoy the book, I am impressed with the man behind the book- I cannot believe that English is his second language. He also has an impressive personal life history- it seems as if he has experienced everything he writes about, this adds value to his works.

In THE SECRET SHARER, Joseph Conrad posits an interesting choice for the Captain protagonist: should he follow maritime law and return a self-confessed murderer to his ship to face justice or should he allow his personal feelings to intrude and harbor a fugitive and let him escape? On the surface, this seems like a fairly routine choice, but in the world of Joseph Conrad no choices are ever easy. Readers who come to this novella from HEART OF DARKNESS are well aware that Conrad likes to place hesitancies in the minds of readers, most of which are couched in symbolic language which suggest a tapping into their psyches. In the case of the Captain, his choice is confounded by his perception of the man Leggatt who climbs aboard his ship. As the Captain sees Leggatt, he sees a man who is described in terms of one who is physically incomplete. Leggatt appears to be headless and as he ascends the rope from water to deck, Conrad's imagery suggests a watery re-birth. The Captain sees Leggatt and in the pages that follow calls him terms that circle back to himself: my double, my secret sharer, and my other self. It is clear that in Leggatt the Captain sees more than just a little bit of himself. They went to the same school with the Captain graduating only a few years prior. At this point, Conrad suggests that the Captain's decision not to hand Leggatt over to justice may not be simply a matter of identifying with Leggatt on a superficial level in that they merely share some common traits. With the Captain's heavily symbolic language, Conrad probes more deeply in the Captain's psyche and by extension in the reader's psyche by suggesting that the Captain's willingness to protect Leggatt even at the cost of his own career and the safety of his ship and crew lies in his subconscious linking of himself to Leggatt. For the Captain to hand over Leggatt to the law and to possible execution would be tantamount to being complicit in his own doom. To further complicate matters, on an even more subconscious level, Conrad raises the possibility that there is no Leggatt at all and that their entire relationship, replete with conversation, mutual interaction, and hiding Leggatt in his bathroom may have existed only within the Captain's mind. If this latter interpretation holds water, then in order for the Captain to maintain the illusion of Leggatt's existence, he had to act as if Leggatt truly existed, even to the point of endangering his ship by approaching too close to shore to allow Leggatt to jump off and swim to safety to a nearby isle. Conrad leaves the reader to ponder the state of mind of the Captain. When the Captain sees a floating hat at the end when Leggatt has jumped ship, that hat serves to remind the Captain and possibly the reader as well that the difference between reality and illusion may be no more significant than whether an abandoned hat floats or sinks in a stormy sea.

The Secret Sharer was one of the best books I've read in a long time. Even though it is really short there is a large amount of importance in every line. Whether its symbolism or some type of hidden meaning its there and it is what makes the book great.
Conrad puts you in the mind of of his characters and you seem to experience what they are going through. It gives you the sense that you are right there on the boat with the captain and his hidden passenger. You feel as if your the only one in on there little secret and if they are found out you will be too. Conrad then puts so much description into his characters you can actually get a feeling of what they look like and the way they act. The similarities between the two main characters is so great that at points you can't see a difference between them. This constantly keeps you on your toes and thinking about what is going on.
What makes the book though is the symbolism and how much meaning each little thing holds. You can read a paragraph and just take it s a regular story or you can think more into it and it holds so much more. It almost completely changes the way you look at what is happening.
This book is definitely worth reading. It makes you appreciate the genius that some people hold in there writing abilities. You will come out of this book with a changed perspective on the way things happen in life.

The four tales in this collection are beautifully composed; they are art, not just stories. Each story is deep in its unique complexities. Each one has plots and subplots and paints an impeccable image of the story upon the reader's mind. And when I look back upon the book as a whole, upon the adventurous stories, the excitement and emotion that the author presents so exquisitely, I can't help but be extremely impressed.

I read this book for a graduate Humanities course. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, written in 1899 is a seminal work about the ills of colonialism, as well as a postmodern look at the subject of mankind. Conrad's book had a crucial influence on five important works of the twentieth century: J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough. Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land, Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces, and Francis Ford Coppolla's movie Apocalypse Now, screenplay by John Milius, was based on Conrad's book. Another interesting fact is that this work was read by Orson Welle's Mercury Theater Players on the radio and was to be his first movie. After doing some work on it he abandoned the project to do Citizen Kane! I would have loved to of seen what Welles could have done with this story. Conrad's story is so riveting in part, because he himself served as a riverboat captain. High school teachers and college professors who have discussed this book in thousands of classrooms over the years tend to do so in terms of Freud, Jung, and Nietzsche; of classical myth, Victorian innocence, and original sin; of postmodernism, postcolonialism, and poststructuralism.

Just a taste of the plot reels you in! Marlow, the narrator of Heart of Darkness and Conrad's alter ego, is hired by an ivory-trading company to sail a steamboat up an unnamed river whose shape on the map resembles "an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country and its tail lost in the depths of the land" (8). His destination is a post where the company's brilliant, ambitious star agent, Mr. Kurtz, is stationed. Kurtz has collected legendary quantities of ivory, but, Marlow learns along the way, is also rumored to have sunk into unspecified savagery. Marlow's steamer survives an attack by blacks and picks up a load of ivory and the ill Kurtz; Kurtz, talking of his grandiose plans, dies on board as they travel, downstream.

Sketched with only a few bold strokes, Kurtz's image has nonetheless remained in the memories of millions of readers: the lone white agent far up the great river, with his dreams of grandeur,his great store of precious ivory, and his fiefdom carved out of the African jungle. Perhaps more than anything, we remember Marlow, on the steamboat, looking through binoculars at what he thinks are ornamental knobs atop the fence posts in front of Kurtz's house and then finding that each is "black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids-a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth" (57).

I especially became interested in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness from the movie Apocalypse Now. There is a scene in the movie that shows Colonel Kurtz's nightstand in his cave. T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land is one of three books on the nightstand. The other two are Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, and J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough. Anyone wanting to understand the movie Apocalypse Now, especially the character of Colonel Kurtz, and what Milius and Copolla are trying to tell their audience need to read these three books as well as Conrad's Heart of Darkness!

As a graduate student reading in philosophy and history I recommend this book for anyone interested in literature, myth, history, philosophy, religion and fans of Apocalypse Now.

Heart of Darkness is, without a doubt, one of the best and most confusing books ever written. It is probably the most discussed book of the 20th century, and an obscene number of academic papers, criticisms and interpretations have been written about it. What does it mean, everyone wants to know. It is so impenetrable, to use one of Marlow's favorite words. Even if you don't want to spend the time figuring out the "message" (if there is one), this is a great novel simply for the characters and the images.

Our narrator, Marlow, is a fascinating character in himself, and he always makes me smile with his wit and insight, though he can be a little pretentious. Kurtz is an enigma, a man who has set himself up as a god with unclear motives. He is taken care of my a Russian harlequin, a hilarious idealist who forgives that Kurtz once threatened to kill him (you can't judge a man like that by ordinary standards!) Marlow comes across many others, such as the fat Englishman who cannot stop fainting on their way to see Kurtz. The imagery is evocative and haunting. A group of starving indiginous men are referred to as a "bundle of acute angles." The scenery is described better than a movie could portray (Apocalypse Now does the jungle no justice.)

It's a short book too, so you have no excuse for not reading it!

If you gave an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters, would they eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare? Who knows?

What I do know is that "Heart of Darkness" could be the result of 4 monkeys doing about 2 hours of work. To read the book is a chore.

My daughter had to read this book as part of a summer assignment for English. I, being one to read classics, looked forward to reading another good book.

Conrad's rambling tale is difficult to follow, but even more, BORING to follow.

I can more easily read a book on quantum physics. To require someone to read Conrad is more like punishment than education.

The word's thrown around a lot, but this is the only case where I've actually been literally haunted by a book. It surfaces in the mind when I don't intend for it to, and its disturbing. I've never been really psychologically messed with by a book like this. I mean, not bad, but I get chills thinking about it. Like someone said, the images are great. The ship firing into the continent is one of those I can't get out of my head. And for those of you who are curious after seeing Apocolypse Now, I think they really messed up the Kurtz character. Its one of, if not the one of, my favorite movies, but he's so overacted and the script never really tells what the horror is. From the movie I got that it was the situation and man's situation, but from the book it is definitely the mind and soul, in my opinion. Any social commentary in the book is secondary to the more philosophical and psychological, here, I feel.
I also enjoyed Lord Jim and every one of his other short stories I've read, but none have been as good as Heart of Darkness. I'll probably read Nostromo pretty soon, too. If you want another take on a somewhat similar situation in colonial Africa, check out Journey to the End of the Night by Celine. I didn't so much care for the book as a whole, but that part has stuck with me.

An excellent work on the role of the imperial European forces in the shaping of the political and economic spheres in Asia and Africa around the turning of the previous century. Since these forces have been instrumental in the determination of the present day attitudes toward western powers, they must be studied carefully help in overcoming the negative aspects of what has resulted.

I picked up Heart of Darkness because I thought Apocalypse Now (not the Redux, which sucks) was a really good movie. As it turns out, there's little in common between the two.

The story concerns Marlow, an Englishman, who takes a job ferrying ivory down a river in Africa. He becomes interested in Kurtz, another trader who has set himself up as a god over the tribes in this area.

Heart of Darkness, again, has been elevated to that divine status of "English literature." The same people who have promoted it thus have also attempted to explain away the novel's flagrant racism, although I don't know how that would be possible. How many English professors would be up a creek (you know which creek) if everybody suddenly figured out that authors like Conrad are overrated?

Like The Secret Sharer, Heart of Darkness is boring and difficult to read. Conrad is one of those who liked sentences the size of paragraphs and paragraphs that went on for a page or more. Often, given his penchant for changing topics mid-paragraph, I did not see why he used half the paragraph breaks he did. The boringness of the novel is compounded by the Marlow's rambling narrative. Certainly, this helps define the personality of the character, but it certainly doesn't help the book's readability.

Conrad presents the whole story as told as narrative by the main character after everything has taken place. Here, glaringly, Conrad's style doesn't work. "The moon had spread over everything a thin layer of silver - over the rank grass, over the mud, upon the wall of matted vegetation standing higher than the wall of a temple, over the great river I could see through a somber gap glittering, glittering, as it flowed broadly by without a murmur." Obviously, people write like this, but nobody ever talked like this. You tell a story to an audience like this and every last one of them will be asleep.

Conrad's work is highly symbolic. Far be it from me to say he was not a talented writer. But I think he, as well as those who cling to his coattails, have missed this: you can go to far with symbolism, and most any other literary device, and absolutely kill the story. While Conrad was busy creating vividly-descriptive sentences and cathedrals of paragraphs, the story fell by the wayside, and nobody went back for it.

This is my problem. I don't want to see word pictures of nothing, no matter how lovely those pictures might be. Just tell me a story. If you can do both at once, so much the better. But if you're only going to have one, this is the wrong one to have.

NOT RECOMMENDED

I found this book somewhat difficult to read and comprehend. It was much deeper that I care to read.

I read this book for a graduate Humanities course. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, written in 1899 is a seminal work about the ills of colonialism, as well as a postmodern look at the subject of mankind. Conrad's book had a crucial influence on five important works of the twentieth century: J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough. Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land, Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces, and Francis Ford Coppolla's movie Apocalypse Now, screenplay by John Milius, was based on Conrad's book. Another interesting fact is that this work was read by Orson Welle's Mercury Theater Players on the radio and was to be his first movie. After doing some work on it he abandoned the project to do Citizen Kane! I would have loved to of seen what Welles could have done with this story. Conrad's story is so riveting in part, because he himself served as a riverboat captain. High school teachers and college professors who have discussed this book in thousands of classrooms over the years tend to do so in terms of Freud, Jung, and Nietzsche; of classical myth, Victorian innocence, and original sin; of postmodernism, postcolonialism, and poststructuralism.

Just a taste of the plot reels you in! Marlow, the narrator of Heart of Darkness and Conrad's alter ego, is hired by an ivory-trading company to sail a steamboat up an unnamed river whose shape on the map resembles "an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country and its tail lost in the depths of the land" (8). His destination is a post where the company's brilliant, ambitious star agent, Mr. Kurtz, is stationed. Kurtz has collected legendary quantities of ivory, but, Marlow learns along the way, is also rumored to have sunk into unspecified savagery. Marlow's steamer survives an attack by blacks and picks up a load of ivory and the ill Kurtz; Kurtz, talking of his grandiose plans, dies on board as they travel, downstream.

Sketched with only a few bold strokes, Kurtz's image has nonetheless remained in the memories of millions of readers: the lone white agent far up the great river, with his dreams of grandeur,his great store of precious ivory, and his fiefdom carved out of the African jungle. Perhaps more than anything, we remember Marlow, on the steamboat, looking through binoculars at what he thinks are ornamental knobs atop the fence posts in front of Kurtz's house and then finding that each is "black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids-a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth" (57).

I especially became interested in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness from the movie Apocalypse Now. There is a scene in the movie that shows Colonel Kurtz's nightstand in his cave. T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land is one of three books on the nightstand. The other two are Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, and J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough. Anyone wanting to understand the movie Apocalypse Now, especially the character of Colonel Kurtz, and what Milius and Copolla are trying to tell their audience need to read these three books as well as Conrad's Heart of Darkness!

As a graduate student reading in philosophy and history I recommend this book for anyone interested in literature, myth, history, philosophy, religion and fans of Apocalypse Now.

Heart Of Darkness Book Review

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is a novel based on him. The book is absolutely amazing. The story is being told of Marlow who travels up the River Congo into the heart of the African Continent, at the height of European colonialism. Throughout the journey Marlow suffers a profound transformation on his out look into human nature, taking him into the darkness. He holds views of African continents, describing the natives with contempt. His prejudices are not able to remain indifferent to the cruelty and horrors of colonization.
Marlow becomes obsessed by his goal to meet Kurtz. Kurtz is a mystical character who has become famous for his success finding an enormous amount of ivory. Deep inside Marlow holds the hope that Kurtz will be able to give him a logical, justification for the horrors he has seen. When they meet, Marlow finds Kurtz has become a savage himself and has lost ties to any moral standard. He has plunged himself into insanity and horror. This book is a very suspenseful. I guarantee you that you will be on the edge of you seat reading this book. It is very deep, and can be interrupted in many different ways. So if you get a chance you should definitely read this book.

~Chris

AN OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS was both Conrad's second novel and the second novel in a trilogy of books featuring Almayer (the first book being ALMAYER'S FOLLY and the third Conrad's final novel, THE RESCUE), who is a major minor character in this one after being the major character in his first novel. This novel is not as strong an effort as the novels from his major phase, but it is nonetheless a book of great power and wonderfully illustrates most of the great themes that run through all of his books. I have a love-hate relationship with Conrad, because while I respond to the marvelously depicted male characters in his books (his women are usually implausibly stupid and cardboardish) and their conflicts with the universe and each other, I find the world he describes as being a little too bleak and the cosmos far too impersonal. All of his characters are doomed to ineffecual action, and their fates are determined by forces and factors outside of themselves, or perhaps to some degree by motives within themselves over which they have no power. I do not like Conrad's universe, but I admit the power of his creation.

This is not one of Conrad's greatest works. It belongs in a tier immediately below his very greatest works like NOSTROMO, THE SECRET AGENT, UNDER WESTERN EYES, HEART OF DARKNESS, LORD JIM, and VICTORY. Nonetheless, slightly lesser Conrad is more rewarding than major works of other writers, and I heartily recommend this novel (as well as his other books) to any serious reader.

I love any book by Joseph Conrad and am on my way to reading just about everything he wrote. My next goal is to re-read it all again.

However, Outcast of the Island is not a "GREAT" book or piece of literature. It is interesting and worth reading especially if you like Conrad. I see it as a colonial/romance novel critical of the "British Empire" and of a man caught in the empire trade game who is led by his own devices to survive in his own game.

I like the descriptions of the exotic location, the dangerous love interest, and everything that is Conrad in style.

His writing style is too generous in his early work. He could be more sparse (needs to put his language on a stairmaster and lean it down). Anyway, I don't want to be against the book. If you are actually thinking about it, then get it and read it. It's not long and is fairly entertaining.

Bottome-line: First time Conrad readers go get a collection of his short stories. Everybody else-- sure why not.

"I know the white man...in many lands have I seen them, always the slaves of their desires..."
This is Conrads second book and like his first it deals with the colonial enterprise but in this book white men are their own worst enemies. The native Malay characters are given more in the way of identity in this book and they are seen as having complex views. There is intrigue in this book as white men from different nations try to assert their dominance in the region but the Malays too have a plan and that is to take advantage of the whites aggressive and competitive natures and set them against each other. Great plot. But Conrad also gives you each characters story and each character is always more interesting than whatever role they are playing in the overall plot. One of the most attractive and elaborated themes in this book is the one of mans place in nature and mans own nature. The beauty of the tropical locale is made even more attractive and alluring by the women who walk through the foliage like "apparitions" veiled in "sunlight and shadow". Conrad describes the forests, the light in the tree tops, and the shadows on the forest floor and all nature is seen as metaphor for mans own dualities and incongruites. A much matured writer from Almayers Folly. The plot is simpler than Almayer was but thats good. The simpler plot allows Conrad more latitude to deal with the individual characteristics and that is certainly one of Conrads strengths. He sometimes overdoes it with the repeated use of words like inscrutable and the always heavy darkness, and his overall view of man seems dim, as man in his eyes is an only partially lit(enlightened) being. To Conrad man remains a lost creature for the most part who just by chance or luck or ill omen gets caught up in events he cannot fully comprehend. A limited resource man may be but while reading it is hard not to see it his way. The summing up scene at the end of the book with a drunken Almayer(who also appeared in Conrads first book, the Almayer of Almayers Folly) relating the now long passed events of the book to a traveling and equally drunk botanist is an excellent closing comment on the continued folly that is the colonial enterprise and man in general.

Conrad has a exciting style of writing which consists of artfully mixed poetic prose and moral analysis. The language of the text alone is enough to make this a great novel, perhaps even an epic poem. The intensity of the prose is such that I was driven backwards into my seat for most of the novel. A prequel to _Almayer's Folly_, An Outcast...is a true must read.

"Almayer's Folly" adequately introduces the theme of culture conflict, an angle that is expressed more fully in Conrad's later works. I would certainly recommend this to anyone familiar with Conrad's body of work, which is not to say that readers new to his work should avoid this novel.

This tale, set in the colonial-era East Indies, narrates the brief rise and slow descent of a man's search for fortune and adventure. Quite simply, the treasure never appears and Almayer is left to ponder what could have been. His woes are intensified by the departure of his daughter, one of his few links to "civilised Europe." Classic symbolism occurs late in the novel, as Almayer erases the footprints of his daughter the day of their parting. While "Almayer's Folly" doesn't reach the heights of Conrad's longer (read: better) works, this effort still captures the romantic essence of the Far East in the classic Conrad style.

Although not to be compared with his major works, this is nonetheless a most impressive first novel. Perhaps because he was already well into his thirties when he wrote and published it, the book contains all the major themes that one associates with Conrad. If one has not read any Conrad at all, I would recommend going to his great masterpieces first (VICTORY, NOSTROMO, THE SECRET AGENT, UNDER WESTERN EYES, HEART OF DARKNESS, THE NIGGER OF THE 'NARCISSUS', or LORD JIM). But for anyone who enjoys the work of Joseph Conrad, this book can hardly fail to fascinate.

An impressive and delightful read and an awesome work by a world-class scholar-author and educator. It is as comprehensive and thorough a critical work as we are likely to find anywhere, on any work of fiction, whether or not canonical. I'm a reader who feasts on literary and scholary criticism. Showing quite a bit of his lively mind and personality at work, Firchow's study of Heart of Darkness is a humbling and joyous reading experience.

Heart of Darkness has become a politically controversial book bringing the issue of racism into the foreground. Firchow counters the accusations of racism that have been made and defends his opinion of Conrad's book with solid arguments.

Much has been said on the subject of colonial racism, and this still leaves a bitter tang in the throats of most historicially learned people. Still, we don't need this book. Conrad's Heart of Darkness is placed in the context of his time, and even when skimming the novell, one get the image that it is an attack on the imperialism of that time. Firchow goes after the wrong novell.