Review on The Book "The Heart of Darkness"

Introduction

Many people recommended me not to read this book, since it is very confusing, that is not understood, that I read it in Spanish if I do not understand it in English, so I listened to it and read it in Spanish, and yes, It is very confusing, it has certain words that to be honest I do not use in my vocabulary, and apart from being told as a story and suddenly it is already in another scene, it leaves some incomplete in all the story I was telling, and therefore I'm lost, but little by little I was reading it, I was getting the wave of how is this roll that skips several parts of the scenes that happened.

I detected some important detail in the way in which the main character carries out his feat, that he is a character who is very clear about what he wants and finds himself with a series of circumstances which are adapted so that he can continue his story, from the simple fact of earning the position in the company with the help of his aunt, until his crossing by all the river of the Congo in which he is the only one that does not suffer attacks, all with the sole purpose of reaching his destination, is It is also interesting to see how this character is very interested in getting to know a character that is practically not seen during the whole work until very short time in the end Kurtz, which gives the reason to be the character of Marlow, this one he discovers by means of the anecdotes of the other characters who also worked in the company and were along the river in camps that served to move safely towards the end, where Kurtz was.

Also another important fact in the book that I detected while I was reading it ,was that the type of the writing that obviously in that time the way of talking changes and the format that we use when we are writing is totally different because now a days we are restricted by some structures that we need to follow so the story made sense and we could read it without getting lost and we can enjoy the quality that the books offers.

So no, I really did not like this book for the reasons already mentioned, but also I could observed in some parts, is that you could see that colonialism was the predominant fact in book, and that can help us students to inform us, how the colonialism was impartial in past years and the brutality with which it was exercised, but I will not tell you what I think since that corresponds to another section that we are going to mention later in this essay.

Chapter one

The chapter begins in a boat called the Nellie, in which there was a group of sailors. It was night. One of them named Marlow, starts telling a story about when he was a freshwater sailor. He started from his childhood when he liked maps as a child and always wanted to go to certain places. To meet his goal he asks his aunt for help and she tells him to go to the Company because they needed a captain.

When he went to the premises of the Company, he was given a medical examination and then he said goodbye to his aunt. He embarked to the river that was going to sail and after thirty days he reached the river where he met the Company. Here, Marlow meets an accountant with whom he has a conversation about a guy named Kurtz. Later, Marlow leaves the Company and meets the director and a young man interested in how Marlow got the job.

Chapter two

Marlow is lying on the deck of his boat when he hears the director and his nephew talking about Kurtz. He did not understand what they were saying and got up to find out better. When the nephew and the director saw Marlow, they got scared and left. A few days later, he left for Kurtz, accompanied by a group of cannibals, pilgrims and the director. They had to stop several times to repair the boat and at one of those stops, Marlow finds an abandoned house in which there was a warning of relief, firewood, a table and a book.

The next morning, the natives attacked again. In the flight, the head of the cannibals was hit by an arrow while driving the rudder of the boat. Marlow, saddened by the death of the chief, threw his body into the river so that the natives would eat it and stop persecuting them. After this, Marlow continued his journey during which, he got a rumor that Kurtz had died.

Chapter three

Marlow meets a man who looked like a harlequin. He had a conversation with the protagonist. This one asks you questions about Kurtz. The man tells him how he got to know Kurtz and the relationship he had with him. The director of the Company locked Marlow in the boat because he felt the opposite of the director about his methods. Here, Marlow meets Kurtz with whom he has a long conversation.

I also want to mention that while I was reading the book, in some parts of the reading I get interested, the way how the they took the cities with a lot of violence and brutality, that I think this way is not the way, with this I mean that they can use other strategies to take the towns, because in the reading it doesn’t say that when they were taking the cities, the citizens do not put up resistance , that they didn’t wanted to die, the wanted to leave in peace, but no, the soldiers treated them with a lot of violence , and I doesn’t like that because they do that because they wanted to do that, they carry with them a great rage , with the thirst of blood and that gives us to understand that they not only do what they do on the orders of their leader, but because they deep down they want it, they have that internal fury that forces them to commit those horrible acts, which end up defining to a man as a beast, as an unevolved being.

Conclusion

In conclusion if you like this types of book, I mean this types of books that they discriminate and treat bad the people that were not in a society, that they don’t have money, or if you like the books that explain how or why they conquer towns with scarce resources , and it is worth mentioning that that is cowardly, because they did not go after those who had resources that were left over, because they know they can lost, and I understand , they only wanted to have slaves and whip them. I can also suppose that they violated them only because they wanted , because they have the authority to do that, they also with the abuse of authority, they cut their hands, which in my opinion I think they did so that they could no longer work, and they only served to do one job, and that is to be a slave.