2021-03-04 - Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad =============================================== Heart of Darkness was one of many books on my high school English class reading list for college-bound students. This book has anti-colonial ideology in the form of brutal honesty, similar to the writing of Samuel Clemens. Yet the protagonist expresses profoundly racist and sexist sentiments. I aim to avoid those in my notes. One topic was restraint, which i perceive as a kind of strength. It was shown by the cannibalistic pilgrims on Marlow's steamboat, and it was absent in the colonial whites throughout the book. Another topic was how out-of-touch the people in London were with the basic facts of reality, placing greater emphasis on material wealth than even the most central human relationships. For example, Mr. Kurtz was betrothed to an English woman, but her family disapproved because she was wealthy and he was not. Therefore he ruthlessly pursued the extraction of wealth from foreign lands. In several parts of the book he makes possessive claims "'My intended, my ivory, my station, my river, my--' everything belonged to him... The thing was to know what HE belonged to..." "The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea--something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to..." "You can't understand. How could you?--with solid pavement under your feet, surrounded by kind neighbours ready to cheer you or to fall on you, stepping delicately between the butcher and the policeman, in the holy terror of scandal and gallows and lunatic asylums--how can you imagine what particular region of the first ages a man's untrammelled feet may take him into by the way of solitude--utter solitude without a policeman--by the way of silence--utter silence, where no warning voice of a kind neighbour can be heard whispering of public opinion? These little things make all the great difference. When they are gone you must fall back upon your own innate strength, upon your own capacity for faithfulness." "I found myself back in the sepulchral city [London] resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams. They trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretence, because I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew. Their bearing, which was simply the bearing of commonplace individuals going about their business in the assurance of perfect safety, was offensive to me like the outrageous flauntings of folly in the face of a danger it is unable to comprehend. I had no particular desire to enlighten them, but I had some difficulty in restraining myself from laughing in their faces so full of stupid importance." author: Conrad, Joseph, 1857-1924 detail: LOC: PR6005.O4 H478 source: tags: ebook,fiction,race title: The Heart of Darkness Tags ==== ebook fiction race