Heart of Darkness, a novel by Joseph Conrad, was originally a three-part series in Blackwood's Magazine in 1899. It is a story within a story, following a character named Charlie Marlow, who recounts his adventure to a group of men onboard an anchored ship. The story told is of his early life as a ferry boat captain. Although his job was to transport ivory downriver, Charlie develops an interest in investing an ivory procurement agent, Kurtz, who is employed by the government. Preceded by his reputation as a brilliant emissary of progress, Kurtz has now established himself as a god among the natives in "one of the darkest places on earth." Marlow suspects something else of Kurtz: he has gone mad.A reflection on corruptive European colonialism and a journey into the nightmare psyche of one of the corrupted, Heart of Darkness is considered one of the most influential works ever written.
Heart of Darkness is well written. The idea of a storyteller within the story isn't unique, but it works very well. We could think about the word darkness for quite some time. The best way to think about it is with Cliff's Notes. I wanted him to get on with it. I guess I was a little impatient for the action and the ending. If it hadn't been for Cliff Notes, I would have missed half of what he was implying.
A merchant company is missing an agent named Kurtz, and Marlowe must find him. Traveling through tougher environments than he expected, he might have discovered what he was looking for. Like many epic stories, the physical distance or direction isn't as important as the change it causes in a person’s soul.
I somehow missed this book in school. The reason I started reading it before I got fully into it was to see how much it resembled the movie. No, not the movie you're thinking of—"Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death" (1988). The film was primarily shot in the avocado groves maintained by the University of California, Riverside (UCR), which the university uses for horticultural research. Adrienne Barbeau plays Dr. Kurtz.
The horror... the horror...
So, you will want to see the movie “Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death” (1989) with Adrienne Barbeau as Dr. Kurtz. Or another adaptation, “Apocalypse Now” (1979).
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