Frederick's Reviews > Heart of Darkness

This novella is so well-known that critiquing it seems pretentious, describing the plot superfluous and trying to convey the experience of reading it dubious. I will point out a few things which have nothing to do with its qualities but do point to its influence. I will first say that, more than seventy years after HEART OF DARKNESS was published, Chinua Achebe wrote an essay which no student of 20th-century literature can do without. The essay's premise is that, in HEART OF DARKNESS, Conrad yields to his own xenophobia to such an extent as to belie the story's anti-imperialist thrust. Achebe was from Africa and felt there was no reason to overlook the racism of HEART OF DARKNESS. Here is a link to a PDF of the essay: https://polonistyka.amu.edu.pl/__data...
Secondly, I think it has to be acknowledged that HEART OF DARKNESS is a novella and not a novel, long for a novella though it is, and though it is, arguably, the length of a short novel. It unfolds like a novella. The form was at its height when Conrad wrote this in the late 1890s. Only Henry James, Conrad's contemporary, rivaled him as a master of the form.
I think F. Scott Fitzgerald took a little of the opening of HEART OF DARKNESS (a part of the book set on a boat on the river Thames) for the closing paragraphs of THE GREAT GATSBY. I don't think this is far-fetched at all. T.S. Elliot quoted HEART OF DARKNESS in his poem "The Waste Land." He and Fitzgerald were contemporaries. I think the mysterious Gatsby has some of the qualities of the mysterious Kurtz.
Occasionally, Conrad's grammar is weird, though this is less often the case in HEART OF DARKNESS than in many of his other works. He didn't learn English until he was twenty, and he didn't start writing for publication until he was forty, so it is understandable that sometimes his phrasing is bizarre. This is from HEART OF DARKNESS: "I felt like a chill grip on my chest." Conrad must mean "A chill gripped my chest," "It felt as if a chill were gripping my chest," or "My chest felt gripped by a chill." He is NOT saying, as someone of out time might, "I felt, like, a chill grip my chest." Nobody used "like" like that in 1899.
I suggest that you read this work in no more than two sittings. Heavy though it is, HEART OF DARKNESS was designed for magazine readers. The narrator is talking to friends one night over drinks. They gather regularly to tell tall tales. (The narrator points out that though his tales are always tall, they are true. Be true to the intent. Read it in one or two sessions.)