Heart Of Darkness Response

I really liked this book, the reading was kind of difficult and it wasn't the easiest book to pick out all of the symbols, but talking about it in class really brought a lot of questions to mind about almost every aspect of the novel. I continue to ask myself if Kurtz was ever really meant to be a real character, or was he an emotion, was he only the evil that emerged from the jungle. For some reason I am very drawn to books that take place in a mysterious jungle setting. Lord of the Flies was the same way, I'm not sure if I really loved the book and the writing itself but I loved what Golding was going for. This suspicion of primitive evil and violence. It is all very intriguing.

Conrad had the same idea, but to me this is far more sinister, It is displaying natives as animals but it goes beyond that. It goes back to the beginning of time and shows man's connection to something we really are so detached from. This may be may favorite book we read this year, the character Kurtz is incredible. I don't understand how Conrad did such an amazing job displaying him as both a human and something very different.

I also think that this was the most serious book we read so far. Of course Invisible Man was very serious, but it was not as powerful to me as Heart Of Darkness. This book was extremely interesting and I found it to have incredible insight into how connected we are to primitive human behavior.