Heart of Darkness is one of my favorite books. Written as a frame narrative, this novel follow's Marlow, an ivory transporter, on his journey down the Congo River. Conrad describes the river as, “... a mighty big river, that you could see on the map, resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in the depths of the land.”
Through his obsession with a man named Mr. Kurtz who is an ivory-procurement agent, Marlow is drawn deeper into the heart of darkness. The book explores the relationship between savagery and civilization, the basis of imperialism. The book is a hypnotic mixture of language and deep symbolism I first picked up this book when I was sixteen and the words have stayed with me till this day.
"It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams...No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream-alone..."
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