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alisarae 's review for:
Heart of Darkness
by Joseph Conrad
First off, this reminded me so much of [b:The Poisonwood Bible|7244|The Poisonwood Bible|Barbara Kingsolver|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1644073807l/7244._SY75_.jpg|810663]. The similarities are uncanny; Kingsolver must have done it intentionally.
In The Poisonwood Bible, one of the white characters grows to understand and embrace their Congolese neighbors as not only fellow humans, but also as a culture with rhythms that are intentional and make sense. In the Heart of Darkness, this never happens. The Congolese remain literally in the background and never grow beyond descriptions of beasts, savages, devils, cannibals, jungle entities etc. The main character only expands his understanding of Kurtz, a white man held in such reverence by both the Europeans and the Congolese that he is described as a cult-like deity.
One of the main themes is futility. Everything from the doctor who takes starting measurements but can never take ending measurements to compare them with, to the message runners who run back and forth carrying messages about needing bolts but never carry the bolts themselves, to the multiple scenes of purposeless gunfire. The ivory trade itself is inherently useless: ivory is sold to make delicate decorations in the "women's world," described multiple times as a protective bubble to keep women from experiencing the reality of the world. Even the riches that ivory could fetch remain unmanifested: Kurtz dies in poverty despite being the most renowned & productive ivory hunter in the country, the Russian harlequin sent a bit of ivory out as repayment but material goods seem to matter little to him and he chooses to live his life as a nomad, and the top company officials in the Congo decorate their office-huts with masks stolen from the Congolese—mud huts and masks show off their prestige, but presumably even the lowest-ranking Congolese man also has that.
The writing is dense, evocative, impenetrable, dark, eerie, disorienting..... really captures the sensation of being in the depths of a jungle.
*Puts on art critique hat* About the illustrated version: I liked the artistic style and it makes for a beautiful book, but I think the artist got too stuck on specific figures and many illustrations were simplistic in a lazy way (like the artist was getting tired of the project and just hammering through it). Nearly all the illustrations were stuck at either a full-body, full-skull, or a mid-distance landscape—why not zoom in or zoom out for variety? The recurring motif of an ouroboros to symbolize futility of progress in the face of infinity (I suppose) could have been explored in different ways, like the penrose triangle, or perhaps some motifs from Congolese art. A rule we had in illustration 101: no hearts, no skulls. It's obvious, boring, and the lowest-hanging fruit. If I were the art director, I would have pushed for at least half the skull illustrations to be something else. Think memento mori—decaying fruit and flowers, flies and worms, vultures, shadows to show the day is ending. So in summary, it could have used someone to question and push the compositions a bit more.
In The Poisonwood Bible, one of the white characters grows to understand and embrace their Congolese neighbors as not only fellow humans, but also as a culture with rhythms that are intentional and make sense. In the Heart of Darkness, this never happens. The Congolese remain literally in the background and never grow beyond descriptions of beasts, savages, devils, cannibals, jungle entities etc. The main character only expands his understanding of Kurtz, a white man held in such reverence by both the Europeans and the Congolese that he is described as a cult-like deity.
One of the main themes is futility. Everything from the doctor who takes starting measurements but can never take ending measurements to compare them with, to the message runners who run back and forth carrying messages about needing bolts but never carry the bolts themselves, to the multiple scenes of purposeless gunfire. The ivory trade itself is inherently useless: ivory is sold to make delicate decorations in the "women's world," described multiple times as a protective bubble to keep women from experiencing the reality of the world. Even the riches that ivory could fetch remain unmanifested: Kurtz dies in poverty despite being the most renowned & productive ivory hunter in the country, the Russian harlequin sent a bit of ivory out as repayment but material goods seem to matter little to him and he chooses to live his life as a nomad, and the top company officials in the Congo decorate their office-huts with masks stolen from the Congolese—mud huts and masks show off their prestige, but presumably even the lowest-ranking Congolese man also has that.
The writing is dense, evocative, impenetrable, dark, eerie, disorienting..... really captures the sensation of being in the depths of a jungle.
*Puts on art critique hat* About the illustrated version: I liked the artistic style and it makes for a beautiful book, but I think the artist got too stuck on specific figures and many illustrations were simplistic in a lazy way (like the artist was getting tired of the project and just hammering through it). Nearly all the illustrations were stuck at either a full-body, full-skull, or a mid-distance landscape—why not zoom in or zoom out for variety? The recurring motif of an ouroboros to symbolize futility of progress in the face of infinity (I suppose) could have been explored in different ways, like the penrose triangle, or perhaps some motifs from Congolese art. A rule we had in illustration 101: no hearts, no skulls. It's obvious, boring, and the lowest-hanging fruit. If I were the art director, I would have pushed for at least half the skull illustrations to be something else. Think memento mori—decaying fruit and flowers, flies and worms, vultures, shadows to show the day is ending. So in summary, it could have used someone to question and push the compositions a bit more.