I’ve started to read heart of darkness recently, and frankly, it has been quite a struggle.

At first, I thought this book will be my cup of tea, I love history and also reading the classics, so a book criticizing colonialism in Congo sounded intriguing to say the least. But I already read the first 60 pages of the book, and it has been so difficult to follow.

The book is filled with archaic words, and there are so many metaphors. It’s like the author tried writing the book as complex as possible. I sometimes have to reread entire paragraphs just to understand what is happening and it’s quite frustrating.

I’ll admit that I’m not a native speaker, but I consider my level of English to be quite good and I didn’t expect it to be so difficult to read this book. I read war and peace and the count of monto cristo in English and they were much more interesting and easier to follow.

I saw some negative reviews about the book but I assumed they were mostly about the patronising and racist nature of the book, I didn’t think the writing would be so senseless.

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Should I keep pushing on or just give up on the book? Is it worth finishing it?

  • Ramoncin@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    It’s not meant to be an easy read. It was written by a Polish writer who had English as his third language (the second one was French) and who wanted to be as cryptic as he could. Also, it’s what is known as a roman à clef or novel in code, where many characters, dialogues and events are not meant to be taken verbatim, but as allusions to countries and philosophies. My take is that “Heart of Darkness” was inteligible when it was first released, but not now.

    Some people might consider “Apocalypse now” hard to follow, especially the last section at Kurtz’s compound, but that’s actually much easier to understand than the novel it adapted.

    But please don’t take my “criticism” of “Heart of Darkness” as a an attack towards Joseph Conrad. The man was a hell of a writer, probably on of the best ever to write in English. I just happen to find some of his other work, such as “Typhoon” or “Nostromo” much more fun.