I love Heart of Darkness so much but I agree that it’s probably a bit beyond many high schoolers. I was (okay, am) a huge lit nerd so I was very into it and appreciated the ways in which the narrator is very much portrayed as vile and horrible by Conrad, but I’m not sure if someone who isn’t passionate about fiction would really read into that much further than just taking the narrator at face value and assuming Conrad believes in the colonial project

Same experience with Songbirds and Snakes. Wasn’t expecting to like it, ended up thinking it was very well done!