Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

We will go down the river with Marlow to meet Kurtz in the Heart of Darkness. We'll see the spiritual darkness inside one of the main characters.

In this haunting and remarkable work, the actual first -- and last -- river of darkness we encounter is the Thames. The word "Thames" itself relates to tamas in Sanskrit, which means darkness; it comes directly from tamēssa in early Celtic, meaning dark or the dark one.

It is Marlow who is our guide along the several rivers of the story. When we first meet him, we see him in the pose of a Buddha preaching; in the last paragraph of the work, we see him in the pose of a meditative Buddha. In the main body of the story, we see him corrupted. What gives with Marlow?

If we have time, at the end of our session, we may touch upon the modern adaptation of Heart of Darkness, Apocalypse Now, in which Marlon Brando plays Kurtz.

You can find Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad for $11 or so in collections of his short works, such as this one from Barnes and Noble. (A PDF version is in the public domain here.) Audio versions running for four hours or so are available on audiobook, Audible, and public domain sites. I like the version narrated by Kenneth Branagh here.

This is a posting from our sister site, Great Novels under 200 Pages - Meetiup; you will see the original posting of this with the companion posting for Siddhartha by Heman Hesse.

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