Ughh…I don’t really know to be honest. Heart of Darkness is undeniably influential and thematically powerful, particularly in its exposé of imperialism’s moral decay. However, its dense and often circular prose, coupled with its Eurocentric perspective, makes it a challenging and sometimes uncomfortable read today. While important, it’s not entirely satisfying.

This last couple years I have been re-reading classics from 18th and 19th century. I’m focusing on books that I read in high school, translated to Spanish, which impacted me, but I don’t really remember why.. This time I’m reading them in the language they were originally published, mostly English. I had almost no memory of Heart of Darkness except that: I hated Kurtz, Marlow wasn’t such a bad person and that I learned nothing about Africa except that was hot and uncivilized and black men were savages. Reading it again was interesting. First, because even though I consider myself fluent in English, reading non-technical books still is much harder to me than reading in Spanish. So, I’m happy I was able focus during the reading of a story that has so much description and very little action. I understand why it is considered a classic and I can imagine that in the time it was published, with the view of the world of those days, it could have cause a lot of talk as it opens the “unknown” Africa to a lot of people and if you pay attention, it criticizes (maybe too softly) the white imperialism in Africa and shows the failures on the morals on the imperialistic countries. In the prologue they reference Achebe’s speech about this book. So, I took the time to read it in advance. I understand Achebe’s point of view although I don’t agree with it. I do think Conrad (the author) and Marlow (the main character) were racists, and that the book paints a false image of Africans and the continent. And yes, there were racist comment in the book. However, I this book is not about Africa or black people. It’s not the intend to “teach us” about Africa. It is completely about white men and their view of the world, and specifically their view of Africa. Is about imperialism. And it is not romanticizing imperialism but criticizing it. I think we all should read it not to learn “how Africans were or think or their culture” because that we will never learn from this book, but to understand how they were treated and how it marked the history of that continent.

Meh. I know I understood the message but couldn't relate to it, which sucked because I was expecting it to be more of an eye-opener. Conrad just has a beautiful mellifluous style, but quotable writing is not enough for me. /: