Heart of Darkness â€� Reader Q&A

Questions About Heart of Darkness

by Joseph Conrad

Reader Q&A

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Answered Questions (19)

How many pages is this book ?

Chelsey Cosh Not many and yet far too many.

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is this book is easy to understand?

Abhishek Mishra I'm afraid not. This isn't your usual page-turner. The book is layered, even allegorical in most verses. The experience of the first half of the book â€¦m´Ç°ù±ðI'm afraid not. This isn't your usual page-turner. The book is layered, even allegorical in most verses. The experience of the first half of the book was rather draining, and the second half moved faster.
I recommend not to read this as a story, but as an essay. It might change how you understand it.(less)

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Do you enjoy the poetic prose of Conrad's brilliant mind as much as I do? I become lost In his language.

Donna Davis The poetic prose is the only reason I was able to finish. I should have marked some of my favorite passages to refer to in my own writing.

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Does anybody think it's odd that 18/20 of the top listed reviewers that gave this book a "one star" are women?

W That's a very interesting observation, because in the introduction of the edition I have (Penguin, 2000), there is a compelling summary of readings ofâ€¦m´Ç°ù±ðThat's a very interesting observation, because in the introduction of the edition I have (Penguin, 2000), there is a compelling summary of readings of the book according to the gender divide. Such interpretations say that it is a text about women being shut out of male society - about men excluding women from their storytelling and their true experience of the world. In the opening pages Marlow says something about women being divorced from reality, living in lush, romantic fantasies. And after all, his aunt is a typical deluded woman for not seeing the truth about the Congo, while in the end he can't bring himself to tell the truth to the Intended. In between the two he witnesses the powerful, mysterious, gorgeous African woman at the centre of Kurtz's congregation.

The question is: is it this depiction of women in the novel which (consciously or unconsciously) bothers female readers, or is there something inherently masculine in the style of the text itself, which excludes and bores them?(less)

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I imagined the Congo being nearly all rain forest, but Marlow's employers are mostly interested in ivory. I didn't think elephants lived in the rain forest, so how did they get the ivory?