In the beginning of Heart of Darkness I was so confused. The amount of vivid detail and description of the sails and Nellie and the people mentioned only by profession threw me off. The roundabout way of beginning the novel must have gone on for over a dozen pages. It took me over 30 minutes to read the first twenty pages. But as the book progressed I began to appreciate the detail and feel as if Conrad was speaking directly to me. The details dragged out the beginning and the more boring parts but when it came to describing emotion or feeling or reason for action I could not have asked for a clearer picture of what was going on.
When Conrad switched up the narrators it made me feel as if I were reading in circles. I must admit although multiple narrators is a brilliant and sometime quite rewarding technique in this case it only made Heart of Darkness seem like an even more confusing novel. It was like hearing a story and seeing it from five different points of view yet still feeling like you're missing something. I think although it could help some readers to be given different ways to look at a story, for me it took away the fun of finding my own point of view. Overall I can’t honestly say I enjoyed the book or the premise of it but I can respect it as a piece of literature. Ships, sea stories, fisherman, and water adventure have never been something that caught my attention and if it weren’t for this project I probably never would have picked up the book. Now that I have, I think although it was based on topics which are not of interest to me it wasn’t the worst book I could have read.
posted by Jenny F.
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wow you don't know how much i agree with jenny on this one but i felt that if you write down who is narrating at the moment keeping track in the start of the novel wasn't that difficult , although the tedium of understandnig what is happening in the rest of the novel is a different story. The discription of the novel is beautiful in the imagination but perplexing when read or spoken.
ReplyDeleteI felt the exact same way about the book. The details were overwhelming (especially the first few pages) and the narration was confusing, but I can also see why you "...can respect it as a piece of literature," because despite the overpowering specifics, it was eloquent and vibrant with description.
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