I have to say that after reading the first part of this book I am a little disappointed. Before we were given the book I did a little research and discovered that it inspired the movie Apocalypse Now which is not only a favorite movie of mine but also a strong cinematic masterpiece. I could not wait to discover how powerful the book must be if the movie received such critical acclaim. Unfortunately I discovered that it is not very powerful. At least not yet.
I do like it better than Crime and Punishment but their are certain things that I find unsettling and target my inner boredom. For instance most of the book is description. I would have preferred more character involvement, less scene and more script I guess you could say. Instead Conrad writes about the Thames and what this or that looks like, what the five men are thinking, and so on. I would prefer it if the five men confronted one another with their thoughts. This made me think, was Conrad anti-social? Could he handle opening up to others. He was a sailor for most of his life and spent all his time living in close quarters so this wouldn't make much sense. If anyone knows the answer I would really appreciate finding out your feelings on it.
So far I give the book a B. It is slow and a little boring but I have a feeling that it will pick up in part two. It has to if it inspired such an unbelievable movie, unless Francis Ford Coppola read the book and figured he could change a lot and set it in Vietnam and its nothing like the movie
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I think Conrad let it, at least Part 1, become an auto-biography, maybe even forgetting that he has character's other than Marlow, who most likely represents him. When you write based off true life, it's probably really easy to lose yourself.
ReplyDeleteAlthough, this is a classic, and he's a famously acclaimed writer I doubt I'm right. Maybe we just can't handle something so complex.
I don't think that this book is too complex for us, yet it is something that we're not going to fully understand after the first reading - especially only after the first reading of what seemed to be, just an introduction. This book has a deeper meaning that will unveil itself as we progress. When we look back at Part I after we are further into the story, I think much more of it will make sense.
ReplyDeleteConrad's style of writing is very unique and I think will have some sort of effect on us after we're done with the book. It seems as if he must have done everything for a purpose.
I agree with Nicole. I think the book is something was going to have to dig into to fully understand what’s going on. I also think there is a deeper meaning to this book and that we will get a better understanding of part one as we continue to read.
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