Heart of Darkness

[michael leahcim]

Soo who else is struggling to read this? I'm stuck on Part II and I can't seem to get into it 

So I'll start off - while I can forgive Conrad for his writing, there are bits and pieces flying all over the place for me and some things that don't quite make sense to me. The conversation b/w the uncle and the nephew confused the hell out of me. Moreover, it doesn't help that reading a page is like walking myself to the grave[send] buh dun tss.

[MightyBeh]

I actually love Heart of Darkness. The first time it's a bit of a pain to read but what I did to get around that is read it out loud. After that I found I was looking for more specific things so the boring bits weren't as mind-numbing. We did it for views and values over term 1, and we're doing Apocalypse Now for adaptions and transformations.

What do you think about the whole 'Marlow is racist' debate? My class seems to unanimously believe that he is, but I'm pretty on the fence about it.

[Glasses]

My class is currently studying HoD as well, and using Apocalypse Now for the adaptations and transformations SAC.

I love it too!! - And Apocalypse Now (although I cannot believe I'd never seen it till now).

With regards to reading it, it might be worth watching the SparkNotes video summary on YouTube? Additionally, there is a "No Fear" edition SparkNotes have published on their website. Here's the link:
http://www.sparknotes.com/nofear/lit/heart-of-darkness/

If you aren't familiar with "No Fear Literature", it is basically a translation of the original text into everyday English.

If I were you, this is what I would do (especially considering it's an exam text):
1. Watch the SparkNotes Summary video on YouTube. - Either the whole thing straight up, or bit-by-bit while you read the text.
2. Read the translated version of the text (bit-by-bit), and then read the original passage.
3. When you get a chance (even later in the year if you are thinking about using the text for the exam), read the original text again and see how you go. - And while doing so, annotate away.

Granted, this will be quite time consuming - but it will definitely broaden your understanding of the text

[jacitran]

Heart of Darkness was a drag first read but second time reading it, it wasnt that bad. Some pages I had to reread several times because I would accidentally skip lines and realise I have no idea whats going on.
Everyone in my class was assigned a page to analyse and ey first page of Part 2 was mine. They were basically shit talking Kurtz and wishing he'll die. They believed that Kurtz was talking all of the ivory and getting the profit for himself so that was why theyre were pissed. It shows how greedy the Company was etc. Also a change from the glorifications of Kurtz.