#172. "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad

As centuries have carried on, the topic of colonization becomes more widely discussed. At the time of Joseph Conrad's publication of his timelesss novel "Heart of Darkness," European authors romanticized the weary traveler. These were men who helped to exoticize worlds different from their regal lifestyle. While Conrad's contribution seems like the same as usual, what he ends up creating is one of the greatest indictments of colonization that fiction had seen. With a protagonist who continually insults the residents of the jungle communities he inhabits, there is a sense of disgust in even being there. Despite being the outsider, the efforts to make him the expert only reflect how lacking the nature of assumptions are. With a third act that finds white guilt and isolation taking a toll on a supporting character, everything comes together in a radical, stunning fashion that shows the heart of a cruel man who ends not with understanding but with even more disconnect than what he went in with. 
The protagonist is not a pleasant man. While Conrad never judges him cruelly, readers can predict certain feelings in how he chooses to describe his environment. There are entire classes of people who he see as lesser. There is disgust in the way nature doesn't suit his needs. He seems to secretly loathe every conversation that is had as he wanders forward. He has a purpose, but there seems to be a lack of motivation. This may all skew a tad nihilistic, but at the same time his efforts to find his goal result in a belief that this journey means something. His unwillingness to connect with anything that he encounters shows an impersonal commentary on how land is nothing more than a thing to claim. Everything is dissociative. Even as he acquires every small victory, the reality is dissatisfaction as he's focused on misery and pain over any revelation.

One of the only things keeping this story from being a meaningless sightseeing event is the presence of a man he meets deep in the jungle. He has gone astray and hides in the shadows. While he's depicted as the one who is disconnected, there is a sense that the man who had been in civilization sooner is lacking appreciation. The ideas the stranger has are odd, but come across as philosophy of someone with time to think. The protagonist hasn't done it in the slightest, or not in a way that's not immediately met with disappointment. For all of the traveling that he's done, they feel more like quests than any grand revelation. 

Conrad's text is one of the most beloved novels in English literature. It can be because of the subversiveness of its intention. Without condemning the behaviors outright, "Heart of Darkness" does a fantastic job of understanding the ways a bigoted mind can decay. Where many would want to depict traveling as a fulfilling endeavor, the lack of flair in the text attempts to move everything closer to realism, deconstructing a genre of fiction better than even satirist Jonathan Swift. It's a text with haunting simplicity, managing to make its meandering pace hold deeper understanding of what it means to be alive and why there is a need to have a purpose other than to conquer. If life is about acquiring land, what happens when everything has been obtained? Happiness can never be achieved that way. There needs to be another way to avoid the horror of obsession.