Joseph Conrad, Heart of darkness: riassunto in inglese

JOSEPH CONRAD, HEART OF DARKNESS: RIASSUNTO IN INGLESE

Cuore di tenebra e Joseph Conrad.

Life and works - Conrad once called himself as "Homo duplex” because duplicity characterized both his life and the contradictions of his work. In fact, he had two nationality, he did two opposite works (the sailor and the writer), he used a lot the theme o double in his writing.
In his novels, work was a very strong theme. As a sailor, he had to go to Africa, where he saw the brutalities of colonial exploitation, that changed his life and the way of writing. First of all, emerged the first signs of a mental breakdown, but, thanks to one of his uncle, he could live his mariner career and he focused only on writing.

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JOSEPH CONRAD, HEART OF DARKNESS: RIASSUNTO

The writer task. Conrad didn’t want to leave a message to the readers, he didn’t want to teach anything; he writes only to record a model of life by his point of view.
Exotic latitudes. At first, Conrad was seen as a writer of adventure stories because of the scenery (the sea or exotic latitudes, ships or African jungle). He settled there his novel because in this way he could isolate his characters.
Conrad’s oblique style. The style of Conrad is definite as “oblique”, because he describes extreme situations and often with violence and mystery. The heroes that Conrad describes are solitary people, rooted in no past and committed to an uncertain future; they are viewed externally, by a relative point of view.

Heart of darkness: analisi opera di Conrad

JOSEPH CONRAD, HEART OF DARKNESS: ANALYSIS

Various narrative techniques. He didn’t respect the chronological sequence of the events, because he though that without respecting it, the events seems to be lived by different people at the same time.
He used different narrative techniques, like first-person narration, an invisible narrator, journals and letters. He always used the same narrator to tell different novels and stories, Marlow, or more than one narrator. He used several point of view to leave more freedom to the reader to decide for himself and to show the relativism of moral values.
Conrad’s language. He used English, although his mail languages were Polish and French, because he though that it was the right language to express his complex vision of life and man’s consciousness.
The dialogue is idiomatic, full of questions and exclamations marks, he used a lot of adjectives and complex structures.
Individual consciousness. In almost his works, we can find an honest, pity and brave man that is confronted by a sense of evil against which these virtues seem powerless. Conrad is concerned with the conflict between personal feelings and professional duties. The writer points out that reality is indeed the construction of individual consciousness through individual responsibility and self-control.

JOSEPH CONRAD, HEART OF DARKNESS: SUMMARY

Heart of Darkness. Plot: It’s a story in which the main character is Marlow, a sailor that works for a British company that involve the ivory trade with Africa. When he went there, he met a lot of people, and all of them talked about Kurtz, a Company agent who wanted to take more ivory than other agents and he became an idol for the native. But indeed Kurtz is only an ill man that want to suppress the savage customs. When finally Marlow met him and could take him on board, he unexpectedly died and in that moment he said “The horror! The horror!”.