Just finished reading Heart of Darkness.

Maybe it's just me but this seems like a very loaded text which may take two to three reads in order to be grasped correctly. There were some very harrowing imageries which did feel like reflections of the human soul. Pardon me if I have misinterpreted it as Conrad's writing style was a bit challenging to follow.

Although I have been involved in postcolonial discourses for a while, HoD still felt like a very fresh take on this topic. The colonisers as well as the colonised, both were given a human side. Though it did feel like Conrad was somewhere in the middle when it came to colonialism(at least in this book). He did critique the inhumane way of looking at the natives and how there were completely dehumanised but at the same time, it felt like he was also going a bit easy on the colonisers. I felt that there was a lack of dichotomy as, at times, it seemed like the colonisers and the colonised were on the same boat(lol) when it came to the psychological torture they had to face. On one hand, the wild nature of the Dark Continent understandably toyed with the sanity of the white men for whom, this tropical place was akin to hell; while on the other hand, the Africans were barely seen as humans and their culture completely disregarded(which was understandable since the novella was written from the perspective of a white man). A lot more can be said about this book when a dialogue is established regarding its themes and ideas. Maybe I would need to read it again to gain an even deeper understanding of the ideas conveyed here but on my first read, these were my thoughts about it.

Please share your thoughts on this book. I would like to discuss more about it!