Thursday, November 18, 2004
Shut Up, Marlow. Shut Up A Lot.
I have read, and I have hated, quite a few required reading books throughout my high school career. I have read and hated Summer of my German Soldier, which might as well have been titled Oppressionfest 1943. I have read and hated Black Boy, which, were it not a biography, I would peg as the prototype for A Series of Unfortunate Events. I have read and hated The Grapes of Wrath, a book where the laws of Punctuation would take a vacation every other chapter. I have read and kinda disliked All The King's Men, which, while having rocking dialogue, carried the most unpleasant characters this side of a Larry Clark movie.
All of these, however, have a new idol. A Baal. A Cthulhu. A dark god at whose altar they are to worship and sacrifice fatted calfs. And this demon's name is Heart of Darkness.
I approached the novella, thinking, "It's short; where's the harm?" Well, let me put it this way: While the other books sucked, I at least had the idea that time was passing while I read them. In Heart of Darkness, however, you have no idea what's going on, no matter how many times you read it. I read ten pages, thought, "I must have missed something," and read them again. And again. And again, until they were red with the blood of paper cuts. And it still didn't make sense.
It also didn't help that the entire story is told by Marlow, who is telling it to the narrator and a few other men, and thus the entire thing is in double quotation marks. And then when someone else speaks, it goes "double quotation mark- single quotation mark." And then you get to the cases of "double-single-double", or, in one mind-raping case, "double-single-double-single", and you have no idea who the fuck is saying what the fuck to who the fuck ever.
This book drove me to SparkNotes, people. Usually I go to SparkNotes for refreshers on certain minor events that may be on a quiz, or quick reminders of where that one quote took place. But this is the first time I have ever gone to that site just to get a basic grip on the plot.
So fuck you, Kurtz, fuck you, Marlow, fuck you, Conrad, fuck you, British Empire, fuck you, Belgian Congo, and fuck you, the Spirit of Imperialism.
UPDATE: Oh, God, not even SparkNotes can stand it. It takes four sections to explain a passage that runs, in total, 34 pages long. Somebody kill me.
All of these, however, have a new idol. A Baal. A Cthulhu. A dark god at whose altar they are to worship and sacrifice fatted calfs. And this demon's name is Heart of Darkness.
I approached the novella, thinking, "It's short; where's the harm?" Well, let me put it this way: While the other books sucked, I at least had the idea that time was passing while I read them. In Heart of Darkness, however, you have no idea what's going on, no matter how many times you read it. I read ten pages, thought, "I must have missed something," and read them again. And again. And again, until they were red with the blood of paper cuts. And it still didn't make sense.
It also didn't help that the entire story is told by Marlow, who is telling it to the narrator and a few other men, and thus the entire thing is in double quotation marks. And then when someone else speaks, it goes "double quotation mark- single quotation mark." And then you get to the cases of "double-single-double", or, in one mind-raping case, "double-single-double-single", and you have no idea who the fuck is saying what the fuck to who the fuck ever.
This book drove me to SparkNotes, people. Usually I go to SparkNotes for refreshers on certain minor events that may be on a quiz, or quick reminders of where that one quote took place. But this is the first time I have ever gone to that site just to get a basic grip on the plot.
So fuck you, Kurtz, fuck you, Marlow, fuck you, Conrad, fuck you, British Empire, fuck you, Belgian Congo, and fuck you, the Spirit of Imperialism.
UPDATE: Oh, God, not even SparkNotes can stand it. It takes four sections to explain a passage that runs, in total, 34 pages long. Somebody kill me.
