Heart Of Darkness
Tough and Tougher Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad is by far the most difficult book I have ever read in my schooling career, despite the fact not much reading has occured. Regardless, this book was still a fascinating read, after all the trouble of course. I will openly admit I did sparknote the hell out of this book, but I will also say that I would read it first then check sparknotes to see if what I was getting out of the book was actually correct. In some parts I was correct but from other’s I was too far off. I had a tough time reading this book as I am not great with metaphors or analogies and take things too literal. Instead of seeing what Conrad intended to say with his words I just read the literal meanings of the words. This is where sparknotes came in, this is why I would use it, to get a feel of what Conrad was really saying with his choice of words.
…show more content…
My second big source of help is one of my friends that attends Clark and is currently reading Heart of Darkness for his class.
Our friendship was being torn apart by this book as I would constantly call him asking what happened on this page ( especially on part 2 where Conrad talks about future events like Kurtz having a fiance or dying). He was reading the book for himself and for me, but he was a great resource to have, he would have class discussions like we did and he would share with me every little ( not literally) about his discussion. I actually used one of the topics he gave me for a discussion in our
classroom. Lastly and probably the biggest help of all had to be our in class group discussions. I would like to thank Julia Snow and Jacqueline Sharry who understood and shared with us what Conrad was really saying in his book. They are very good at reading a text and finding out the figurative meaning the author wanted to get across and they are even better at sharing with the rest of the class. It felt like I should have been taking notes because the information they pulled out is just amazing. I could not do that so what I would do is try to remember what they talked about in class and read the chapter or few pages over and try to understand t from their topic or their “view”. I understand this is not correct and I should be reading in order for me to understand the story for myself not have someone else explain it to me, but it helped out much more in further readings of the book ( section 3 and the ending). I will be honest and say Heart of Darkness was a very difficult and strenuous read but it was also very interesting. The best part was definitely how so many people thought a single sentence meant so many different things. I would always find myself asking, what did conrad really mean when he wrote this?
My second big source of help is one of my friends that attends Clark and is currently reading Heart of Darkness for his class.
Our friendship was being torn apart by this book as I would constantly call him asking what happened on this page ( especially on part 2 where Conrad talks about future events like Kurtz having a fiance or dying). He was reading the book for himself and for me, but he was a great resource to have, he would have class discussions like we did and he would share with me every little ( not literally) about his discussion. I actually used one of the topics he gave me for a discussion in our
classroom. Lastly and probably the biggest help of all had to be our in class group discussions. I would like to thank Julia Snow and Jacqueline Sharry who understood and shared with us what Conrad was really saying in his book. They are very good at reading a text and finding out the figurative meaning the author wanted to get across and they are even better at sharing with the rest of the class. It felt like I should have been taking notes because the information they pulled out is just amazing. I could not do that so what I would do is try to remember what they talked about in class and read the chapter or few pages over and try to understand t from their topic or their “view”. I understand this is not correct and I should be reading in order for me to understand the story for myself not have someone else explain it to me, but it helped out much more in further readings of the book ( section 3 and the ending). I will be honest and say Heart of Darkness was a very difficult and strenuous read but it was also very interesting. The best part was definitely how so many people thought a single sentence meant so many different things. I would always find myself asking, what did conrad really mean when he wrote this?