Literature Circle Resonse #1

Since our book, "Heart of Darkness" was so short, by our second meeting we had completely finished it. Although it was very short it covered a lot of ground. I think the overall theme of it was greed and the potential for madness to overcome us all. The cause of greed in the story, ivory, could be implemented in modern society by money, oil or really any other thing that has value. The scary thing about this concept is that we all have the potential to go made, be overtaken by greed. There is nothing to predict in the story because, like I said, I completed the book. Some other themes that were present were imperialism and mistreatment of natives. The main story of "Heart of Darkness" was about the journey of Charles Marlow to the Congo as a captain of a steam boat. He experiences life in the Congo for several months when his boat breaks down and he has to wait for parts of it so it can be fixed. During his stay he learns of a man named Mr. Kurtz who intrigues him greatly. Mr. Kurtz is a manager and ivory trader at the Inner Station. After his steam boat is fixed, he travels to the inner station and on his way he is attacked by natives. Once he gets there, he learns that Mr. Kurtz has gone mad and taken the position as a native chief. He was overtaken by his greed for ivory. Mr. Kurtz gets sick and dies and mutters his last words "The horror, the horror." There were two parts that I had amazing visualizations for due to the authors amazing use of descriptive language (although it was often a bit overdone). The parts were: Marlow's first encounter with the natives and when Marlow saw the heads on posts. This book was very confusing for me and didn't make sense a lot of the time, but I got the overall idea and theme of it.