Mistah+Kurtz

In the late 1800s, Charles Marlow is appointed as a captain of a river steamboat for an ivory trading company in Africa. He travels up the Congo river toward his appointment with the steamboat and with fate, in the form of Kurtz, the **megalomaniac manager of an ivory trading station** two hundred miles up the river.

But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude—and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because **he was hollow at the core.**

Joseph **Conrad explores the darkness in men's hearts** in every way feasible in little over a hundred pages, illustrating it with **various symbols**: the heart-shaped Africa, with the snake-like Congo writhing its way into the heart; the greed for ivory that motivates the employees of the trading company, exposing their dark sides; the looming, brooding jungle; the dark, oppressed natives; the European men (who are as dark spiritually as the Africans they heartlessly take advantage of are physically); the "whited sepulchre" of Brussels, Belgium (whitewashed on the outside but filled with decay and corruption on the inside).

No one is exempt from the horror that Kurtz sees in his final moments, except perhaps his intended bride, but only because she's suffering under delusions about Kurtz's goodness and honor. The conversation between Marlow and this woman is one of the darkly (of course) humorous parts of this tale, with a double meaning in almost everything Marlow says to her:
 * 'You knew him well,' she murmured, after a moment of mourning silence.

"'And you admired him,' she said. 'It was impossible to know him and not to admire him. Was it?'  I found Heart of Darkness hard to wade through in college, despite its short length. It was a lot better this time around: I appreciated Conrad's writing, the way he layered descriptions and symbols until the gloom and horror of it all close in around you. On the con side, it does start to feel repetitive, and most of the characters other than Kurtz and Marlow remain rather flat symbols--especially the Africans and the few women characters, though I liked the two women knitting their black wool who were cast as the Fates. And I cut Conrad some slack here, given that this was written over 100 years ago. He's more open and fair-minded than most of his Victorian-era contemporaries. I'm not much on the **unrelievedly cynical and gloomy worldview** displayed by this story, but as a work of literature it's an amazing achievement.
 * "'Intimacy grows quick out there,' I said. 'I knew him as well as it is possible for one man to know another.'
 * "'He was a remarkable man,' I said, unsteadily. Then before the appealing fixity of her gaze, that seemed to watch for more words on my lips, I went on, 'It was impossible not to—'
 * "'Love him,' she finished eagerly, silencing me into an appalled dumbness.

It wasn't really enjoyable reading for me per se, but it was absorbing, and it's made a permanent impression on me.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4900.Heart_of_Darkness