I have a love-hate relationship with the classics. Some, I believe, are amazing and deserve their legendary setting in the halls of the library. Others, I’m not too sure about. This is one I’m not too sure about: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. The entire time, we are listening to a guy talk about another guy. That’s it; that’s the plot. No subterfuge or secret meanings, no analogy for something else. I was expecting a twist so badly that I thought the characters we were being spoken to about were fake the entire time, something ala Jekyll and Hyde. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. It was a book about a steamboat captain taking about the atrocities of colonialism through the lens of something absolutely amazing. There was nothing else to the dehumanization of nearly everyone else, or those who wanted more money. It was just what it was, unless that was the entire point: a book about the very real perspective of colonialism from an old man who thought that was all his life would grant him as we plundered the world for more of its resources. That’s also something to think about when considering this a classic: whether the accurate depiction of a time far away is what makes it amazing.
Drabble Geeks 