Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Secret Sharer (Cliffs Notes) [Paperback]

Norma Youngbirg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1965 | Series: Cliffs Notes

Each of these stories deals with the dark side" of the human character. Heart of Darkness is a journey up a Congo river to where an ivory agent, Kurtz, mentally disintegrates into a grotesque creature. Secret Sharer is about a murderous captain who is tragically alienated from other people."

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Product Details

• Paperback: 74 pages
• Publisher: Cliffs Notes (March 1, 1965)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822005875
• ISBN-13: 978-0822005872
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 4.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,374,334 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars "Mistah Kurtz--he dead." An influential work on five 20th century seminal works, October 20, 2007

By 

Michael A Neulander "Political Philosophy" (VA) - See all my reviews
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I read this book for a graduate Humanities course. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, written in 1899 is a seminal work about the ills of colonialism, as well as a postmodern look at the subject of mankind. Conrad's book had a crucial influence on five important works of the twentieth century: J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough. Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land, Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces, and Francis Ford Coppolla's movie Apocalypse Now, screenplay by John Milius, was based on Conrad's book. Another interesting fact is that this work was read by Orson Welle's Mercury Theater Players on the radio and was to be his first movie. After doing some work on it he abandoned the project to do Citizen Kane! I would have loved to of seen what Welles could have done with this story. Conrad's story is so riveting in part, because he himself served as a riverboat captain. High school teachers and college professors who have discussed this book in thousands of classrooms over the years tend to do so in terms of Freud, Jung, and Nietzsche; of classical myth, Victorian innocence, and original sin; of postmodernism, postcolonialism, and poststructuralism.

Just a taste of the plot reels you in! Marlow, the narrator of Heart of Darkness and Conrad's alter ego, is hired by an ivory-trading company to sail a steamboat up an unnamed river whose shape on the map resembles "an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country and its tail lost in the depths of the land" (8). His destination is a post where the company's brilliant, ambitious star agent, Mr. Kurtz, is stationed. Kurtz has collected legendary quantities of ivory, but, Marlow learns along the way, is also rumored to have sunk into unspecified savagery. Marlow's steamer survives an attack by blacks and picks up a load of ivory and the ill Kurtz; Kurtz, talking of his grandiose plans, dies on board as they travel, downstream.

Sketched with only a few bold strokes, Kurtz's image has nonetheless remained in the memories of millions of readers: the lone white agent far up the great river, with his dreams of grandeur,his great store of precious ivory, and his fiefdom carved out of the African jungle. Perhaps more than anything, we remember Marlow, on the steamboat, looking through binoculars at what he thinks are ornamental knobs atop the fence posts in front of Kurtz's house and then finding that each is "black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids-a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth" (57).

I especially became interested in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness from the movie Apocalypse Now. There is a scene in the movie that shows Colonel Kurtz's nightstand in his cave. T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land is one of three books on the nightstand. The other two are Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, and J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough. Anyone wanting to understand the movie Apocalypse Now, especially the character of Colonel Kurtz, and what Milius and Copolla are trying to tell their audience need to read these three books as well as Conrad's Heart of Darkness!

As a graduate student reading in philosophy and history I recommend this book for anyone interested in literature, myth, history, philosophy, religion and fans of Apocalypse Now.

5.0 out of 5 stars We are reviewing the "notes" not the book or movie, June 25, 2000

By 

bernie "webviator" (Arlington, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Secret Sharer (Cliffs Notes) (Paperback)

I could not stand reading or watching anything about Vietnam for about 10 years. I eventually watched the movie "Apocalypse Now" I found it interesting but it did not relate to anything in the central highlands. Later I saw "Pork Lips Now" ( the movie parody) and could relate this to the movie. Finally someone told me that the whole thing was based on "Heart of Darkness". So I decided to read the book. I found it fascinating and much better than the movie. However I could not see the forest of the trees and needed some help in showing me what I was looking at. Because I was not in some school class, I turned to the "Cliffs Notes" Of course my views don't match the notes exactly but they gave me some questions to ask and showed me the forest. The notes include:
* Life of the Author
* Introductions to the Novel
* Lists of Characters
* Brief Plot Synopses
* Summaries & Critical Commentaries
* Critical Essay
* Suggested Essay Topics
* Selected Bibliography
Later I found a movie that was much closer to the original story,
"Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death" (1988)

Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death ~ Shannon Tweed

5.0 out of 5 stars Great the second time around!, May 1, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Secret Sharer (Cliffs Notes) (Paperback)

I had to read Heart of Darkness and write a research paper on it, and you know when a teacher assigns you and book to read you never enjoy it unless you read it on your own. While writing the research paper I hated it and everything about it, then about two years later I read it again, and this time found out everything I missed with my bad attitude. The depths that Conrad explores are unbelievable! This is were the evil nature of man egsists. After reading it a second time, I realized that the research paper that I wrote SUCKED big time.