If I had a quarter for every time I have seen a reference to the novel Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, I would would be very wealthy and would have not had to take AP Literature and Composition in high school to not only try and earn college credit, but to also earn $100 from my school.
This was the most time consuming class that I took in high school, and Joseph Conrad did not make it any more bearable. Sometimes I would think, "The horror! The horror!" whenever I saw the cover of it on the shelf. In fact, the day that my class of seven began reading the novel in class was the same day that I began to dread going to that class.
Every day we would sit at our desks and the same kid would read out loud. And it was not because he wanted to. He became the default reader for the rest of the school year in that class because no one else wanted to read. The only time we found reading out loud enjoyable was when our class decided to act out the entire play The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, but that only lasted for about three weeks. This book was completely different.
During the time we would read it, I would find myself staring off into the distance and trying to rid my mind of that horrid book. However, I could not. It seemed as if the more I tuned in at different points in time, the angrier I would get.
Charlie Marlow is the kind of narrator that loves to describe things. And when he describes things, he describes very vividly. I am not kidding. He spent a great deal of time describing a report he found written by Mr. Kurtz, which included this:
“It gave me the notion of an exotic Immensity ruled by an august Benevolence. It made me tingle with enthusiasm. This was the unbounded power of eloquence— of words— of burning noble words.”
Thank you for that description, Marlow. I am very glad to know that you tingled after you read a report that concluded with, "Exterminate all the brutes!" This is the kind of person that would definitely not be fun at parties.
For a while, I honestly thought that my AP Literature teacher only picked that novel to torture us. Reading this novel made me question my motives for taking AP Literature. I thought that I would not make it to the last chapter. There were only three of them, but it was still three chapters too long.
So, finally, after what seemed like ten years, our class finished the novel and I no longer had to write about the book.
Until the AP Literature exam happened.
After trying to make myself not write about Heart of Darkness on the exam, I felt that I had to. It was the only one I could pull exact quotes from and effectively describe in that moment. The amount of hours that I spent studying over the haunting, pink major works data sheets for my other choices The Poisonwood Bible and The Sound and the Fury no longer mattered. Fate somehow made sure that Heart of Darkness was going to make its way into my mind one last time.
However, I cannot complain. Apparently spending five pages in the open response booklet urging the AP readers to see your point and quoting the book three times helps you earn a very nice qualifying score of a four on the AP Literature exam. So, thanks to Marlow and his strange obsession with Kurtz's writing that gave him a tingling sensation, I have earned myself $100. And college credit. There is that too.
The moral of the story is this: never judge how well a book can help you on an exam by its boring, yet strange, narrator. It might be the most helpful piece of literature you have ever been exposed to.
