I’ve started to read heart of darkness recently, and frankly, it has been quite a struggle.
At first, I thought this book will be my cup of tea, I love history and also reading the classics, so a book criticizing colonialism in Congo sounded intriguing to say the least. But I already read the first 60 pages of the book, and it has been so difficult to follow.
The book is filled with archaic words, and there are so many metaphors. It’s like the author tried writing the book as complex as possible. I sometimes have to reread entire paragraphs just to understand what is happening and it’s quite frustrating.
I’ll admit that I’m not a native speaker, but I consider my level of English to be quite good and I didn’t expect it to be so difficult to read this book. I read war and peace and the count of monto cristo in English and they were much more interesting and easier to follow.
I saw some negative reviews about the book but I assumed they were mostly about the patronising and racist nature of the book, I didn’t think the writing would be so senseless.
Should I keep pushing on or just give up on the book? Is it worth finishing it?
It’s over a hundred years old, so the language, conventions, and formatting are over a hundred years old. Not only are some words archaic, but some word usages are archaic – sentence 2 of the whole book says “The flood had made,” where made means to “rise.” I had to look that up as a native English speaker, because my first thought was, “The flood made what, exactly?” No one uses “make” as “rise” anymore.
If you’re not enjoying it, I would skip it, or dedicate yourself to making notes in the margins about more complicated word use. The point it’s making was revolutionary and fair for its day (not many people sympathized with Africa and hated colonialism in 1899), but better and more concise works on the same subject have come up in the time since. You’ll have to make that decision on your own.