I've been meaning to read this for years, ever since watching Apocalypse Now, and it was everything that I imagined it would be. Conrad has intense writing that seems to drain the life out of you. I'm not sure where the accusations of racism from some reviewers comes from; this is definitely anti-racist, anti-colonialist in particular. Conrad was careful to instill a narrative inside his own voice in order for us to get inside the head of an English expansionist, not his own. Kurtz' "horror" wasn't about the Africans, it was from what the English were doing to them. His "enlightenment" had made him realize all the horrible things he stood for; hence it was the horror of living blindly that terrified him. The Africans and the jungle exposed all the imperialist marauding that he did, and he realized that his entire life's work was wrong, evil, and meaningless because the jungle has a way of cleansing modern toxins, helping us see clearly the bestial origins of our species. Darkness is essential for opening up pathways to our higher selves, but first we have to muck through it, and that's what Kurtz knew he would face after his death, as repentance for his sins. The great irony of it is that the beings who opened up his mind happened to have dark skin, so the metaphor is like a Mobius Strip, paradoxical and wild.
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