Personal Reflection

        Heart of Darkness did alot for me. First it was yet another step in my never ending quest to become familiar with all the styles of English writing (both prose and verse) between my native Modern English and my second Shakespearean English. This book also showed me the origins of one of my favorite movies of all time (Apocalypse Now). I always hear about stories that absolutely don't make their characters relatable, but this is one of the few cases when that proves to be a good thing. Marlow despite being to some exstent the projection of the author is always very separate from the story, this would be death to other books, but here it works. This goes back to something Mr. Booker told us in Comm. Tech "You can break the rules, as long as you know the rules your breaking". This story also does alot for me in terms of the exploration of power (one of my favorite topics) and almost seems to suggest that the impersonal corporation that evokes no loyalty apart self interests in it's employees, actually has more control over it's people than Kurtz does over the "savages" who worship him as a god. The thing that strikes me now is how much I really don't understand a book until I've put it's ending a week in the past. When reading this book I really didn't get it. I mean I took in the story fine but really I almost found it a chore to read but a week later (and now a month later) it's one of my favorite books. Compare this to The Da'vinci code which I read in one day and couldn't put but now doesn't make my top top 100 books. I really need to live with these things abit to get them.