/lit/ - Literature

>>20330861
>everyone already knows the jungle, the unknown, will fuck you up
but that isnt what it's about. Kurtz and the roman commander would have went in knowing that too. I want you, a man used to civilization and order, to stop and truly visualise yourself floating down a river; the banks lined with forest. You can't see 2 feet past the first trunk; whatever lies beyond that is wild and unknown and probably out to kill you. No maps; no idea what horrific and "abominable" things happen there, lost in the jungle. It would probably feel like you were being watched by the wilderness, being ultimately distinct from it and invading it with your steamboat.

Conrad clearly experienced this, or at least got a taster, and tries to make the reader feel it. It's a comlicated feeling; not like "love" or "hate" that everyone has witness to, and can be summarised in a word, which is why it confuses so many people. He either makes you feel it or he doesn't. Today the earth has been tamed, and doesn't have the same mystery and danger we once gave it, but this novella can try and help us imagine.

>i do understand this, but it doesnt have that much effect on me
understandable. the effect it has on you is going to mostly be subjective

>specifically, i, and i believe everybody else confused,
scrolling through goodreads and through this thread, people are either confused because they have no idea what to think; or they think it's about black people, or a critique of colonialism, or something stupid.