This guy learned English as an adult and writes so well, I don't feel worthy to review him. I was assigned this book in Freshman English and I couldn't read it then. I couldn't read all that much back then, but finally I'm up to the level of a college freshman.

So here's the idea. Civilization, and sanity is all a lie, as are books and book reviews. Behind it all is an unspeakable reality--an unspeakable horror, and of that which one cannot speak, one must remain silent. Freud's version of this was the ego and the id, or, to translate his German differently, the I and the It. The I suppresses the It. It does this in the name of civilization, but the I is not really in charge. The It drives it from below to force it to carry out it's secret lusts but they are disguised.

The disguise is efficiency and morality and progress and commerce and business and law. The Company employed Marlowe as an agent of civilization and sent him into the African Id with it's alien savagery, which makes no sense to a Westerner. It's animal and insane and must be held in check by brutality that only makes sense if you realize it's frightening alterity. It is so "other" that it could never be understood and even to try is dangerous because that way lies madness.

But, as Marlowe sees as he descends deeper and deeper into the Congo, the sanity being imposed on Africa is a sham. It's no more sane than that which it opposes. What it is, is ordered and familiar, and seems to be almost working if you ignore the parts that ought to be ignored, such as the mindless inhuman suffering imposed on the natives in the process of satisfying the White man's greed.

But ahead of Marlowe on his journey is Kurtz who has, it is reported, freed himself of all restraint. Kurtz answers to nothing and nobody and is worshiped by the natives. He satisfies all his lusts and greeds and would kill anyone who got in his was, or was perceived as getting in his way or just needed to be killed on his whim.

The story is framed as Marlowe telling the story of his descent into the heart of this darkness and his return to the ordinary world, having barely glimpsed what must be fled in terror and bearing witness to the man who didn't flinch from any of it. It's set up like so many horror stories with the naive protagonist seeing the signs of warning which are obvious to us, the readers of the book, but foolishly ignored by him as he proceeds into the Heart of Darkness.

How can a sheltered undergraduate at a fancy university understand such a thing except as an abstract trope? How can a review express it as other than an abstract trope? Well, there, I've done it and we can all go home now.