A Decade Reading Heart of Darkness
I was first assigned Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in the second semester of my freshman year. I gave the book a cursory reading; since the professor assigned no specific writing assignment along with the book, and I spent much of class half asleep slipping through class without bothering to follow along. At the time, I excelled at feigning attentiveness in class.
Six years passed with me thinking poorly of the book. On occasions when Conrad slipped into conversations, I dismissed him as dry and uninteresting, my claims based on the rather cursory reading given years earlier. But after years I regretted the missed opportunity to accumulate knowledge and looking to correct my past faults I determined that I should revisit what I had overlooked. Again I took up my copy of Heart of Darkness and whirled through the pages. On this second reading, though I still felt the text dry, I took away from it understanding the more sinister subtext.
Later, resolving that I wanted—against the advice of my friends—to attend a graduate program in English, I enrolled in some undergraduate English courses to bolster my academic transcript. I had not majored in English and felt I should have a few more classes before applying to a program. The assigned reading for that first summer course happened to be Heart of Darkness.
About half of the six week summer course was to be dedicated to the Heart of Darkness. The instructor lead us on seemingly impromptu analysis of various passages—a text so rich that every other sentence offered some hidden suggestion. We discussed the racially charged language and the demeaning of humanity, and finally I wrote a final term paper on Conrad’s text.
I finished the class confident I now possessed a sufficient writing sample to accompany my graduate school applications. I expected to massage the text of the paper, edit out a few faults, but otherwise believed it ready to send off. The following year, after another two summer classes, I still felt my paper on Conrad provided the strongest writing sample of sufficient length and depth. Then one of my recommendation writers read it only to advise that I should consider rewriting the thing. I could not shake Heart of Darkness.
I set out on my fourth reading in the final weeks before my graduate school application was due. I had spent the last several months either in summer session classes or preparing for the GRE test. But that test was finished. My recommenders had agreed to write letters. My personal statement was written. All that remained was revising my writing sample.
At first I hoped to salvage bits of the former paper, merely tweaking phrases and minor arguments as I originally intended. I hoped to do so, at least. But after rereading the book for yet a fourth time, I decided scrapping the paper and starting over anew was the best option. I pulled a few sentences from the original paper, but that was all. I was racing to complete this new paper as it was the only thing holding up my application. By the first week of November, I was finished with the Heart of Darkness. It only took ten years.
