In the heart of darkness (Heart of Darkness), in high school, it was a must reading for I don't know what lesson. Too much for sixteen-year-olds, I think. I still remember the professor telling us that Joseph Conrad was a classic in literature, as if that made the book more attractive. At that time I didn't know what was called a classic, but I quickly realized that the word gave a special weight to the book. Two, after three readings, I still didn't understand anything, and that gave me a lot of pressure. I remember the guilt of not understanding a classic, which later became hatred for the writer.

Thanks to this traumatic anecdote, I learned a lot about how to bring literature to young people, but I have not yet overcome the rejection of the writer. I've been here for a long time trying to deal with trauma.

Logically, contact has been different this time. Life experience undeniably influences assimilation, understanding and, above all, tastes. In other words, classical readings do not have to be mandatory, much less desirable. For this reason, we must be careful with the use of too theoretical concepts, especially in relation to youth. As far as I am concerned, yes, I can say that I have overcome the trauma, thanks to the loss of fear of theoretical opinions.

So things, it must not be said that it is the only book of Conrad that I have read in the heart of darkness. We all have an idea of the argument, thanks to the film Apocalypse Now by Coppola, which has a solid foundation in the novel. It places us at the end of the 19th century, as Marlow says, at the time of the “conquest of the land”. The European sailboat driven by Marlow enters Africa to replace the sick commercial ivory Kurtz. Taking as a scenario the abuse of occipital colonization, in general, there is talk of the clash between man and civilization that comes from darkness. Going into the jungle is like traveling through the ghosts themselves, a classic motif called descending your ad inferos, knowing the darkest aspects. The complication of the book lies precisely in the fact that it is excessively psychological, that in the most innermost places of consciousness (also called unconscious) there is anxiety, anguish and, sometimes, rupture with the environment. That's why I think it's a proper reading for an older audience, but it's not mandatory. For everyone decides to explore the heart of their own darkness.