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    The Mayor of Casterbridge
    The Mayor of Casterbridge
    The Mayor of Casterbridge
    Audiobook14 hours

    The Mayor of Casterbridge

    Written by Thomas Hardy

    Narrated by Jenny Sterlin

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    One of the great novelists of British literature, Thomas Hardy caused quite a stir when this powerful novel was first published. Michael Henchard, down on his luck and drunk, sells his wife and child to a sailor for five guineas. As time goes by, Henchard becomes Mayor of Casterbridge-but he cannot escape the tragedy of his past.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateAug 26, 2011
    ISBN9781461810735
    Author

    Thomas Hardy

    Thomas Hardy was born in Dorset in 1840, the eldest of four children. At the age of sixteen he became an apprentice architect. With remarkable self discipline he developed his classical education by studying between the hours of four and eight in the morning. With encouragement from Horace Moule of Queens' College Cambridge, he began to write fiction. His first published novel was Desperate Remedies in 1871. Thus began a series of increasingly dark novels all set within the rural landscape of his native Dorset, called Wessex in the novels. Such was the success of his early novels, including A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873) and Far From the Madding Crowd (1874), that he gave up his work as an architect to concentrate on his writing. However he had difficulty in getting Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1889) published and was forced to make changes in order for it to be judged suitable for family readers. This coupled with the stormy reaction to the negative tone of Jude the Obscure (1894) prompted Hardy to abandon novel writing altogether. He concentrated mainly on poetry in his latter years. He died in January 1928 and was buried in Westminster Abbey; but his heart, in a separate casket, was buried in Stinsford, Dorset.

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    Reviews for The Mayor of Casterbridge

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    • 2/5
      This book lacks any subtlety in its transparent meditation on morality and purpose. Perhaps this book was a bold, groundbreaking novel in its heyday for its bleak observations about human nature and the ways men abuse each other. But the novel reads more as a philosophy dissertation than as the jungle river expedition of its premise. There are numerous scenes where the narrator is so involved with his longwinded diatribes about the way the world works, that the actual world of the book becomes impossibly imperceptible to decipher what is actually happening to the characters. This story is certainly a overhyped classic, and deserves to be best remembered at this point as just the brilliant "Apocalypse Now."
    • 5/5
      A novel about the destruction of a people and a land at the hands of colonial power. A novel about evil in its most human form. Heart of Darkness is not racist as some have ridiculously suggested. It is a novel that argues against the vile deeds wrought in Europe's colonies. It is a novel that argues the relative nature of morality. I don't necessarily agree with all of its conclusions, but it is brilliant.
    • 3/5
      It took me a while to get into this story as the prose gets a bit bogged down with details at times, but I read the story twice and once I got used to the author's style, I found Heart of Darkness to be a chilling story of savagery and madness. The protagonist, an English seaman named Marlow searching the African Congo for the agent Kurtz, discovers that savagery is not necessarily found in the jungle amongst the so-called "savages", but in the dark recesses of each of our own hearts. The movie Apocolypse Now was based on this book and may give further insight into the character who most fully embraces the darkness, Kurtz. I would recommend this book, but it may be one of those books that is easier to digest audibly, via book on CD.
    • 3/5
      Beautifully written, but I've read too much about international development to actually feel for the narrator. It's too much of a pity party for him.
    • 1/5
      I ended up sparknoting it because my English teacher expected us to read the entire thing between two classes. Based on that, I didn't think it sounded too great. I know this is a ridiculous claim to make without actually reading the book but I did read parts of it and just couldn't get attached.
    • 1/5
      Read together with State of Wonder for book club. Heart of Darkness, set in the early 1900s, is narrated by Marlow, a sailor who journeys to Africa under the employment of the Company, a Belgian outfit conducting trade in the Congo. Marlow’s journey is a journey into “the horror” of imperialism. Natives of the Congo are brutalized by Company agents and forced into Company service; the resplendent natural resources of the country are raped for profit. In the heart of the Congo, Marlow meets Kurtz, a reputed Company Chief who represents humanity’s capacity for evil. They return to port and then onto Europe.Marlow listens to Kurtz talk while he pilots the ship, and Kurtz entrusts Marlow with a packet of personal documents, including an eloquent pamphlet on civilizing the savages which ends with a scrawled message that says, “Exterminate all the brutes!” The steamer breaks down, and they have to stop for repairs. Kurtz dies, uttering his last words—“The horror! The horror!”—in the presence of the confused Marlow. Marlow falls ill soon after and barely survives. Eventually he returns to Europe and goes to see Kurtz’s Intended (his fiancée). She is still in mourning, even though it has been over a year since Kurtz’s death, and she praises him as a paragon of virtue and achievement. She asks what his last words were, but Marlow cannot bring himself to shatter her illusions with the truth. Instead, he tells her that Kurtz’s last word was her name..
    • 3/5
      I find Conrad very hard to get into, and while I know he is often rated very highly I can't but see him as at best somewhat dated. The book dynamic of a narrator who describes what Marlowe says about his experiences years ago just seem to pull you away from rather than immerse you in the story. He does manage to paint a really interesting atmosphere of colonial Africa, but I just don't get much of a sense of madness, darkness, social strife or tension from it. There is a very long build up to Kurtz which then doesn't fulfil on its promise and ends by just petering out. I do now get where Apocalypse Now got some key ideas from but actually think it fairs much better and drawing us into madness, sickness, power, destruction than the book it was based on.
    • 5/5

      It was a breathtaking read. There are few books which make such a powerful impression as 'Heart of darkness' does. Written more than a century ago, the book and its undying theme hold just as much significance even today. Intense and compelling, it looks into the darkest recesses of human nature. Conrad takes the reader through a horrific tale in a very gripping voice.

      I couldn't say enough about Conrad's mastery of prose. Not a single word is out of place. Among several things, I liked Marlow expressing his difficulty in sharing his experiences with his listeners and his comments on insignificance of some of the dialogue exchanged aloud between him and Kurtz. The bond between the two was much deeper. Whatever words he uses to describe them, no one can really understand in full measure what he had been through. In Marlow's words:

      ". . . No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream--alone. . . ."

      This was the first time I read this book which doesn't seem enough to fathom its profound meaning and all the symbolism. It deserves multiple reads.
    • 5/5
      A life changing book for those with angst. In my top 5.
    • 2/5
      This classic book has been sitting on my ereader for ages as something I felt I ought to have read. I picked it up this week in a gap between library books. One of the reasons I hadn't read it before was that I was worried it would be graphically violent - knowing how brutal the colonial regime in the Congo was.In fact the violence in the book is much less vividly described than I expected; the horrors are more psychological than physical in nature and there's a lot of heavy symbolism about darkness and light and the nature of the colonial enterprise and the heavy toll it took on all concerned.
    • 3/5
      A beautifully, descriptive work. The descriptions of place are outstanding. The slow pace of the work mirrors the leisurely, lazy flow of the river and the slow lives of the characters. The darkness that inhabits the place and the human soul is always at the heart of this work. But, it didn't have the emotional pull on me. Therefore its a three for this book.
    • 2/5
      Oh dear, I always feel so guilty when I don't care for a classic.I'm not sure how much difference there was between Joseph Conrad and his protagonist Marlow, but it is very difficult for my twenty-first century sensibility to get around the casual racism and misogynism which is further compounded by Marlow's unrelenting contempt for his fellow white men both in the Congo and in England. In fact, the only people he has any admiration for are Kurtz and Kurtz's "intended". We are told repeatedly about Kurtz's specialness, magnetism and great plans, but no details as to why this should be so, other than his talents as a musician, painter, and thinker. Furthermore, when Marlow meets Kurtz's fiancée, he waxes lyrically on her character and motives, all based only on a fleeting interview.There are some wonderful descriptive moments; I particularly liked the image of two station employees dragging their shadows behind them. Also, the ending, which I will not give away, has a certain poignancy. However, I have no plans to tackle this again.I should point out that this particular audio edition won awards, no doubt deserved. Otherwise, I might have loathed this book.
    • 5/5
      Jaysus, this book is a brutal little thing.
    • 5/5
      I read this back in highschool, given as an assignment by a rather awesome teacher. I think that it tends to be a rather misunderstood book and people are thrown off by Conrad's ,let's say lack, of writing skills so that they do not get to the message of what "the horror" really is.
    • 4/5
      Amazingly, I'm reading this for the first time in my 40's. But I can't imagine I would have understood it very well when I was younger. Mr. Conrad makes ample use of Africa as a symbol of darkness but the real darkness doesn't lie in the external world. It has always lain in the depths of the human soul. It doesn't take living in a savage land to find oneself unmoored from goodness and right. Anytime external restraints are lifted is the time when man must grapple with his own soul and what he can do and what he will do. Mr. Conrad's capturing of that truth and all the horror of that truth is masterful.
    • 3/5
      But for the manner of its telling, this could have become one of my favourite books.I'm already a big fan of Apocalypse Now, even though I realise there's only a tenuous link between the book and the film. I think the theory behind both is the same - a man lost in an alien land, in a culture that cannot be grasped, and the men sent to retrieve him. The horror, et cetera.What I dislike is that the novel is narrated to us - it isn't just narrated, but we are one of a group of sailors sat around in the middle of the night listening to the story as it is told. Interjections are reported, interrupting the flow of the narrative, which itself is presented in the text with every line appearing in speech marks. Oh the horror indeed! Why did Conrad choose to make this such a painfully difficult book to read?
    • 2/5
      My Bookcrossing review from February 02, 2006:For those who aren’t aware of the fact, Heart of Darkness is the novella from which Francis Ford Coppola took his inspiration for Apocalypse Now. Seeing the film before reading the book was probably a mistake, especially when the film was so fresh in my memory, as I was struggling to find parallels between the two. Apart from the two main characters and the river, there are not a lot of obvious similarities. I actually think that Conrad and Coppola are giving us quite different messages, and that they focus on subtly different themes. I’m not much of an intellectual, so I’ll have to leave my analysis at that.Anyway, I managed to read this one in a weekend, as it’s only 110 pages, although it wasn’t exactly a light read. Conrad’s awkward and sometimes ambiguous prose made it more of a chore than a pleasure to read. Check out this convoluted sentence: "We could not understand because we were too far and could not remember because we were travelling in the night of first ages, of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign - and no memories."The most interesting parts of the book were, for me, his descriptions of the scenery, which were quite evocative of the oppressive darkness of the jungle. I was disappointed that after the arduous journey to reach him, Kurtz doesn’t say much, and he only features for a couple of pages. The flaccid ending was also a let down. The only thing I can think of is that Conrad wanted the reader to feel the same dissatisfaction as Marlow might have felt.
    • 4/5
      I ended up liking this book quite a bit but I almost wonder if its reputation isn't somewhat inflated (specifically regarding the subsequent adaptations such as Apocalypse Now) ~ I would not call it a masterpiece or even "great." But for a novella I will say, it packs a whallop, and it is beautifully written for the most part. Due to the tertiary stacking of narration (the unnamed narrator, then Marlow, then Kurtz at times), one has to read quite carefully to know when narrators switch and it's not always done gracefully. It is choppy at times. However, I got into the pulse of it. It is stunning to me that English is Conrad's third language (which he learned in his 20s) because some of the passages have a spare and eloquent beauty, evidencing a brilliant command of the written English word as per someone native to it. But the story and portrayal of the Congolese people, while sad, seems rather honest for that time ~ as a European of his day accurately stating what he thought, saw and experienced. My big, big complaint is that insipid ending (the fiance part), egads, seriously? That took it down a huge peg and ended up saying nothing about the symbolism and themes throughout the preceding events. It seemed, in one page to ridicule, or put down, the women of the time, as buffoonish simpletons. Ah well, overall a really interesting travel down the Congo during the violent, oppressive ivory trade and the "hearts of darkness" that lie within human beings, and the places they inhabit (by way of the Congo and Thames Rivers).
    • 3/5
      The day I met him, however, something was troubling him greatly. He began to speal as soon as he saw me. Even though I had arrived at the camp after walking 35 kilometres that day, he did not even invite me to sit down. The situation, he told me, is very serious. The up-river stations must be relieved. We cannot wait. We don´t even know who is alive and who is dead up there.
    • 5/5
      This is easily one of the best five books I've ever read. The constant use of metaphors, anthropomorphism, and the portrayal of evil personified by Kurtz are so magnetic that as I read it I feel, alongside Marlow, as if the foliage is closing in around me and I'm starting to go crazy. Also, I very highly recommend "Apocalypse Now Redux," the film adaptation, which is one of the best book-to-film adaptations, and thus one of the best films, ever. It brings a truly tactile portrait of the foreboding aspect of nature to the tropes of the Vietnam war film, making it a wickedly unconventional slice of the genre pie.
    • 5/5
      Extraordinarily good. I expected many things of Heart of Darkness but I didn't expect the odd flash of humour (black though it may be) and the immense readability of this enthralling tale. To be honest I was a bit nervous, not generally taking to allegorical works. This swept me along with the genius of the narrative--I was as enthralled as Marlowe's ship-mates, and could hear every word falling from his lips in the darkness of the Themes estuary. Just over 110-years-old, the writing remains fresh and engaging. More fulsome review to come, when I have the book to hand.Something to note is that this edition comes with copious footnotes (plus Conrad's 'Congo Diary'). While it was tiring to look things up all the time, I think that added a lot to my reading experience. My housemate doesn't remember his copy of Heart of Darkness, when he studied it a decade of so ago, having those notes. It may be worth seeking out an edition that does.
    • 4/5
      I was taken off-guard by this novel: how can such a short book be so dense? The intensity of the descriptions, the detail of the story, but at the same time of choppiness of the narrative - all these elements made it very hard for me to concentrate on the storyline, the themes and even the characters. While the criticism of imperialism and colonialism is clear, the novel left me perplexed more than it answered my questions, both as to Kurtz's destiny and to Marlow's silence about the events. A book I would have to reread with a clear intent of studying it rather than reading it for mere pleasure.
    • 5/5
      While small this book was really packed deep. Haunting really, as I read onwards my heart increasingly palpitated as I got further into the story as Marlow - narrating from the deck of a ship in the Thames - recounts his voyage up the Congo river towards a man named Kurtz. Kurtz as we are told - in hushed tones early in the work - is the head of the Central Station up the river, the most successful ivory trader by far, but alone in the wilds he's gone mad. The backdrop of the Congo Free State is pitch perfect as an element of late nineteenth century colonial Africa in the wake of the "scramble" for that continent. Conrad rather quickly - and effectively - shows the horrors and moral darkness of the peculiar form of colonialism that existed in the Congo at that time. Non-whites are shown with distain - at best just "niggers," but more often referred to as savages who can barely be excised from the jungle, or as cannibals. Coexisting with that most evident form of darkness is the theme of personal moral darkness as Marlow goes up the river and sees the trappings of civilization collapse, culminating in the most savage of sights at Kurtz's station. On the whole, I very much liked Heart of Darkness. It kept me enthralled throughout and managed to get much more meaning into just over a hundred pages than most books manage to get in four or five times that much.
    • 1/5
      I tried really hard to read this book and absolutely could not get past the first 30 pages. I felt stupid because it's supposed to be such a classic book, but it just made no sense to me whatsoever.
    • 5/5
      Heart of Darkness is a tale of a seaman, Marlow, who pilots a boat up the Congo River around the turn of the 20th Century. His mission is to make contact with an ivory trader named Kurtz on behalf of their mutual employer. Kurtz is a mysterious fellow who not only has a unique relationship with the nationals, but also has an uncanny ability to provide ivory for the company. As Marlow's journey progresses, he becomes more and more eager to meet Kurtz, all the while becoming more and more disgusted with his fellow expatriates. It's a dark and dreary tale, but so very well written. As a good Lutheran, I had to admire Mr. Conrad's ability to paint such a realistic of human sin. The pity is, he also seems to have no concept of or use for forgiveness and the ability of God to bring about good even amongst us petty, nasty humans. I'm tempted to hang onto this book for its craftsmanship, but I don't know if I'd ever care to delve into Mr. Conrad's world again.--J.
    • 3/5
      Better than I remembered it, from my reading as a teen. I'll set myself on Achebe's side, though, when it comes to Heart of Darkness in relation to Africans.
    • 2/5
      I tried to read this when it was on my summer reading list in high school; I think I got to the third page before I gave up. This time, I toughed it out to the end. The story was not bad, but just dry. It actually felt more like an essay or memoir than a story. Conrad does play with some interesting concepts, and I guess that is why it is a classic.
    • 5/5
      A marvellously written tale of sombre deeds in the Belgian Congo. I first read this novella about thirty years ago, having just seen "Apocalypse Now" in which the basic core of the story was transplanted to the Vietnam War, and re-reading it now I found it just as compelling and enthralling as the first time round.Essentially a parable with a similar message about the fallibility of our ostensibly civilised upbringing to Golding's "Lord of the Flies", this story is written with a hypnotic mastery of the language. Marlow's descriptions of the river leading to the heart of Africa are glorious, and the eventual encounter with Mister Kurtz, the colonial who has succumbed to the temptations of life in the bush where he is treated as a supernatural force is terrifying. "The horror, the horror" indeed!
    • 3/5
      In order to read and understand this book, I found a little bit of knowledge about art and writing in the modernist age would be greatly beneficial to the reader. The vagueness of the text is very similar to that of impressionist painting in art, i.e making 'impressions' of something, 'suggesting' rather than saying 'This is what it is'. Conrad starts out telling a story within a story, within a story....like we all do in conversation...(a friend of a friend, of a friend). The story starts off as a fairly light and bright scene and gets darker and darker as the story progresses, journeying further into the depths of the jungle (the film Seven uses this same method). He turns what is perceived as racism today completely on it's head, for example, one of the African characters says that all white people look the same to him. As for the term 'savages', it's the white man, Kurtz who is written as the most savage of all. The journey into the dark jungle is a metaphor for journeying deep down to the depths of the human heart to find that inner animal where we first came from, which Kurtz found in himself. Hence the title being 'Heart Of Darkness'. Conrad seems to be commenting on his main character Marlow's realisation that races are no different to one another and we are all savages at heart...just look at the way we treated the animals in the ivory trade. Contrary to some beliefs, Heart of Darkness is an anti-imperialist and anti-racist book, after all Conrad writes about how horrendous slavery and the ivory trade is. Even the quotation 'The horror, the horror', is surely a reflection of this.
    • 5/5
      The main argument of this story, is that without society's pressure to determine good and evil and an appropriate way to behave, there is the potential to act in a truly evil way. This story is a good analogy to unchecked power as well. The story itself doesn't carry the weight since I watched Apocalypse Now before reading this story. The elements are there and the unchecked aggression and evil are great, but there is a difference between controlling an area for profit, to obtain ivory, and a soldier using natives to butcher an enemy. My perception is a bit tainted because of the order. However, even without the extreme elements, it is a demonstration of how those who have power unchecked can lead to horrible behavior. Favorite Passages:"You should have heard him say, 'My ivory.' Oh yes, I heard him. 'My Intended, my ivory, my station, my river, my--' everything belonged to him. It made me hold my breath in expectation of hearing the wilderness burst into a prodigious peal of laughter that would shake the fixed stars in their places. Everything belonged to him--but that was a trifle. The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own. That was the reflection that made you creepy all over. It was impossible--it was not good for one either--trying to imagine. He had taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land--I mean literally. You can't understand. How could you?--with solid pavement under your feet, surrounded by kind neighbors ready to cheer you or to fall on you, stepping delicately between the butcher and the policeman, in the holy terror of scandal and gallows and lunatic asylums--how can you imagine what particular region of the first ages a man's untrammeled feet may take him into by the way of solitude--utter solitude without a policeman--by the way of silence, utter silence, where no warning voice of a kind neighbor can be heard whispering of public opinion? These little things make all the great difference. When they are gone you must fall back upon your own innate strength, upon your own capacity for faithfulness. p. 123They only showed that Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts, that there was something wanting in him--some small matter which, when the pressing need arose, could not be found under his magnificent eloquence. Whether he knew of this deficiency himself I can't say. I think the knowledge came to him at last--only at the very last. But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude--and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core. p. 200And for a moment it seemed to me as if I was also buried in a vast grave full of unspeakable secrets. I felt an intolerable weight oppressing my breast, the smell of the damp earth, the unseen presence of victorious corruption, the darkness of an impenetrable night...p. 170"Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of somber pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror--of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision,--he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath--"'The horror! The horror!'p. 223