I first read this novella in AP English at the tender age of seventeen. As a teenager I think did not appreciate the novel in part because I was unable to comprehend the depths that Conrad plumbs. I had not the emotional and existential tools to process such a story about the horror of human life, our immense capacity for corruption, and the illusion of progress to which we cling as if to a vine swinging over an abyss. Twenty more years of life experience certainly make me no sage, but these ideas resonate now, and I am awed at the author’s ability to express so concisely and eloquently that which is so difficult even to conceive. . . .