I'm not usually someone that is big on blatant symbolism, but that's a bit of what I liked about HoD. Everything in the book related to something else, and when you really start peeling back and thinking about everything that was going on, the depth of the book is simply brilliant. I loved the way the trip up the river mirrored the descent into madness, and the way that everything followed this descent. Plus...I mean.... "The horror! The horror!" It's so ambiguous what he was talking about...it really makes you think. Was Kurtz talking about how horrible the things he had done were, or was he talking about the horror of returning to the civilized world? Were the real monsters the people that did the horrible things, or the people that tried to act as if the horrible things were anything other than human nature?

I'm really really drunk right now, so defining it is a bit hard because the intelligent parts of my brain are asleep, but I think I'm kinda sorta getting my point across.

I love the layers in the book, and I love the honest thought that it inspires.