Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is a novel about the evil that lurks inside of all of humanity; when pushed close enough to the breaking points, primal actions emerge in primal situations. Conrad alludes to Nietzche's quote: "when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you."
I have found a modern setting for this novel to replace the African Congo: my university's dining hall during finals week.
Every student is on campus; there is no going home during finals. Every student also emerges from their studying cocoons composed of flash cards, crumpled notes, highlighters, and tears at the same time to eat from communal vats of cheap food.
Just as the characters in Heart of Darkness fight for survival in a world with no rules, students fight for an empty table. The idlers stare at their stacks of plates adorned with used napkins and empty glasses with melting ice as they complain to one another about this test and that. Those without tables stalk the lucky few, pacing around and around, stomachs growling and minds imagining the moment they forcefully swipe the dirty dishes from the tables and throw a jacket onto the chair, like the Belgians taking the Congo, claiming the table for their own.
After twenty minutes of stalking the tables and a few minutes before cannibalization seems viable, finally one opens up! One of your pack approaches the table, but a swifter student seizes with a maniacal victory laugh. Death glares ensue as your group returns to pacing in circles in the increasingly frustrated throng.
Eventually, you ecstatically seize a table for your very own with just enough seats to accommodate your numbers. Heading out into the abyss, you seek to win yourself a plate of warm nourishment. But alas! all the stations are out of food and the lines waiting for the disgruntled workers to replenish their stocks extend agonizingly far. From a distance, you spot a pizza about to be removed from its fiery shelf and thrown to the masses for consumption. You elbow your way to the front of the crowd to ensure a good spot to pounce upon the fresh, cheesy goodness.
Ducking and spinning and fighting all the way, you manage to claim a slice for yourself. Still riding the high from your victory, you go for a glass to obtain a drink to augment your recently acquired food. There are none. You seek a fork and knife. There are none.
Frustrated, you stalk back to your table to sit down, prepared to choke down food with your fingers and no liquid accompaniment.
Your chair is gone.
You slam your plate down on the table, causing the grease bubbling in the pizza to splatter into the air. "Where is my chair??" you announce to the patrons eating all around you, silent and ignore your plight.
In your mind, you are ripping the chairs from underneath their smug butts, separating their heads from their bodies and skewering them on sticks around your table to serve as examples for further people who want to steal your chairs. Gathering the chairs from under the decapitated bodies, you stack them up and sit high up in the air, shouting "the horror, the horror!" over the whole scene as people cry in the floor, clutching their plates and murmuring, "I just want a seat...a glass... a fork."
But instead you share a chair with your friend, squashed tightly together as you silently eat and then surrender your table to the next group to set the cycle anew.
As you exit the double doors into the cold world, hardly full and satisfied, you think how when they swiped your card, the dining hall staff also swiped a little piece of your soul. A little of your faith in humanity.
But you have survived. You have stared into the apocalypse and won.
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