Why I Chose the Title Into the Heart of Darkness

When I first began writing this memoir, I didn’t set out to mirror Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. But as I relived the darkest days of my illness—days filled with uncertainty, confusion, and a profound reckoning with my own mortality—I realized I wasn’t just moving through a hospital system. I was moving downriver.

The infection that threatened my heart wasn’t just physical—it brought with it emotional, spiritual, and existential weight. Like Marlow in Conrad’s novella, I found myself navigating a terrain that was both literal and symbolic. The ICU. The waiting rooms. The operating table. They weren’t just places. They became checkpoints on a journey I wasn’t sure I’d survive.

That’s why I chose the working title Into the Heart of Darkness: A Memoir. Not to borrow weight from a literary classic, but to reflect the parallel I couldn’t ignore—the descent into the unknown, and the hope of returning from it, changed but alive.

This story is mine, but it’s also for anyone who has been misdiagnosed, doubted, or nearly lost. Anyone who has fought to return from their own personal river of darkness.

I hope you’ll follow along.

—Harvey J. Gotte, Jr.