zBlogging the Literary Life - AP College English

Perpetuating Cycles

Interesting.  In both Heart of Darkness, and in The Bluest Eye, there are perpetuating cycles of evil.

In Heart of Darkness, society blinds people to the real emptiness in life, and to the great evil they are all capable of.  It is debatable whether this self-inflicted blindness is better than knowing the truth and losing oneself completely to evil, as Kurtz did, becoming one of the greatest devils of the land.  Society, however, keeps men busy; it keeps them from understanding the hollowness of their hearts, and from consciously sinking into the great evil they are capable of.  Marlow is busy with maintaining his steamboat, the accountant is busy with maintaining his appearance, and Marlow's aunt is busy participating in society and being brainwashed by tales of moral enlightenment of the savage African natives.  Kurtz, however, is left alone in the stillness of the wilderness.  He is forced to look into his own hollow soul, and realizes "the horror!  The horror!" of life.  Kurtz (possibly a hero if you look at how he rejected society, even though he ended up being consumed by his emptiness as a result of doing so) is the only one who attempts to break out of society's perpetuating cycle of lying through life.  He dies, however, and entrusts the care of his memory to Marlow.  Yet, Marlow continues the cycle of hypocrisy by lying to Kurtz's Intended about Kurtz's supposedly wonderful mission.  There is little escape from this continual cycle of the facade of life.

In the Bluest Eye, something similar occurs.  Pecola ends up going insane as the result of the perpetuating evils of society.  The cause was partly her unloving family life, yet the true reasons extended even farther.  Abandoned as an infant, Charlie (Pecola's father) grew up without a true loving figure in his life.  Yes, he had his aunt, but she died when he was 15.  Then, he was forced to fend for himself.  Courting a girl, he was forced to rape her by white men looking for a show.  These white men had probably had bad experiences in the past that had made them force Charlie to do this horrible deed, though this does not excuse what they did.  Charlie then became completely unbounded by the laws of love and kindness, such as his eventual rape of his daughter and his violent relationship with Pecola's mother.  Pecola's mother grew up being responsible for her siblings.  Therefore, she dreamed of a man who would take her away from the drudgery in life.  She found Charlie.  She watched movies and had a misconstrued conception about life.  Her fairy tale beliefs were eventually shattered, and she became bitter, taking it out on Charlie and her daughter, Pecola.  People around Pecola, such as the store owner, her white schoolmate, the white child of her mother's employer, and the fortune teller, all further harmed Pecola.  They too, were all acting as a result of experiences in their life.  This all shows that society perpetuates cycles of evil, as occurs in the Heart of Darkness too.

Yet, as humans, with a capacity for love, we must rebel against these cycles of evil, as Claudia and her sister did in their care for Pecola in The Bluest Eye.

Darn! The title competition has begun, but I've got nothin

We didn't have very much time on Monday to workshop our Heart of Darkness drafts, so I was wondering if anyone would care to take a look at the following excerpts from my paper.  Any and all criticisms are welcome!

Intro:

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness tells the story of a man named Marlow who witnesses the corruption of "The Company" as it exploits the natives of the Belgian Congo.  As Marlow travels further and further into the "heart of darkness" that is Africa, he sees the emotional insecurity of the natives.  Conrad uses these observations to show that a pressured labor force eventually revolts using violence.  Such scenes of violence occur against both Fresleven and the narrator when they agitate the natives.

Later, after expressing the theme also as "Extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence" (69):

The despair Marlow witnesses in the grove of death is overwhelming. He sees men “in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair” (24). Some natives are so bothered by their grief that they stop their futile labor and withdraw to die. Even the process of dying is awful for them. “They were dying slowly- it was very clear” (24). Some men literally rot away in a pit of despair; they are “nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom” (24). One boy in particular grabs the narrator’s attention. His “black bones reclined at full length with one shoulder against the tree, and slowly the eyelids rose and the sunken eyes looked up at me, enormous and vacant, a kind of blind, white flicker in the depths of the orbs, which died out slowly” (24). These miserable workers wallowing in the depths of despair certainly show signs of “extreme grief.”

Any ideas?

You'd Expect More Restraint From a Hyena

My favorite passage of Heart of Darkness is the one where Marlow asks why is it that the natives have more restraint than the Europeans.  Marlow is on his steamboat, on his way to meet Kurtz, and the boat is surrounded in fog when a desolate cry rings out through the jungle.  The cannibalistic natives on board want to "catch 'im" and "eat 'im!" (60).  Marlow realizes just how hungry the men are.  The men have been working for the company for six months, eating only rotten hippo-meat.  All that time, they were hungering for live human meat.  Yet they did not attack the white men.

Why?

"What possible restraint?  Was it superstition, disgust, patience, fear - or some kind of primitive honor?" (62).  Yet, no fear or patience can overpower the insatiable urge for food.  Disgust is nothing to a starving man.  Beliefs "are less than chaff in a breeze" to those who hunger (62).  It is a survival instinct shared by both humans and animals that all else is overlooked in the dire situation of self-preservation, of acquiring food.  And, Marlow states that the natives "had no earthly reason for any kind of scruple", of which even that might not be powerful enough for even the strongest of men to overcome their blinding need for food.  This complete lack of reason for the natives' restraint is what compels Marlow to state:  "I would just as soon have expected restraint from a hyena prowling amongst the corpses of a battlefield" (62).

What is it, about the natives, that allows them to have the strongest form of restraint, when from the European perspective, no restraint is possible?  (keep in mind, both Kurtz and the dead native helmsman were said to have had no restraint.)

Secret Sharer and The Stranger

The Secret Sharer by Joesph Conrad is alot like the Stranger. Leggatt deals with issues with his double side, while Meursault has a power struggle with himself.  Legatt's double is alot like Meursault in a wierd way.  Leggatt killed a man on the ship and acted as if he wasn't the least bit remorsefull.  "There's a ship over there... yes I know.  The sephora.  Did you know of us? Hadn't the slightest idea.  I am the mate of her -- I should say I was... Aha! Something wrong?  Yes, very wrong indeed.  I've killed a man." (130)  Leggatt was conscious thathe had killed a went about it a if it ws a casual incident. 

On the other hand, Meursault was  in sort of the same situation.  "We stared at each other without blinking, and everything came to a stop there between the sea, the sand, and the sun, and the double silence of the flute and the water.  It was then that I realized that you could either shoot or not shoot." (56)  As a result, meursault decided to kill the Arabian man.  Both Leggatt and Meursault had a choice not to kill the men but they did.  Meursault is a distant character that keeps to himself .  Leggatt in a way is a little distant also.  "Mr Leggatt you've killed a man.  You can no longer as chief mate of this ship." (133)  When Leggatt heard this he really had no reaction just as Meursault did not have a reaction when his mother died.  All in all, Leggatt and Meursault are similar characters.

Absolute Power Corrupts Absolute

How is it that Kurtz came to be corrupt? He left the city to go to the Congo to collect ivory and make a large amount of money quickly. However, he stayed in the jungle, even though he made his money. Why is this. Could it be that he wanted to make more money? Or could he have found that being seen as a god by many people is awesome. Maybe it was to stay away from his fiance. We will never know the answer to this question due to the fact that poor Mr. Kurtz is dead, however one thing is for certain: Kurtz was a pretty cool guy. 

Stylish, Like a Fox

Conrad's style is fantastic. There's no getting around that. He can make you feel whatever the character is feeling, and his characters are never shallow. They feel, and thus, you feel.

One passage in particular caught my eye; and by that I mean Bernie's eye caught it, pointed it out, whereupon my eye caught it. On page 53 of the novella, Marlow is discussing his encounter with the African natives. He recognizes them as fellow human beings, but it is as he is horrified by that idea.

Imagine a mother and father, the mother just gave birth to a child. The mother, due to some condition, fainted after giving birth, causing her to miss seeing her child's entrance in to this world. When the baby was born, the doctors saw that it was deformed. When the mother was revived, she and her husband, seeing their baby for the first time, were horrified. They couldn't believe that that was a baby, that it was theirs. But it was their duty to love and care for the baby, so, with grim expressions on their faces, the mother and father glanced at each other. They saw in the other's face the horror that would have to be staunched out.

This is exactly the feeling that Conrad was trying to convey in the passage on page 53. Marlow, seeing the natives, knew that he would have to accept them as human, but it was hard for him to do so; a task that lay ahead of him, forever. That idea daunted him.

Foggy

I'm still a little confused about the white fog.
I understand that it is meant to be ironic that it is the white that is blinding the pilgrims instead of the darkness. Does that mean that white is imperialism? Or that white is good intentions? Or that white is greed?
Interpreting the fog as greed makes sense. The people who wear white in this book, or have a white bald head like ivory (Kurtz) are greedy people. So their greed is blinding them as to the damage they are inflicting upon this culture for the sake of ivory.
The fog has a blinding quality, as mentioned above, but it is not neccesarily evil. The fog is also shielding the pilgrims from the natives.

Y is Kurtz's memory so Important?

Why is it so important that Marlow preserve Kurtz's memory?  In the novella, on pages 74-75, it is made clear that Europe, Kurtz, and Marlow all have striven to preserve Kurtz's memory.  The "International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs had intrusted him with the making of a report, for it's future guidance" (74).  This society represents Europe and it's desire to know the details of Kurtz's journey into the Congo, the heart of darkness.  Kurtz himself wrote "seventeen pages of close writing" on the subject and of the brutes (74).  Kurtz, in turn, entrusts his papers to one worthy man, Marlow, so that his legacy may continue on for a good many years yet.  At the end of this passage, Marlow feels as if he must preserve Kurtz's legacy too:  "I was to have the care of his memory" (75).  Later on, a company representative comes to Marlow, demanding to be shown Kurtz's documents.  Even more later, a journalist comes and wishes to publish the papers.  The question is, is why is the knowledge of Kurtz and his life so important?

One possible theory is that from Kurtz, we, humanity, are better able to understand life - its magnificence, its incomprehensibleness, its mysteriousness, and possibly even its insignificance.  Kurtz is looked upon as a "remarkable man.  He had something to say.  He said it" (106).  Kurtz, whether or not his actions may be agreed with, took a stand against the interference of the Europeans, as seen by his complete embrace of the savage way of life.  Though Kurtz turned out to be "hollow" on the inside, he still was able to pour his passions into some activity.  For him, it was subduing the natives and stealing their ivory, that occupied his thoughts and energy.  Unlike Kurtz though, many of us do not have anything to say, do not have a substantial stand to make.  We, like Marlow, will die forgotten and unnoticed unless we take a stand and make our voice heard.

Ground Breaking

I noticed something. We've been pointing at imperialism as being sort of “over glorified” “evil”, and/or just plain old bad. Boo hoo imperialism. If any of you bothered to read my previous post, you’d know that it’s not as bad as it’s cracked up to be.

Anyway Kurtz comes a long as the big time head honcho, entrepreneur type guy that harvests ivory and wants to kill all the savages. Basically, from my stand point, we can assume that he represents imperialism. He’s great because he works based on his own ideals, and even everyone else in the name of imperialism is doing whatever it is they happen to be doing, in the name of Kurtz.

To the rest of us, that sounds dandy. How about taking it a step further? Suppose Kurtz… IS imperialism. Not that he represents imperialism, but that he is the reason for it, the motivation and the drive.

Ok, I’ll explain with a list of facts. Kurtz has this magical woo on people that is somewhat unjustified. Actually, it isn’t justified at all. Marlowe praises Kurtz all too often, as well as everyone else. Kurtz is original and a leader. His report wasn’t magic, it was a report, period, but everyone that knows him treats him like it. From there, Marlow already makes the assumption of how possibly great of a human being Kurtz is without actually even meeting the guy, and when he does, this impression GROWS.

Lets look at imperialism for a second, more specifically the goal. Why is everyone in the congo? They’re there for resources, in this case, ivory. What’s so great about ivory? Well… it’s rare I guess, makes a nice neck piece, whatever, it’s never really elaborated on. All we know is that everyone in the name of imperialism wants it.

Ivory and Kurtz… this is exactly linkable in that sense. If Marlowe represents the imperialists, and Kurtz represents the finite goal, then Marlowe illustrates just what imperialism does to people. Marlowe seemingly shunned imperialism throughout the novel, based on the description of the savages. Everyone else is so obsessed with getting resources that they intentionally overlook everything. Yet, when he meets Kurtz, the finite goal, and Marlowe even tries to kill him, he stops and, suddenly, realizes how wonderful Kurtz is, and he takes him BACK TO HIS SHIP, a representation of modern society. He is taking Kurtz, a thing from the wilderness at this moment, back to his ship, a conception of humans.

Hold on! What’s significant about all of this? Well…Isn’t that exactly what imperialism has as a lure on people? Kurtz isn’t just an opposite of Marlowe; he’s everything that Marlowe says he opposes. Marlowe is therefore a hypocrite, he treats the prize of Kurtz as being more valuable than anything or anyone else yet is in complete spite of the imperialist system.

Marlow Envies Kurtz

After Kurtz's death, on page 106, Marlow feels disappointed with his life.  He feels that he led Kurtz's life and has found no satisfaction, or realization, like Kurtz did.

Kurtz was a remarkable man.  He had something to say.  He said it. (106)

Marlow envies Kurtz for having something to say at his deathbed, whereas when Marlow got really close to death, he had nothing to say.  This saddens/frustrates Marlow.

The most you can hope from [life] is some knowledge of yourself-that comes too late-a crop of unextinguishable regrets.

Marlow had no self-realization when he was so close to death.  I think that this self-realization is something that everyone wants in life.  Everyone wants to feel that they had a purpose in life, that they somehow contributed to the whole.   "why are we here?"