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Analysis on joseph conrads heart of darkness
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Heart of darkness by joseph conrad analysis
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In the 1900s novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, the protagonist often encounters women at landmarks of his life. Charlie Marlow is a sailor and imperialist who sets out along the Congo River to “civilize” the “savages.” The novella begins with a crew on the Thames waiting for the tides to change. During their wait, a character named Marlow tells of his exploits on the African continent. In his recounted travels, Marlow meets other imperialists such as Mr. Kurtz, a man who is obsessed with the pursuit of ivory and riches. Like Mr. Kurtz, Marlow embarks across the African continent in hopes of earning both money and respect. One early critic of the novel, Edward Garnett, wrote in his review that “[Heart of Darkness] is simply a piece of art…the artist is intent on presenting his sensations in that sequence and arrangements whereby the meaning or meaninglessness of the white man in uncivilized Africa can be felt in its really significant aspects,” (Garnett). What Garnett fails to observe is that Heart of Darkness is not only an observation of “the white man,” but the white woman as well.
Throughout the entirety of his story Charlie Marlow seems unaware of the importance of female interactions within his travels. Though he mentions women on vague occasions—as in the case of his aunt and the multiple mistresses of Kurtz—he treats them as if they were secondary citizens. In much the same way he regards the “savages,” Marlow approaches women with extreme prejudice. He notes “how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there has never been anything like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether…” (Conrad, 10). He refers not only to the women from his young adulthood, but...
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...ost themselves in the rush to keep it alive; or it could be the imperialists themselves as the fire’s burn touches them as well.
Works Cited
Achebe, Chinua. An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness. New York: Wylie Agency, 2006. Print.
A. Michael. Matin. Introduction to Heart of Darkness and Selected Short Fiction. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2008. Print.
Bloom, Harold. Heart of Darkness, Bloom's Guide. New York: Chelsea House, 2009. Print.
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. New York: Dover, 1990. Print.
Conrad, Joseph. The New Review Dec. 1897. Print.
Garnett, Edward. Review. Academy and Literature 6 Dec. 1902. Print.
Nadelhaft, Ruth L. Joseph Conrad, Bloom's Major Short Story Writers. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2000. Print.
Stewart, Garrett. Lying as Dying in The Heart of Darkness. New York: Facts on File, 2009. Print.
Watts, Cedric. 'Heart of Darkness.' The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad. Ed. J.H. Stape. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 45-62.
Bausch, Richard, and R. V. Cassill. "Heart of Darkness." The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. 126-86. Print.
Throughout history many works of literature have reviewed the gender stereotypes that determine how a society functions. In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness women in patriarchal societies are kept in ignorance of lies by men who feel the need to protect them. In the story, Marlow, a steamboat captain, journeys into the Congo as an employee of a British colonization Company to civilize the Congolese savages and bring Kurtz, a former employee, back to civilization. During his journey he encounters three women; an aunt, a mistress and the intended, or fiancé. All three women have no individual identity and are distinguished by their relationship to men. The women are lied to, objectified and used by the men for their self-serving purposes.
As challenged to permitting them to fire them unmercifully, Marlow blows the steamers horn knowing it should scare the natives back into the forest and saving them from the guns. Marlow made the comment contrasting the demise of Kurtz to his helmsman, "I am not prepared to affirm the fellow was exactly worth the life in getting to him." This to me says Marlow did have feelings in the direction of a black man. I think that by saying the word, "nigger," does not make one a racist. I denote and agree alongside Candace Bradley's opinion that Conrad merely uses the word after denoting to a negative action gave by someone in the direction of the black man. Conrad suggests that women are in a disparate world. He truly does not far appeal to women, but is seized alongside the black women who appear out of the forest. Marlow goes into outstanding detail in defining her emergence and her movements. I sense she makes an encounter on him as no supplementary female has completed
SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Heart of Darkness.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2002. Web. 30 Oct. 2013. < http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/heart/
"I don't want to bother you much with what happened to me personally,' [Conrad] began, showing in this remark the weakness of many tellers of tales who seem so often unaware of what their audience would most like to hear" (Conrad, 9). Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad's best-known work, has been examined on many bases more than I can possibly list here, but including imperialism, colonialism, and racism. I would reason that all bases of analysis are perfectly acceptable through which to critique Conrad's novella, or any piece of writing. I would reason this, were some of these bases mainly, racism not taken to an extreme level. In arguing racism, many critics seem to take Heart of Darkness as Conrad's unwavering view on Africa, Africans, life, or whatever else one may please to take it as. I, therefore, propose that Heart of Darkness be taken for what it truly is: a work of fiction set in late 19th century Europe and Africa.
Levenson, Michael. "The Value of Facts in the Heart of Darkness." Nineteenth-Century Fiction 40 (1985):351-80.
In 1899 Joseph Conrad published a short work of fiction called Heart of Darkness. This novella is often read, discussed, criticized in literature programs throughout the world. It is a work that allows us to tackle a variety of topics, and is therefore responded to in a variety of ways. The work itself as one critic puts it “might most usefully be considered hyper-canonized” (Padmini “Why” 104). The work is taught beyond the realm of a normal work in the literature program. Many forms of criticism have taken on the subject matter within the book. Feminism, psycho-analytic, Marxism have all had things to say about the novella. They’ve discussed things such as imperialism, the psychology of Marlow and Kurtz, the role of women in the novella (both literally and symbolically), all these issues are important topics in the novella. For a long time, however one crucial issue in the work was not addressed, that of race.
Let us take it for granted that Marlow’s attitude to women is Conrad’s attitude to women in the novel. The woman who is first to appear in the novel is Marlow’s aunt. She appears at a moment of crisis: Marlow had cherished the idea of going to Congo for a job, but he fails to get it on his own accord; when all his attempts fail, his aunt’s influence solves the problem. In Marlow’s words:
In “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness”, Chinua Achebe says that “it is the desire¬—one might indeed say the need—in Western psychology to set Africa up as a foil to Europe” (337). Indeed it is wise for Achebe to make this claim while discussing Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, a short novel that presents the relationship between Europe and Africa as an entirely one-sided narrative which denies the African people their right to personage. For a majority of the novel, Marlow’s narration of a story goes so above and beyond telling one narrative, that it works toward preventing the African people from developing a voice of their own. Edward Said, in Culture and Imperialism, provides perhaps the most efficient explanation as to how the narrative that Marlow tells in the novel works against the African people:
“ The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.” (Conrad 65) So stated Marlow as though this was his justification for ravaging the Congo in his search for ivory. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness shows the disparity between the European ideal of civilization and the reality of it as is evidenced by the domination, torture, exploitation and dehumanization of the African population. Heart of Darkness is indicative of the evil and greed in humanity as personified by Kurtz and Marlow.
An Image of Africa Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad has been depicted as “among the half-dozen greatest short novels in the English language.” Chinua Achebe believes otherwise. In Chinua Achebe’s An Image of Africa: Racism is Conrad’s Heart of Darkness he simply states that, “Joseph Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist” [pg.5]. Achebe argues that the racist observed in the Heart of Darkness is expressed due to the western psychology or as Achebe states “desire,” this being to show Africa as an antithesis to Europe.
One interpretation of Marlow's relationship to colonialism is that he does not support it. Conrad writes, "They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now,-nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom" (p. 27-28). Marlow says this and is stressing that the so-called "savages", or Africans, are being treated and punished like they are criminals or enemies when in fact they never did anything. He observes the slow torture of these people and is disgusted with it. Marlow feels sympathy for the black people being slaved around by the Europeans but doesn't do anything to change it because that is the way things are. One can see the sympathy by the way that he gives a starving black man one of his biscuits. "To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe" (p. 54). This statement by Marlow conveys that he doesn't believe that the Europeans have a right to be stripping Africa of its riches. He views the Jungles of Africa as almost it's own living, breathing monster.
In Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, Marlow’s view of women embodies the typical 19th century view of women as the inferior sex. There are only three relatively minor female characters in Heart of Darkness: Marlow’s aunt, Kurtz’s mistress, and Kurtz’s "Intended." Marlow mentions these female characters in order to give the literal aspect of his tale more substance. While they definitely play specific roles in the story, they do not relate with the primary theme of the story. The primary theme focuses more on how Marlow’s journey into the heart of darkness contrasts the "white" souls of the black people and the "black" souls of the whites who exploit them, and how it led to Marlow’s self-discovery.
A. The Heart of Darkness. New York: Knopf, 1993. Print.