Comparing Heart of Darkness and Wuthering Heights

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Similarities between Heart of Darkness and Wuthering Heights

Although Joseph Conrad's novel, Heart of Darkness, and Emily Bronte's, Wuthering Heights, were written in different era, they do in fact share a few similarities.

First of all, Heart of Darkness and Wuthering Heights compare in the manner that both novels draw on their respective author's personal experiences. Emily Bronte, who wrote in the latter Romantic Period but also had characteristics of Victorian writers, was left motherless at the age of two and spent most of her life with her father and siblings in Haworth, England. It was in this location that Emily first experienced the moors that play a critical role of her novel linking Wuthering Heights with Thushcross Grange. The moors was the area Heathcliff and Catherine would escape to when things were difficult. Haworth was a town that was isolated and surrounded by moors much like the setting of Wuthering Heights is described. Also, Emily Bronte parallels her own life in the manner in which she creates motherless characters. For example, Catherine and Hindley lose their mother at a young age as well as Catherine eventually dies leaving her young daughter, Catherine motherless. Joseph Conrad draws on his own person

al experiences in his novel, Heart of Darkness. Joseph Conrad had always been enthralled with the open oceans, maps, and uncharted territories of the African continent. He was hired by a British Company to operate a small steamship on the African Congo. He went on this trip and while there began keeping journals that would later become the basis for this novel.

Secondly, the authors of Wuthering Heights and Heart of Darkness both write their novels in the narrative fr...

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...bright and upbeat feeling. It is true of both novels, for every good there is an evil. In Wuthering Heights, the characters are paired. For instance, two opposite households and the contrast of characters in Heathcliff vs. Linton. We see the coalition of good verses bad in Heart of Darkness, in the distinguishable manner in which Conrad writes o

f the black and the white. The underlying tone of Heart of Darkness is the oppression of the British over the African natives in the Congo.

In conclusion, many years separate Wuthering Heights and Heart of Darkness. The issues at hand facing these two authors were different, however they do possess similar ways of expressing to their readers the message they hope to convey.

Works Cited

Bronte, Emily. Wuthering Heights

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness

Gersh, Marianna. "Heart of Darkness"

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