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“Our experiences shapes who we are.” These simple words summarize the solid connection translated throughout “Heart of Darkness” and “The Things They Carried.” In both written novels, “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad and “Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong” from The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien share a similar perspective in revealing dark transformation individuals utilize to cope with new environments. In fact, a new habitat proceeds with new outlook because of the transformation of thoughts. Thoughts depict the concealed action that character wants to achieve. Mary Anna and Kurtz’s dramatic transformation illustrates the destruction of individualism and humanity through actions reflecting thoughts. Furthermore, both characters lose
In the story, “Sweetheart of the song Tra Bong”, the reader acknowledges the similarities between average soldier and Mary Anne. In the beginning of the chapter, Rat Kiely decides to tell a story to the team about how a soldier decided to bring his girlfriend to vietnam. When Mary Anne first arrives, Rat Kiely describes her with a bubbly personality and very outgoing. But soon Mary Anne knew the truth about the war and that she had to fight in order to keep her life. Rat Kiely mentions, “ ‘...I mean, when we first got here- all of us- we were real young and innocent, full of romantic bullshit, but we learned pretty damn quick. And so did Mary Anne’” (page 93). This quote shows the atrocious reality of war. It can be assumed that Mary Anne symbolizes
There are over thirty genres of books in the world. All of stories are told and written in many different forms from written to spoken, action to romance, or fiction to non-fiction. But, all stories have something in common--a theme that is intended to make a difference to the reader. No matter what the story is about, it is centered around a strong theme. The author of The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien., uses a separate theme in each of his vignettes. But, these themes aren't always depicted through truth. "I'm forty-three years old, true, and I'm a writer now , and a long time ago I walked through Quang Ngai Province as a foot soldier. Almost everything else is invented"(171). O'Brien uses story-truth and happening-truth in The Things They Carried to show a great theme. In certain cases in the book, story-truth shows theme better and happening-truth isn't used and vice versa. In the vignette "The
Metamorphosis in Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong The story of the "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" is no typical Vietnam war story. It is a story that involves no bloods, guts or glory. This story isn't so much about the physical damage caused by war as much as this story is about the emotional changes that effect not only the males.
In the short story, “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” by Tim O’Brien, the author shows that no matter what the circumstances were, the people that were exposed to the Vietnam War were affected greatly. A very young girl named Mary Anne Bell was brought by a boyfriend to the war in Vietnam. When she arrived she was a bubbly young girl, and after a few weeks, she was transformed into a hard, mean killer.
In “The Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong,” Rat Kiley recounts the time when Mark Fossie brought in his girlfriend, Mary Anne Bell, from Ohio to Nam. Mary Anne is a curious and very friendly seventeen-year- old girl who just graduated from high school. She constantly asks questions about the war. Tension grows between Mary Anne and Mark when Mary Anne starts to become more involved in the war. She helps with taking care of the injured soldiers and learns how to operate an M-16. Mark suggests that the two of them go back home, but Mary Anne refuses. She begins to return to the camp late at night, or not at all. One day in the early morning, Mark cannot find Mary Anne and panics, only to discover that she is out on an ambush with the Green Berets. Mark has a talk with Mary Anne in which they make plans to get married. However, over the next several weeks, an undeniable tension grows between the two. Mary Anne suddenly disappears after Mark starts to make plans for her return home. After about three weeks, Mary Anne returns to the camp and disappears into the Special Forces area, and Mark waits for her there. He hears a woman, Mary Anne, chanting along with strange music and bursts into the hootch to confront her. O’Brien uses disturbing imagery to emphasize how the war takes away one’s innocence and changes one forever.
Watts, Cedric. 'Heart of Darkness.' The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad. Ed. J.H. Stape. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 45-62.
In Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella Heart of Darkness, women are portrayed as being inferior to men in nearly every way. Two of the story’s main characters, Charlie Marlow and Mr. Kurtz, appear to view women as weak and powerless objects, trapped in a world of fantasy all their own. In this novella, women are treated as merely the trophies of men. Their purpose in society, however, is left uncertain through the entire novella.
Have you ever wondered why some people act certain ways? Are some people born smart, mean, or ambitious or do they achieve their traits? Malcolm Gladwell explores this question in his book Outliers: The Story of Success. Through analysis of data, he reveals many of our actions are a result of the environment. Moreover, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer exemplify this theme. Brutal environments test his characters, revealing their evil side. The settings in the Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer personify man's inner evil, supporting Gladwell's thesis.
In his novel Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad portrays the role of a woman to be the source that the man relies on when he can no longer bear the harsh realities of the world, and utilizes the idealistic world she creates to obtain a small sliver of hope for the future. He uses the character Kurtz, a European captain who is searching for ivory in the heart of the Congo in Africa, to display how a man will need a woman and her world in order to keep his sanity. When entering the world of the woman, the man will be able to find comfort because he is able to take a break from the real world and find solace in the world of the woman, using her as an audience to display his emotions to. The solace that the man finds in the woman is a way to keep his sanity because the truths that one discovers may leave one with pain and emotions that can drive him mad, while a woman's separate world may cause one to become blind from the actualities of society, the temporary blindness will help not only a man but also the woman to continue to have high hopes and ambitions in order to save themselves from falling into the wrath of reality and succumbing to the darkness that may cause one to fall victim to savagery due to embracing too much pain that comes from the reality.
Within the text of Heart of Darkness, the reader is presented with many metaphors. Those that recur, and are most arresting and notable, are light and dark, nature and Kurtz and Marlow. The repeated use of light and dark imagery represents civilization and primitiveness, and of course the eternal meaning of good and evil. However, the more in depth the reader goes the more complex it becomes. Complex also are the meanings behind the metaphors of nature included within the text. It represents a challenge for the colonists, often also signifying decay and degeneration. Finally Kurtz and Marlow represent imperialism and the colonists. All these metaphors come together and contribute not only to the effect for the reader, but also to the overall meaning.
As Marlow assists the reader in understanding the story he tells, many inversions and contrasts are utilized in order to increase apperception of the true meaning it holds. One of the most commonly occurring divergences is the un orthodox implications that light and dark embody. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness brims with paradoxes and symbolism throughout its entirety, with the intent of assisting the reader in comprehending the truth of not only human nature, but of the world.
* Conrad, Joseph. “Heart of Darkness” in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, M.H. Abrams, general editor. (London: W.W. Norton, 1962, 2000)
Without personal access to authors, readers are left to themselves to interpret literature. This can become challenging with more difficult texts, such as Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness. Fortunately, literary audiences are not abandoned to flounder in pieces such as this; active readers may look through many different lenses to see possible meanings in a work. For example, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness may be deciphered with a post-colonial, feminist, or archetypal mindset, or analyzed with Freudian psycho-analytic theory. The latter two would effectively reveal the greater roles of Kurtz and Marlow as the id and the ego, respectively, and offer the opportunity to draw a conclusion about the work as a whole.
This is clear through his presentation of darkness always overpowering the light. Joseph Conrad has such a negative outlook on life that he believed that even light could not be trusted. "I know that the sunlight can be made to lie, too, yet one felt that no manipulation of light and pose could have conveyed the delicate shade of truthfulness upon those features" (Conrad 90). It is clear in Heart of Darkness, that the light blinds people from seeing the darkness in the world. Conrad sees the world with such a critical eye that he knows that no matter what light usually means the world is completely surrounded by darkness. Conrad continues to play with the meaning of light and darkness showing that neither is what they seem to be. In reality, Conrad is instilling the idea that light and darkness do not have any meaning along with the rest of the words used in literature. For Heart of Darkness, Conrad is showing that the darkness is used to show how literature is unable to show the precise meaning of something through language and symbols. The connection between words that are used to create a novel is arbitrary because the meaning comes from the reader. For this reason, Conrad changes the meanings in Heart of Darkness so that the reader can go astray from the commonly accepted ideas about language and realize that all words have no meaning or significance. The only way for something in literature to be understood
The title, Heart of Darkness, aptly chosen, can be very strongly linked to the novel. IT can be used to describe Joseph Conrad’s views on civilization, the individual mind and the land into which he ventures. These sum up his opinions on the bourgeoise society, uncivilized society and the faults of human nature, linking them to the land under one common theme and thus establishing the title.