Shedding Light on Conrad's Darkness
"My mother bore me in the southern wild, And I am black, but O! my soul is white; White as an angel is the English child: But I am black as if bereav'd of light." -William Blake "The Little Black Boy".
"Bereav'd of light" is the quintessential idea one encounters when reading Conrad's Heart of Darkness. We enter the Congo, a place filled with Keats' "verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways," a place where Conrad calls "the farthest point of navigation." From whence comes our source of light? Who is this source of light? In order to enhance our understanding I propose that we look into the one who is "out of place". To clarify my proposal, I mean to say that we will look at the Black man in the "White setting", and vice versa.
In Book VII of his famous poem, "The Prelude", William Wordsworth tells of his encounter with "The Beggar" on the streets of London. In my opinion, the Beggar is representative of the Black man in London. He is seen as a beggar, treated like one, and respected, or rather, disrespected, like one. He is merely a spectacle, a nuisance, living off the mere scraps of the English. Wordsworth describes the beggar saying, "...a blind Beggar, who, with his upright face, stood, propped against a wall, upon his chest wearing a written paper, to explain the story of the man and who he was. My mind did at this spectacle turn round as with the might of waters, and it seemed to me that in this label was a type, or emblem, of the utmost that we know, both of ourselves and of the universe; and on the shape of the unmoving man, his fixed face and sightless eyes, I looked, as if admonished from another world." We find the Beggar out of place, in a world clearly not his own. He is labeled, shunned, outcasted. He lies blind, desolate, unmoving. This is what the English society has done to him. Like the African natives in Heart of Darkness he is silenced, yet he screams a powerful image. His label says it all. Wordsworth, the Englishman, is unable to reach out to him, as he is "from another world." Yet he cannot help but be caught, trapped, by the "spectacle" of the Beggar. His message cannot be overlooked, just as Conrad's message is not to be overlooked either.
In the book “Heart of Darkness”, Joseph Conrad wrote about the horrors that were committed by Leopold’s regime. As one of the first insider to witness these horrors, he wrote “Heart of Darkness”, with this book, he was able to spread the word about the atrocities he had seen in Leopold’s greedy pursuit of rubber and ivory in the congo. This book details closely how Leopold made his humongous profit. Leopold issued decrees on the Congo such as that the native people may only trade with his state agents or with his concessions. Leopold’s concessions were private companies that would sell the ivory and rubber, they would give Leopold 50% of their profits. The Abir Congo Company was one of these concessions that harvest the natural rubber of the Congo.They were granted a large portion of the land in the north and had the right to impose a rubber tax on its inhabitants. It was through concessions like these but also from his personal company (the Congo Free State) that Leopold created his personal wealth. This book brings us one step closer to answering our question since it tells us how Leopold got ahold of all of his profits. But this brings us to another question of, exactly how much money did the Congo bring to Leopold II?
Joseph Conrad is the author of the novel, The Heart of Darkness, along with many other profound works. Compared on any scale, Conrad is nowhere near average. Joseph Conrad is a very interesting character who sees the world through wide eyes. By traveling the world and exploring the many walks of life he is able to discuss common global views and habits that include injustices which are explained in his renowned novel, The Heart of Darkness.
One example that could be considered racist is in Chapter one. In this paragraph, Joseph Conrad is talking about how the Europeans are colonizing Africa and what they are doing to the natives in the process. He says that the Europeans are at fault for many things, including extremely violent robbery and the murders of numerous people. He is speaking about the reality of colonization and how in the end, countries will only care about making money off of it. He said they accomplish this by using “brute force,” which obviously means violence and killing. The European countries wanted to take away Africa from those who had “a different complexion or slightly flatter noses.” Up until this point, it does not seem as if Conrad is using any racist ideas. However, he then goes on to say that all of this is acceptable because it will be worth it in the end. In other words, he was trying to say that the end will justify the means, no matter how many innocent people must be hurt in the process (page 8).
Throughout its entirety, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness utilizes many contrasts and paradoxes in an attempt to teach readers about the complexities of both human nature and the world. Some are more easily distinguishable, such as the comparison between civilized and uncivilized people, and some are more difficult to identify, like the usage of vagueness and clarity to contrast each other. One of the most prominent inversions contradicts the typical views of light and dark. While typically light is imagined to expose the truth and darkness to conceal it, Conrad creates a paradox in which darkness displays the truth and light blinds us from it.
Many people think that depression just means that someone is sad, but that is not the case. There are many symptoms that depressed people may show such as hopelessness, guilt, worthlessness, or pessimism. If someone is depressed they may also be restlessness and have difficulty concentrating. More signs of depression include loss interest in activities they once found enjoyable or difficulty making decisions. They may also experience a lot of fatigue (NIH, n.d.) Remember just because someone exhibits these signs or symptoms once in a while does it mean that they are depressed. If someone is depressed they will show these symptoms for a while. One major indicator of depression is thoughts or attempted suicide (helpguide,
Depression is one of the most common psychological problems, affecting nearly everyone through either personal experience or through depression in a family member. The cost in human suffering cannot be estimated. Depression can interfere with normal functioning, and frequently causes problems with work, social and family adjustment. It causes pain and suffering not only to those who have a disorder, but also to those who care about them. Serious depression can destroy family life as well as the life of the depressed person.
A lie is an untruth. It can be a false statement or a statement left unsaid that causes someone to be misled. In life, lies are told for many different reasons. In fiction, they thicken the plot. In Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Marlow dislikes lies and therefore only tells two, both in extraordinary circumstances. The lies that Marlow tells show several things about him. For example, even though he has been touched by evil, he is still a good man. He never actually tells a lie, instead he lets others continue to believe what they already believe. This helps him justify his lies.
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.
Literature is never interpreted in exactly the same way by two different readers. A prime example of a work of literature that is very ambiguous is Joseph Conrad's, "Heart of Darkness". The Ambiguities that exist in this book are Marlow's relationship to colonialism, Marlow's changing feelings toward Kurtz, and Marlow's lie to the Intended at the end of the story.
William Blake's, "The Little Black Boy" depicts racism even though the poem's main message is that divinely everyone is the same and equal despite their race .The opening stanzas that state, "And I am black, but O! my soul is white; White as an angel is the English child: But I am black as if bereav’d of light.", show race degrading views that have been instilled within the little black child, the narrator. These stanzas make racism apparent because it states, "but O! my soul is white; White as an angel is the English child", which makes it seem that since there is some whiteness inside of him because of his soul then he can be angelic, like that of a white child. Not only that, Blake uses skin color to define worth and purpose. Through those stanzas its apparent to see that he associates whiteness as being good and moral, or that of a “light” and black as being the opposite, meaning evil and immoral. Blake then tries to develop another idea of light as the child remembers instructions given to him by his mother. “Look on the rising sun: there God does live. And gives his light, and gives his heat away. And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive. Comfort in morning joy in the noo...
Tourism has become much more prevalent in recent times, due in large part to the increasing human population of the earth and the increasing leisure time and dis...
Depression is a mood disorder involving disturbances in emotion (excessive sadness), behavior (loss of interest in one’s usual activities), cognition (thoughts of hopelessness), and body function (fatigue and loss of appetite) (Wade, Tavris 567). Most people don’t even know when depression is happening to them. It usually takes friends, family, or even doctors to notice the symptoms of depression within somebody they know. People that are depressed have the tendency to describe their mood as gloomy, miserable, dreary or uneasy. A lot of victims of depression have additional feelings of worthlessness, doubt, emptiness, pointlessness, unreasonable guilt, boredom, despair, and weakness.
Modernism began as a movement in that late 19th, early 20th centuries. Artists started to feel restricted by the styles and conventions of the Renaissance period. Thusly came the dawn of Modernism in many different forms, ranging from Impressionism to Cubism.
Six Sigma is a set of tools, processes and techniques that aid in the improvement of any business processes. It has the ideal goal of perfecting the processes that may make it more efficient and effective. It needs to follow a disciplined and systematic approach to achieve the efficiency and effectiveness that it desires. Six Sigma relies a lot on the data available from the organization; hence, it is important that these data are properly stored and then can be accessed quickly and efficiently by the members of the group. The Six Sigma also tries to eliminate any faults in the process or system, in which it arrives with six standard deviations (hence, the term six sigma) just between the mean and the desired value. The Six sigma process can be applied in almost all processes from manufacturing to transactional. It also does not matter whether the business offers a product or a service.
Tourism is a typical activity of fashion that the public participate widely and it has grown in importance over recorded human history. Innumerable articles refer tourism as “the world’s largest industry”; policy-makers, analysts, and scholars often speak of the size of the tourism compared to that of other industries (Smith 2004: 26). These series of misleading statement, together with the mass media’s reports (out of context), make the idea that tourism is a single large industry branded into many people’s minds. However, in this essay I will demonstrate that it is a simplistic and misleading idea, which should be replaced by the plural term, “tourism industries”. Moreover, tourism is not the world’s largest industry, but largest service sector.