The Dark Walk One of the first places Julia always ran to when they arrived in G- was The Dark Walk. It is a laurel walk, very cold; almost gone wild; a lofty midnight tunnel of smooth, sinewy branches. Underfoot the tough brown on her so that she screamed with pleasure and raced on to reach the light at the far end; and it was always just a little too long in coming so that she emerged gasping, clasping her hands, laughing, drinking in the sun. When she was filled with the heat and glare she would turn and consider the ordeal again. This year she had the extra joy of showing it to her small brother, and of terrifying him as well as herself. And for him the fear lasted longer because his legs were shorter and she had gone out at the far end and while he was still screaming and racing. When they had done this many times they came back to the house to tell everybody that they had done it. He boasted. She mocked. They squabbled. 'Cry babby.' 'You were afraid yourself, so there!' 'I won't take you any more.' 'You are bit pig.' 'I hate you,' Tears were threatening, so somebody said, 'Did you see the wall?' She opened her eyes at that held up her long lovely neck suspiciously and decided to be incredulous. She was twelve and at that age little girls are beginning to suspect most stories: they already found out too many, from Santa Claus to the stork.
Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness uses character development and character analysis to really tell the story of European colonization. Within Conrad's characters one can find both racist and colonialist views, and it is the opinion, and the interpretation of the reader which decides what Conrad is really trying to say in his work.
Dead Man Walking is a great book that deals with one of our nations most controversial issues: capital punishment. The books narrator, Sister Helen Prejean, discusses her personal views on capital punishment. She was a spiritual advisor and friend to two death row inmates; Elmo Patrick Sonnier and Robert Lee Willie. From her experiences, she developed views on the death penalty. She believed it was morally wrong and spoke openly about it. Sister Helen successfully defends her views on capital punishment while stating that capital punishment should be illegal. Her experiences have taught her that although these criminals were dangerous and deadly, and that their crimes were inexcusable, a death sentence should not be the answer.
The world view of the Navajo who had lived for many centuries on the high Colorado Plateau was one of living in balance with all of nature, as the stewards of their vast homeland which covered parts of four modern states. They had no concept of religion as being something separate from living day to day and prayed to many spirits. It was also a matriarchal society and had no single powerful leader as their pastoral lifestyle living in scattered independent family groups require no such entity. This brought them repeatedly into conflict with Spanish, Mexicans and increasingly by the mid-nineteenth century, Americans as these practices were contrary to their male dominated religiously monolithic societal values. The long standing history of raiding between all these groups and particularly the taking of women and children who were forced into slavery was extremely distasteful to their western Christian morality. The practice had been carried out among the native tribes for centuries and had spread among the Spanish and Mexicans as they began to enter the territory and was the most serious cause of insecurity in the eyes of Maj. Edward Canby, who found himself the senior Union officer in the New Mexico Territory as the Civil War heated up.
When questioning whether or not Joseph Conrad was an imperialist, a racist or both for that matter, the answer should be quite obvious after reading some of his works, such as, Heart of Darkness. Everywhere you look in this book, there is both imperialism and racism illustrated. Through Kurtz, Conrad's imperialist side breaks through and likewise, through Marlow Conrad's racist views come to life.
1. The protagonist of Heart of Darkness is a person named Charlie Marlow. Oddly, his name only appears once in the novel. Marlow is philosophical, independent-minded, and generally skeptical of those around him. He is also a master storyteller, eloquent and able to draw his listeners into his tale. Although Marlow shares many of his fellow Europeans’ prejudices, he has seen enough of the world and enough debased white men to make him skeptical of imperialism. An example of Marlow being independent-minded and philosophical is when he takes a trip up a river, as a break from working on ships. Marlow describes the trip as a journey back in time, to a “prehistoric earth.” This remark on how he regards colonized people as primitive, which is his philosophical viewpoint.
He fig-ured that the normal half hour walk home might take as long as two hours in snow this deep. And then there was the wind and the cold to contend with. The wind was blowing across the river and up over the embankment making the snow it carried colder and wetter than the snow blanketing the ground. He would have to use every skill he’d learned, living in these hills, to complete the journey without getting lost, freezing to death, or at the very least ending up with a severe case of frostbite be-fore he made it back to Ruby.
The Novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad is about an Ivory agent, Marlow, who is also the narrator of his journey up the Congo River into the heart of Africa. Marlow witnesses many new things during his journey to find Mr. Kurtz. In Apocalypse Now, the narrator is Captain Willard, who is also on a journey to find Kurtz. The Kurtz in the movie however is an American colonel who broke away from the American army and decided to hide away in Cambodia, upon seeing the reality of the Vietnam War. The poem “The Hollow Men” talks about how humans’ “hollowness” affects their lives and often leads to the destruction of one’s life. These three works all deal with similar issues, and are related to one another in many ways, and also share somewhat similar themes.
Heart of Darkness ?gHeart of Darkness?h, written by Joseph Conrad, holds thematically a wide range of references to problems of politics, morality and social order. It was written in a period when European exploitation of Africa was at a gruesome height. Conrad uses double oblique narration. A flame narrator reports the story as told by Marlow, assigned to the command of a river steamboat scheduled to transport an exploring expedition. Kurtz is a first-agent at an important trading post of ivory, located in the interior of the Congo. Both Marlow and Kertz found the reality through their work in Africa. Marlow felt great indignation with people in the sepulchral city after his journey to the Congo region because he discovered, through his work, the reality of the universe, such as the great virtue of efficiency, the darkness in society and individuals and the surface reality. When Kurtz found himself on his deathbed and he said ?gThe horror, The horror referring to his life in inner Africa, which caused him disintegration. Marlow emphasized the virtue of ?gefficiency?h throughout the story because he thought of it as the only way to survive in the wilderness. After seeing the dying natives in the forest of the outer station, Marlow described them as ?ginefficient.?h Under ?gthe devotion to efficiency,?h incompetent people were excluded from society. Only efficient people can survive. For example, since Kurtz was the most efficient agent, with regards to producing ivory, his employers respected his achievement and regarded him as an essential person.
A Genetic Odyssey’ is an interesting movie to watch. There were many thoughts that passed my mind as I watched the movie. First of all, it was interesting to visualize the movie back in the day, assuming how one single man lived in Africa approximately sixty thousand years ago. It is quite amazing to have traced the records so far behind to find that Adam could be the father of homo sapiens after all. The better question arises when there are different sizes, races and shapes to each human being.
Joseph Conrad uses the literary device of foreshadowing in his work, Heart of Darkness, to set the mood and set the stage for his ironic plot to unfold. The foretelling begins when Marlow, the novel’s main character, narrates a brief reflection “… of very old times, when Romans first came here” to carry out their conquest of England, suggesting that this Roman conquest was similar to the Belgian efforts to colonize Africa (p. 1635). Conrad, a sailor at the young age of seventeen, tells his story through the character of Marlow who recounts the adventures during his quest to retrieve the bones of a murdered sailor. Marlow’s experiences are much like the Roman’s conquest as they both faced the darkness of a treacherous path, overrun terrain, untamed natives, and personal self-doubt.
The world of women was vastly different to modern times. The unsettling truths of the view of men at this time were disconcerting “they—the women I mean—are out of it—should be out of it. We must help them to stay in that beautiful world of their own, lest ours get worse” (80). Ultimately the voice of Marlow thinks that women are naïve, delicate beings that should be sheltered from everything because they are too delicate to handle the truth. As the narrator says, “it’s queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own” ( 28). Marlow frequently says that women are the keepers of naïve illusions but their role is important, because those naïve illusions that he refers to are the basis of societal fiction. The role of women are the justification of European colonial expansion and imperialism. And in return, the women are the benefit from the wealth their men attain, and they become objects upon the shoulders of men that display them as their level of success and status. Kurtz’s Intended represents this particular role, his Intended embodies, faith and naive innocence. She only actually devotes herself to an image of Kurtz instead of the man himself. The woman’s has a sincere character and a high sense of morality. Marlow notices and describes that “she was not very young… not girlish. She had a mature capacity for fidelity, for belief, for suffering” (p. 119). Indeed she represents her culture and race she living in the realm of fiction. “A mystery; and yet the terms of light in which he speaks of it relate this quality to the idealism and faith embodied in a figure who is herself a core of light, Kurtz's Intended” (Ridley 6) She believes that she was in love with Kurtz but she didn’t even know who he re...
is an exposure of Belgian methods in the Congo, which at least for a good
King Leopold II of Belgium is known for being one of the most brutal racists in history. His inhumane treatment of Africans in the Congo was revealed in photographs that surfaced and that were taken to emphasize his cruel behavior over the Africans in the Congo. His motive for this inhumanity was pure greed. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, although does not embody the vicious behavior of King Leopold II, contributes to the racism of that period in other ways. Because of this, the novel can be interpreted in different ways from a racism standpoint. In my opinion, I both agree and disagree with Chinua Achebe’s statements concerning Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and feel that it can be viewed in some ways as both racist or not racist.
In the poem, a person is walking along a path in an autumn forest in the early hours of the morning, when he stumbles upon a fork in the road. The speaker wishes that he would be able to travel down both of them, but he has places to go, and he does not have enough time. One is worn out from people walking along it so much, and the other is grassy and barely worn from fewer people walking on it. Although neither of them had been traveled on that day, as the leaves were still fresh on the ground, the speaker was compelled to travel the second or grassier path. The speaker fin...
In the distance, the trail along which I had been walking wound through a thick velvet fog. Lining the path were tall trees that stoo...