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Thread: Heart of Darkness Supplementary Readings

  1. #11
    Inactive Member RodrigoCC's Avatar
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    Mark Ditenfass

    This man, to me, is a complete genius. I absolutely iloved how he described the very indescribable essence of how this novel can be interpreted. His explanation of this gave books more meaning to me. He said that what Conrad tries to do is to give you a hazy, dreamlike image of what it going on in Marlowe's mind and life. The problem is, where does this take you? This takes you anywhere you want to go. He basically says that almost any explanation that you can put your own reason behind is completely valid. That is the beauty of his novel and art for that matter, that there is nothing concrete and easy about it. It requires the experience to be interpreted and he hands us the experience just how it is, hazy and confusing.

  2. #12
    Inactive Member dainkelly's Avatar
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    Mark Dintenfass:
    I think that his interpretation of the book really broadens the spectrum of the novel. He offers several points of views, including psychological, sociological, historical etc. He also discusses the light and dark, the comparisons between black and white, that i think are esencial to the main point of the story. He brings out the white parts in black people, like their eyes or teeth or clothing to show how even if their environment is dark (africa or their black bodies) they still have good in them. At the same time, the other white people on board, the pilgrims, even if they are white (not only skin, but social background, europe) they still come out as being greedy. I also like how he gives the reader his own two perspectives, that of a teacher and that of a novelist. even though as a teacher he prefers not to be given such vague things as the heart of darkness, but as a novelist he seems to enjoy the chalenge of such a realistic story.
    Joyce carol oates:
    I belive that this introduction was a bit too wide and less focused than the other criticisms, but at the same time it was only an introduccion. Oates manages to point out one of the most important aspects of the story which is that it is based on a real experience that Conrad has gone through. This gives the story a sense of purpose, and makes me realise that this story is much closer to the real world than I imagined, and that this isnt regular fiction. I think that other than that the comentary was more basic than the others and more focused on the author and why the story was written than the story itself.
    Chinua Achebe
    I think that chinua achebes interpretation was just looking for something that I believe was not there. I got the interpretation of him being a very smart man who reads novels looking for signs of racism, specially against african americans. I also believe that he has missed comenting on the main point of the story which I think is that we all have evil or darkness inside all of us. I also think that (I got this from reading the oates introduccion) he missed the fact that besides trying to make a point he was writing of an experience, he was trying to describe the images he recieved and how he interpreted them from his own point of view which I think is not racist, in fact I think it is extremely unbiassed by anything.
    COppola:
    I think that coppolas version of heart of darkness, apocalypse now is definately better than the book, not because of the the movie as a movie and the book as a book, but because for the purpose of the story a movie is som much better than a book. More than a story i believe that heart of darkness is a description of one of the situations that goves insight into the nature of man kind, and situations are captured so much better in film than in written literature, because it also includes the senses of hearing and seeing. This makes the story much less dense and much eisier to understand. I also think that the movie itself was spectacular, and that the director really knew how to manage the lighting and sounds, to use them to his advantage.

    <font color="#a62a2a"><font size="1">[ December 03, 2007 06:55 PM: Message edited by: dainkelly ]</font></font>

    <font color="#a62a2a"><font size="1">[ December 03, 2007 07:15 PM: Message edited by: dainkelly ]</font></font>

    <font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ December 03, 2007 07:25 PM: Message edited by: dainkelly ]</font>

  3. #13
    Inactive Member RodrigoCC's Avatar
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    I believe that Achebe is one of the great speaker on this planet. From the beginning of his anylization of Conrad's novel he started off by saying that Conrad is one of the greatest writers of his time and that HoD is one of the 6 greatest short novels. This already put Achebe high up for me, but soon after i saw Achebe, although he is a great thinker, it seems that he doesn't exactly see this novel as it should be seen. There are many references to the primitive life of Africa and "racist" descriptions of dark creatures but he doesn't seem to see that that is not what sticks to readers. I feel that in my context it would be as if there was a book that was written 100 years ago that talks of Paraguayan natives as dumb animals. I understand that he is somewhat offended by that but that is not what the novel leaves you with. The novel takes you through a psychological and physical challenge of going up a river that you are in no way familiar with. Marlowe only tells the story as he does because he was not familiar with such people. Conrad probably became familiar with such people later in his life but the first time an American or a Western European goes to such a place and in such a time a feeling of mystery and adventure jumps into you. I think that that is was Conrad is trying to give and that he is not putting down Africans. Achebe is taking this too far although I understand that he really wants his people to be viewed with greater respect. The point of this weird and somewhat disrespectful descriptions was to give a sense of the unknown. That is how he saw it when he first experienced going up such a river.

  4. #14
    Inactive Member mariaceleste's Avatar
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    Response to Achebe's paper

    I have yet to read Joyce Oates?s essay, but can assert that I find Achebe?s to be the richest. Achebe included in his essay one of the same excerpt I had used in my close reading assignment- the excerpt that begins with ?We were travelers on a prehistoric earth, ? and then describes the kinship between the prehistoric man and his civilized European descendent. And one of the annotations I made was in reference to the following line: ?the thought of your remote kinship?? I thought that the adjective -remote- almost annuls its subject- kinship. And I sensed a small trace of racism but I did not think that Conrad was responsible for it; I thought Marlow was the one that was slightly racist. Even so, I considered that ? because in the passage Marlow recognizes the kinship between the European man and the prehistoric man, and that because he can recognize the humanity of the latter- that the passage is more good than it is racist. I had never considered that perhaps Conrad would deliberately filter his own racism through Marlow and ?set up layers of insulation between himself and the moral universe of the story.? It?s an interesting idea.
    However, the richness of Achebe?s paper is not attributed to this. And his essay is rich for much more reasons than merely contributing to my understanding of Heart of Darkness. A work of true anthropological value, his paper enabled me to rid myself- at least momentarily- of the Western lenses I involuntarily wear. I underlined, highlighted, circled, and memorized his anecdote of the child from Yonkers. And I think that what he said is so true; that we often regard the traits of other?s who differ from us as idiosyncrasies while neglecting that our own attitudes and customs are also idiosyncratic.
    Something else that caught my attention was Achebe?s use of the world ?willful? when describing the Western tendency to use Africa as a foil of the ?civilized world?. And the use of that word seemed so horrible to me because it denoted intentionality. And then he says that ?Although I have used the word willful a few times in this talk to characterize the West?s view of Africa it may well be that what is happening at this stage is more akin to reflex action than to calculated malice.? And I coincide with him in that doing so with out of reflex may be worse than doing so out of intentionality, because that goes to show how deeply ingrained within us are these racists views.
    There are other such memorable things Achebe mentions. Conrad?s conferment of speech to the European but not to the African women, for instance. I enjoyed Achebe?s paper and think it is very accurate in depiction of the Western view of Africa.


    Response to Coppola's movie

    The movie contributed to my understanding of the novel by reveling the universality of the themes Heart of Darkness deals with. I think the movie is valuable for that reason; for reminding us that the brutality of man, that racism, that all these themes are not impertinent or outdated, rather are still (and sadly) very pertinent. Today?s world may in various aspects differ from the era of imperialism, but man has shown to be consistent in his condemnation of other races, in his embrace of racism, and in his brutality. The movie was well made. The beginning scene had very good use of juxtaposition. It was a very good and very well made movie. But not one I would watch again.


    Response to Dintefass's Heart of Darkness

    At first, the ambiguity of Conrad?s notion of darkness proved frustrating to me. Yet, upon reading Dintefass?s essay, I discovered virtue in Conrad?s vagueness. Because he does not delineate what precisely is meant by darkness, he forbids the reader?s passivity; the reader is forced to assign- on his own- a meaning to darkness rather than merely rely on a meaning provided by the author.
    I liked Dintefass?s approach of separating the realm of experience from the world of ordering principles. And I think that sometimes, beyond being able to understand a treatise, it is important to be able to sense the experience an author is trying to convey through his art.


    Response to Oates's

    More than anything, Oates?s introduction functioned as brief synopsis of the novel, with some facts and analysis embedded in the text. Upon comparison to the other papers, Oates?s introduction is somewhat superficial and doesn?t? espouse an opinion or perspective as engaging or profound as the others. It did still contribute to my understanding of the text by reiterating some important and relevant ideas and complimenting them with excerpts from the novel.


    <font color="#a62a2a"><font size="1">[ December 03, 2007 07:19 PM: Message edited by: Maria Celeste ]</font></font>

    <font color="#a62a2a"><font size="1">[ December 03, 2007 08:05 PM: Message edited by: Maria Celeste ]</font></font>

    <font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ December 03, 2007 09:23 PM: Message edited by: Maria Celeste ]</font>

  5. #15
    Inactive Member RodrigoCC's Avatar
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    I enjoyed Joyce Carol Oates interpretation and reflection only to a certain point. I feel that she is saying to much to explain how much she enjoyed the novel. She definitely respects Conrad but she overly stated the good things about this novel. She does share similar points with Ditenfass about how one should analyze the novel and it seemed to be very effective how she explained it. The one problem seems to be how one-sided she is in this particular reflection.

    The movie was spectacular. I read the book before and after the movie and the movie helps your imagination flow a little better. It is incredible all the similarities there are in the novel as in the movie. Although the movie differed in many parts I think the movie was made just right. Some things can't be appreciated in movies just as some things can't be appreciated in books and I think that HoD and AN both show this very thing.

  6. #16
    Inactive Member mrodriguez's Avatar
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    # 1 Mark Dintenfass Lecture

    I enjoy how Dintenfass makes a clear distinction with how thinkers like philosophers and novelists express their thoughts and view the world. He emphasizes the idea that novelists, and especially modernists like the ambiguity that they present in their work, and this mystery and mess is how they organize their experiences and ideas. Mr. O'Prey and Mr. Guetti's criticisms of Heart of Darkness are refuted in explanation of how Conrad purposely left the "darkness" to the imagination.
    I also like how he concludes these ideas with how the novel must be read, both as a student analytically and as a reader, to relive the experiences presented. He goes on to say that this jumbled mess of modernism, can, in this way be deciphered. All in all the lecture is great and informative.

    # 2 Joyce Carol Oates Introduction:

    I enjoyed how Oates put the novel into historical perspective. She describes the climate of late nineteenth century Europe and how the outside world was viewed. Africa was seen as a place to be plundered and abused by the colonizers. She goes on to describe the parallel nature of Kurtz and how he is both good and evil at once. She touches on the corruptibility of mankind and how the European is influenced by those he deems inferior. She then defends Conrad from the critics such as Achebe.
    The praise and exaltation is what is expected of an introduction, and I do agree with her in defending the book and in that it deserves this praise.

    # 3 Achebe's criticism

    I think Achebe is missing the point of this novel. It is written through the eyes of the of a European in the late nineteenth century, and the description of Africa it provides is the reality that these men saw. Achebe views the novel as an attack on Africa and as racism but he fails to take into account historical context and point of view. A novel written from a Nazi point of view is expected to contain skewed views of Jews and other races. Maybe not all Nazis shared these views, but the vast majority did, as did the Europeans in Conrad's novel. Furthermore, throughout the novel there is criticism of imperialism and the mistreatment of the natives, implying that Conrad was not the racist Achebe puts him to be.

    # 4 Coppola's adaptation

    I really enjoyed this movie. It was very well done and faithful to the themes in the book. I liked the ambiguity in depicting either side as more or less brutal than the other. After bombing the Vietcong with napalm and killing many (while looking like they're having fun doing it), the Americans describe the woman who puts a grenade in the helicopter as a savage and proceed to gun her down. Later the brutality of the Americans is most notable in the killing of all the people in the boat for no reason whatsoever with Willard shooting the woman so as to simply not delay his mission. At this point he was obsessed with his mission and Kurtz. By the way, Kurtz was the example military man, and is corrupted in these Vietnamese jungles as in the book.

    <font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ December 03, 2007 08:54 PM: Message edited by: mrodriguez ]</font>

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