Peace be upon all of you
My colleagues in the 4th year;
I hope that t you are preparing well to take Modern Prose exam a few days later ……
I have collected some articles that were discussed in the lectures, and I hope you to save the page and to have a "snapshot" as D. Mezil said...
In the name of Allah ……we begin
--------------------S Y M B O L I S M -------------------
Below is a list of the most noteworthy symbols found throughout Heart of Darkness, as well as their meanings and implications in the novel?
• Congo River - Marlow's journey on the Congo River can be said to represent a journey into one's inner spirit. As Marlow progresses further up the river in his search for Kurtz, he begins to learn more and more about himself. He comes to realize that he probably has more in common with the natives than the smug Europeans who have come to civilize them. At the end of his journey, Marlow learns that everyone has a dark side to them, but that some people can conceal it better than others.
• Ivory - The ivory symbolizes greed and the destructive nature of man. The managers and agents of the Company are so obsessed with obtaining ivory that they forget about their morals and so-called civilized ways.
• White worsted - Marlow discovers the white worsted wrapped around a Negro's neck at the Outer Station. The fabric can be said to represent the attempt of the Europeans to colonize the natives, and the strangling effect it has on them.
• Kurtz's painting - The painting at the Central Station is perhaps the most extensive symbol in the novel. The painting is of a blindfolded woman carrying a lighted torch, which distorts her face. The woman likely symbolizes the Europeans who have come to civilize the natives. The torch she carries represents the European customs and values that they try to force upon the native Africans. The woman is blindfolded because the Europeans cannot "see" the negative effects that their customs have on the natives. Her face has become distorted because, to the natives, the European customs seem rather repulsive.
• Eldorado Exploring Expedition - This group is symbolic of the Whites' search for something that cannot be attained. Eldorado is historically known as a city of gold that never actually existed. However, the prosperity that could possibly be gained was so overwhelming for this group that they felt compelled to risk their lives for it.
• Candle on the steamship - Marlow brings a candle into Kurtz's quarters as Kurtz is dying on the ship. The candle is symbolic of Kurtz's losing struggle for life. When Kurtz finally submits to death, Marlow blows out the candle.
• General Manager - The manager symbolizes all the immorality of European colonization. It is no coincidence that he ran the most disorganized and deplorable station in the region. The manager led his station not through intelligence and acumen, but rather, through his ability to stay healthy and invoke uneasiness. He was not interested in actually colonizing the region. His only concern was to attain as much ivory as possible.
• Kurtz - Kurtz represents man's dark side and what can happen when it envelops you completely. Kurtz's prolonged exposure to the untamed regions of the Congo has removed all his ties to civilization. He no longer feels satisfied with just being a mere mortal, so instead transforms himself into an omnipotent being. Kurtz's descent into madness is firmly established with his disturbing final words, "The horror! The horror!"
----------- SOME PEICES OFINFORMATION --------
Heart of Darkness opens on a boat called "Nellie." Marlow and his shipmates, including the
narrator whose descriptions of the scene fill the few breaks in Marlow's stories, loll on the
deck waiting for the tides of the Thames River to change. To entertain his compatriots, Marlow
begins to talk about his philosophies on colonization, his personal history, and his voyage up
the Congo River into the heart of Africa. Like many storytellers, Marlow speaks in a stream of
consciousness, skipping forward and backward in time without warning. The reader is left to
infer from symbolism the specifics of Marlow's narrative. Marlow abhors colonization. He
believes that when Europeans colonize other countries to exploit rather than to civilize, white
men commit robbery and murder on "a great scale." His urgent feelings regarding colonization
trigger Marlow to remember his trip into Africa. However, before he begins that specific story
he tells his audience about his fascination with maps and "empty spaces." Since he was a child,
Marlow dreamed of venturing into the dark places on maps. He gets a great chance, he explains,
when his aunt helps him secure a position working for a European-based ivory company as a
-----------Redeemtion ( Freedom ) In The Heart Of Darkness And Great Expectations-------
The idea of redemption is an idea that has existed for as long as humanity has. Therefore, it should be no surprise to see the idea of redemption in the literature of many different periods. However, what is surprising is the way that different periods such as the Victorian period and the Modern period each portray redemption in different ways. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, which is considered a Modern period work, deals with redemption mainly through the character of Kurtz. Moreover, his self-redemption, just before he dies, he realizes all he has done and that it was wrong and far from what he originally came there to do, and by doing this redeems himself at least in his mind. In addition, Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, which is considered a Victorian period work, expresses the idea through many of the characters, however the best example is Pip. Who gives redemption through forgiveness and receives it through forgiveness.
The character of Kurtz is a very crucial one in the interpretation of the story as a whole. Marlow describes Kurtz as being created by all of Europe. He was one of the best of the best, but had somehow become the worst. As the story unfolds to its end, Kurtz is found to be an artist.
------------------------- Headlines ----------Topics -----
The Hypocrisy of Imperialism
Heart of Darkness explores the issues surrounding imperialism in complicated ways. As Marlow travels from the Outer Station to the Central Station and finally up the river to the Inner Station, he encounters scenes of torture, cruelty, and near-slavery. At the very least, the incidental scenery of the book offers a harsh picture of colonial enterprise. The impetus behind Marlow’s adventures, too, has to do with the hypocrisy inherent in the rhetoric used to justify imperialism. The men who work for the Company describe what they do as “trade,” and their treatment of native Africans is part of a benevolent project of “civilization.” Kurtz, on the other hand, is open about the fact that he does not trade but rather takes ivory by force, and he describes his own treatment of the natives with the words “suppression” and “extermination”: he does not hide the fact that he rules through violence and intimidation. His perverse honesty leads to his downfall, as his success threatens to expose the evil practices behind European activity in Africa.
However, for Marlow as much as for Kurtz or for the Company, Africans in this book are mostly objects: Marlow refers to his helmsman as a piece of machinery, and Kurtz’s African mistress is at best a piece of statuary. It can be argued that Heart of Darkness participates in an oppression of nonwhites that is much more sinister and much harder to remedy than the open abuses of Kurtz or the Company’s men. Africans become for Marlow a mere backdrop, a human screen against which he can play out his philosophical and existential struggles. Their existence and their exoticism enable his self-contemplation. This kind of dehumanization is harder to identify than colonial violence or open racism. While Heart of Darkness offers a powerful condemnation of the hypocritical operations of imperialism, it also presents a set of issues surrounding race that is ultimately more troubling.
Madness as a Result of Imperialism
Madness is closely linked to imperialism in this book. Africa is responsible for mental disintegration as well as for physical illness. Madness has two primary functions. First, it serves as an ironic device to engage the reader’s sympathies. Kurtz, Marlow is told from the beginning, is mad. However, as Marlow, and the reader, begin to form a more complete picture of Kurtz, it becomes apparent that his madness is only relative, that in the context of the Company insanity is difficult to define. Thus, both Marlow and the reader begin to sympathize with Kurtz and view the Company with suspicion. Madness also functions to establish the necessity of social fictions. Although social mores and explanatory justifications are shown throughout Heart of Darkness to be utterly false and even leading to evil, they are nevertheless necessary for both group harmony and individual security. Madness, in Heart of Darkness, is the result of being removed from one’s social context and allowed to be the sole arbiter of one’s own actions. Madness is thus linked not only to absolute power and a kind of moral genius but to man’s fundamental fallibility: Kurtz has no authority to whom he answers but himself, and this is more than any one man can bear.
The Absurdity of Evil
This novella is, above all, an exploration of hypocrisy, ambiguity, and moral confusion. It explodes the idea of the proverbial choice between the lesser of two evils. As the idealistic Marlow is forced to align himself with either the hypocritical and malicious colonial bureaucracy or the openly malevolent, rule-defying Kurtz, it becomes increasingly clear that to try to judge either alternative is an act of folly: how can moral standards or social values be relevant in judging evil? Is there such thing as insanity in a world that has already gone insane? The number of ridiculous situations Marlow witnesses act as reflections of the larger issue: at one station, for instance, he sees a man trying to carry water in a bucket with a large hole in it. At the Outer Station, he watches native laborers blast away at a hillside with no particular goal in mind. The absurd involves both insignificant silliness and life-or-death issues, often simultaneously. That the serious and the mundane are treated similarly suggests a profound moral confusion and a tremendous hypocrisy: it is terrifying that Kurtz’s homicidal megalomania and a leaky bucket provoke essentially the same reaction from Marlow.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Observation and Eavesdropping
Marlow gains a great deal of information by watching the world around him and by overhearing others’ conversations, as when he listens from the deck of the wrecked steamer to the manager of the Central Station and his uncle discussing Kurtz and the Russian trader. This phenomenon speaks to the impossibility of direct communication between individuals: information must come as the result of chance observation and astute interpretation. Words themselves fail to capture meaning adequately, and thus they must be taken in the context of their utterance. Another good example of this is Marlow’s conversation with the brickmaker, during which Marlow is able to figure out a good deal more than simply what the man has to say.
Interiors and Exteriors
Comparisons between interiors and exteriors pervade Heart of Darkness. As the narrator states at the beginning of the text, Marlow is more interested in surfaces, in the surrounding aura of a thing rather than in any hidden nugget of meaning deep within the thing itself. This inverts the usual hierarchy of meaning: normally one seeks the deep message or hidden truth. The priority placed on observation demonstrates that penetrating to the interior of an idea or a person is impossible in this world. Thus, Marlow is confronted with a series of exteriors and surfaces—the river’s banks, the forest walls around the station, Kurtz’s broad forehead—that he must interpret. These exteriors are all the material he is given, and they provide him with perhaps a more profound source of knowledge than any falsely constructed interior “kernel.”
Darkness
Darkness is important enough conceptually to be part of the book’s title. However, it is difficult to discern exactly what it might mean, given that absolutely everything in the book is cloaked in darkness. Africa, England, and Brussels are all described as gloomy and somehow dark, even if the sun is shining brightly. Darkness thus seems to operate metaphorically and existentially rather than specifically. Darkness is the inability to see: this may sound simple, but as a description of the human condition it has profound implications. Failing to see another human being means failing to understand that individual and failing to establish any sort of sympathetic communion with him or her.
تسجيل الدخول
MOB
الأسئلة المتكررة
بحث
