Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness – Flashcards

His father was a polish nationalist and opposed russian domination when russia was trying to take over poland. Joseph was sailor in the British Navy and became a British citizen. Much of his work is about adventures/sailing/travel

As a polish born citizen, by the time he started to write Poland didn’t exist anymore ebecause it had three successive parititons. He strongly was anti-imperliasm and a nationalist for Poland. His work often showed a hierarchy in European countries (classes of people).

Conrad became known as the father of African novel making Africa th ebckdrop of his story that would also show how classist and ignorant European minds were. In the text HoD, Africans are part of their landscape, they are a key part of displaying African culture in comparison to the brutality of white/European settlers. there was a concern that even though the point of having in Africa was really to show Europe as simple minded and ignorant, that Africa would be deemed inarticulate, canniabls, and without humanity, possibly cannibals

He has an unnamed narrator, it seems like it is Marlow but it is a narrator reciting the story of Marlow. the way the story is told is important because th eposes in the story where Marlow interacts with the reader creates these unknown reactions and forces the reader to question the narrators reliability (The Victorain Era used to sketchy narrators ora narrator acting as a guide-> Modernism: narrators that we don’t trust)

he does not agree with imperialism but sometimes he believes it is a saving grace. Overall there i much confusion about his moral views. Europe has created this moral jdugement on the othe prats of the world that they are for savages and cannibals, and it implies that North American and Uero have alread evolved to become civilized an others have not. Africa has no concept of history they don’t move on through history they exist outside of history and going through Africa is a danger to lose oneself because being European makes you civilized. Marlow said “The fear of going native ad chief accountant ‘hist starched collars and got-up shirt fronts were achievement of chracter”

‘The horror, the horror” Marlow, though, finds that he himself has “nothing” to say, and thus Kurtz’s life and his dying words oscillate between absolute emptiness and an overabundance of meaning. The “horror” is either nothing or everything, but it is not simply “something.” The actual moment of Kurtz’s death is narrated indirectly. First, Kurtz’s words—”The horror! The horror!”—anticipate and mark that his death is beginning. Then flies, the symbol of slow, mundane decay and disintegration (as opposed to catastrophic or dramatic destruction), swarm throughout the ship, as if to mark the actual moment. Finally, the servant arrives to bring the moment to its close with his surly, unpoetic words. The roughness of “Mistah Kurtz—he dead” contrasts with Kurtz’s self-generated epitaph, again bringing a blunt reality (death) into conflict with a subjective state (horror). The impenetrability of the brief moment of Kurtz’s death and his reduction to something “buried in a muddy hole” indicate the final impossibility of describing either Kurtz or his ideas

similiaryt between Conrad and the Impressionist painters where they show meaning as being constructed based on various inputs from the environment and th eimiations of human understanding based on the environment people have grown in. In the actual book HoD there is a delayed perception before we get ot ht emening.

a persons ith a dark personality like Kurtz and a place of physical or metaphysical darkness (The Congo, the place in Africa they are in). It is very ambiguous and not sure if it talking abouta people place, coloniaism, or Kurtz…

The contradiction of imperialism as white/Euro believe it is to help other countries but in reality it does the opposite, madness as a result of imperliasm, evilness. Read more: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/heart/themes.html

Basically a man is named captain of a steamer ship that is in Africa and searches for ivory (expensive and found in animal tusks) and he tries to go down and meet the ship and Kurtz (another ship captain). When he goes down the natives start firing on the ship and he believes that they have killed Kurtz since the report was that they were savage beasts. turns out Kurtz is alived and the natives weren’t that bad. But Kurtz had ordered Marlows boat to be killed. Upon his return to Europe, Marlow brings back the papers Kurtz requests him to bring back that say that the treatment of Natives must change.

The congo is a vast territory in the HEART of Africa (could this possibly reference the heart of darkeness?) And it has been called the hole in the heart of africa because mich of it is a gian power vacuum. Warlords brutally scramble for power and control where fighting and rape are prominent and children are made soliders. They might bevel be cannibals.

Marlow believed his crew practiced canniablsim. Even when they are sailing through the fog and there is a feeling tha t’african men are on the shore (which they are and then shoot at the boat)’ the sound of the horn that Marlow makes the boat make satisfies the african men and they stop shooting (because it is implied that the horn noise sounds like an animal). This begs the question of humanity/inhumanity of the Africans.

1902

French shooting projectiles ino the wild coast, eurpeans were pictured as greedy savages, in Kurtz’s writing of “The INternatoinal Society for the SUpression fo Savage Customs” it stated to exterminate all the brutes. Also they are colonists of women, they make women their mistresses.