Heart of Darkness

The paper has been drafted to critically evaluate the heart of darkness and it portrays of Africa and Africans. It has considered Chinua Achebe's criticism of the novel as a means for "dehumanization of Africa and Africans." For the critical evaluation of the assertion different perspective has been taken. The novel has been critically evaluating from the perspective of the Chinua Achebe and other writers. In the later section, the writing of Conrad has been evaluated based on the circumstances and the perspective of that era. Lastly, the assertion has been evaluated based on the period of critics like Chinua Achebe. Reading and evaluating the work of Conrad in the 21 st century is itself a different perspective. When the novel has been published, no critic has pointed out that it's writing to the dehumanization of Africa and Africans. However, in 1902, "An Image of Africa" has been evolved. The critics like Chinua Achebe know that its perspective will be well understood in that period. Though the meaning of the words remains the same the ideas that had been construed from it have to keep on changing based on the period and the circumstances of that era.

This paper conducts a comparative dispositif analysis of Joseph Conrad’s 1902 novella 'Heart of Darkness' and James Gray’s 2019 cinematic adaptation 'Ad Astra', in order to assess whether the imperial legacy implicit within the novella has continued into the contemporary world.

Literary critics are interested in meaning (interpretation) but when linguists, such as Haj Ross, look at literature, they’re interested in structure and mechanism (poetics). Shakespeare presents a particular problem because his plays exist in several versions, with Hamlet as an extreme case (3 somewhat different versions). The critic doesn’t know where to look for the “true” meaning. Where linguists to concern themselves with such things (which they mostly don’t), they’d be happy to deal with each of version separately. Undergraduate instruction in literature is properly concerned with meaning. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness has become a staple because of its focus on race and colonialism, which was critiqued by Chinua Achebe in 1975 and the ensuing controversy and illustrates the problematic nature of meaning. And yet, when examined at arm’s length, the text exhibits symmetrical patterning (ring composition) and fractal patterning. Such duality, if you will, calls for two complementary critical approaches. Ethical criticism addresses meaning (interpretation) and naturalist criticism addresses structure and mechanism (poetics).

The possibility of native resistance to colonial tyranny and the threat of the loss of colonial “order” is a sustained anxiety throughout Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness. Critics have largely ignored or downplayed these inscriptions of resistance in Conrad's text. Much of the criticism that surrounds this novella, according to Patrick Brantlinger, is focused on the European subjects of the text, and therefore renders Africa and its native peoples as a kind of backdrop. Literary critiques of Heart of Darkness that do discuss the African natives tend to portray them as victims rather than having any kind of agency. This latent fear of native resistance demonstrates the fantasy of stability and superiority endemic to imperialism: a narrative that the imperial administration must continually tell itself.

In H. G. Wells's The Time Machine and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, power is exercised for its own sake and in the name of “civilization”. The split of society in The Time Machine presents how it would look like in the future if the class problems would prevail. Rich segments of society using their power for power's sake further pushed the poor classes underground, both metaphorically and literally. Inequality shaped the evolution of these two classes in strikingly different ways. The Heart of Darkness, on the other hand, presents a fraction of human history to exemplify the terrific consequences of a mindset that would exercise his power on anything just because he can. One can consider Wells’ novel to be a prophetic result of Conrad’s civilization concept. In both novels, the ways of exercising power are excused by misunderstood concepts of "civilization" and wronged the paths the human race should have taken.

With its innovative narrative structure and its controversial explorations of race, gender and empire, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is a landmark of 20th century literature that continues to resonate to this day. This book brings together leading scholars to explore the full range of contemporary philosophical and critical responses to the text. Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Contemporary Thought includes the first publication in English of philosopher Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe's essay, 'The Horror of the West', described by J. Hillis Miller as 'a major essay on Conrad's novel, one of the best ever written'. In the company of Lacoue-Labarthe, leading scholars explore new readings of Conrad's text from a full range of theoretical perspectives, including deconstructive, psychoanalytic, narratological and postcolonial approaches. Drawing on the very latest insights of contemporary thought, this is an essential study of one of the most important literary texts of the 20th century.

http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/conrads-heart-of-darkness-and-contemporary-thought-9781441101006/

Summary: Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now counts as one of the best (anti-) war movies ever made, The aim of this article is to show how Classical mythology is employed in this film to represent and understand America’s Vietnam War experience. Not only does Apocalypse Now contain various references to the Odyssey, the storyline itself is structured as a myth. In our article, we show how Coppola and his screenwriter John Milius used Joseph Campbell’s book The Hero With a Thousand Faces and James Frazer’s The Golden Bough to give their film a powerful mythological foundation. These mythological references add depth to the movie and are used to manipulate the audience's expectations. Thus the artistic accomplishment of Apocalypse Now demonstrates the enduring power of myth.

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is one of the finest works in English literature where setting plays a vital role upholding the theme. In this novella none of the themes is explicit in the surface of the story, rather the different themes are encapsulated with the different aspects of the story and one of them is ‘setting’. This study goes on finding the uniqueness in the integration of ‘setting’ and ‘theme’ in this world famous text on colonization and primitiveness.

The authors posit syphilis as the source for Kurtz’s affliction in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and argue for understanding the novella as a deployment of the rhetoric of disease, which yokes together medical fears and problematic sexual morality with a global violence infecting self-congratulatory European benevolence and charity. Conrad’s tale is both implicitly and explicitly eroticized as well as steeped in gothic representation of the hidden and revealed to manage an unsayable horror. As such, the language of the story parallels pervasive late nineteenth-century syphilis discourse that likewise relies on obfuscation and silences. Descriptions of Kurtz’s megalomania resonate with the symptomatology of syphilis and perceived syphilitics, such as Nietzsche and Columbus, who might have served as models for the character.

In the Chancellor's Lecture at Amherst on 18 February 1975, titled An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", Chinua Achebe saw Joseph Conrad as “a thoroughgoing racist”, Achebe asserts that Conrad's famous novel (published in 1902) dehumanizes Africans, rendering Africa as “a metaphysical battlefield devoid of all recognizable humanity, into which the wandering European enters at his peril”. This caused controversy, right from the venue of the lecture, where some western professors refused to support Achebe’s views. The researchers analyze the lecture, bringing out its strengths and weaknesses and making an independent synthetic view of it. In our view, Conrad’s book is seen as a work which brings out the beauty of the African natural settings and the evil behavior of intruding Europeans searching for ivory. Nevertheless, Conrad’s book is also seen as hastily pandering to the erroneous zeitgeist of the time it was written (given that some African culture had beauty in them) and Achebe’s response is seen as a bit severe and non-diversified (giving that not much of Africa had western civilization at the time of the appearance of Conrad’s novel and not all of African culture had beauty in them). This critique is contextualized by making references to aspects of Western negativities and backwardness within the novel or around 1902 and aspects of African beauty and backwardness within the novel or around 1902 also. Therefore, both Conrad’s Novella and Achebe’s Essay have their flaws and strengths.

This paper is a comparison about narrative techniques between Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers. This paper includes my own personal thoughts about the specific topic and it is not published academically.

The paper has been drafted to critically evaluate the heart of darkness and it portrays of Africa and Africans. It has considered Chinua Achebe's criticism of the novel as a means for “dehumanization of Africa and Africans." For the critical evaluation of the assertion different perspective has been taken. The novel has been critically evaluating from the perspective of the Chinua Achebe and other writers. In the later section, the writing of Conrad has been evaluated based on the circumstances and the perspective of that era. Lastly, the assertion has been evaluated based on the period of critics like Chinua Achebe. Reading and evaluating the work of Conrad in the 21st century is itself a different perspective. When the novel has been published, no critic has pointed out that it's writing to the dehumanization of Africa and Africans. However, in 1902, “An Image of Africa" has been evolved. The critics like Chinua Achebe know that its perspective will be well understood in that period. Though the meaning of the words remains the same the ideas that had been construed from it have to keep on changing based on the period and the circumstances of that era

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899) is among the best works of literature of the 20th Century. The story of the journey up the Congo river in Africa, made by a sailor who was incharge of collecting the ivory from the colony can be read through several different criticalperspectives. The goal of this thesis is to apply a postcolonial reading (based, mainly, onEdward Said’s theory of Orientalism) in order to perceive how Conrad portrayed imperialismin the Belgian colony of Congo, as well as the mechanisms the author used to construct theblack African characters in his narrative. The narrative showed to be a reflection of the web of ambiguities and ambivalences that characterized the imperial ideology – theory and practice being so distant from each other.

Social Darwinists applied Darwin‟s models of evolution to human societies and social thought to provide a justification for imperialism and colonialism. In this paper the way how they used Darwin‟s theories to justify their exploitation of other countries is explained. The relation between Social Darwinism, colonialism, imperialism, and racism regarding different theorists, philosophers, and political figures‟ views of such concepts are going to be discussed with reference to historical facts and literal productions e.g. Heart of Darkness. The purpose of this study is to trace the roots of construction of such theories i.e. Social Darwinism back to human beings‟ will to power and domination of other weaker nations and in this way an examination of nature of human being according to naturalists is given to show the inevitability of colonialism and imperialism based on what naturalists and Social Darwinists said about the nature of human beings.

Imperialism and desire for expansion of empire across the globe by powerful empires caused the process of establishments of their colonies in the distant geographical spaces. It paved way to colonialism. It is a system of powerful colonial state to impose their hegemony over weaker countries. It initiated the large scale explorations of new continents. Colonialism came under the garb of trade and religion. The European powers like Rome,

Heart of Darkness is an 1899 novella about a voyage up the Congo River into the Congo Free State. The plot centers round Charles Marlow, an English sailor, whose journey up the Congo River to meet Kurtz, an ivory trader who went mad. Marlow is appointed as the captain of a steamboat for an ivory trading organization called Company. While travelling up the river he encounters inefficiency and brutality at the Company’s native stations. He also witnesses the exploitation and oppression of the natives under the Company’s agents. The novel is a white man’s imaginative narrative of Africa, at once repulsive and desirable. Africa is a stereotypical landscape evolved from white man’s ambiguous attitude to it. Conrad’s Africa is a land of impregnable forests, throbbing drums, primitive customs, sudden sunsets, vultures and black water fever. He describes an Africa without meaning, coherence and order where rational human beings end up confused, overcome with obscurity and wilderness. The physicality of Africa is incomprehensible and maddening, creating a “heart of darkness” which is a site for various kinds of conflicts.

The paper has been drafted to critically evaluate the heart of darkness and it portrays of Africa and Africans. It has considered Chinua Achebe's criticism of the novel as a means for “dehumanization of Africa and Africans." For the critical evaluation of the assertion different perspective has been taken. The novel has been critically evaluating from the perspective of the Chinua Achebe and other writers. In the later section, the writing of Conrad has been evaluated based on the circumstances and the perspective of that era. Lastly, the assertion has been evaluated based on the period of critics like Chinua Achebe. Reading and evaluating the work of Conrad in the 21st century is itself a different perspective. When the novel has been published, no critic has pointed out that it's writing to the dehumanization of Africa and Africans. However, in 1902, “An Image of Africa" has been evolved. The critics like Chinua Achebe know that its perspective will be well understood in that period. Though the meaning of the words remains the same the ideas that had been construed from it have to keep on changing based on the period and the circumstances of that era

For decades, the tales about the colonies were known solely as told by the colonial masters, where the aboriginal people were seen as Kipling wrote - “half devil, half child”. But this was altered for good when the 28-year-old Achebe “wrote back to Europe” with his epoch-making novel - Things Fall Apart, bringing a true story from the heart of Africa.

The aim of this paper is to explore the possibility of reading “An Outpost of Progress” (1897), the first fiction where Joseph Conrad deals with Europeans in Africa, through Samuel Beckett’s categories of alienation and absurd. The perspective opened up by such a comparison can illuminate, I argue, the irony underlying Conrad’s writings, especially with regards to his debated attitude towards the Empire, largely based on Heart of Darkness, after Chinua Achebe and Edward Said’s stances on it.

The devolution of the struggle for power from the centre to the periphery happens in three mutually dependent levels. First, there are power-allocating narratives made. As Joseph Conrad shows, they legitimise the dominance of the centre over the peripheries by circulating homemade “re-presentations” of the “other.” Second, the “grand narratives” are dismantled into small local ones without simultaneous dismantling of the universal “re-productions” of “the other” already existent within them. Third, the local narratives are taken to the peripheries where they are purged of their generalising “sentimental pretences” of unquestionable authority. It is John Maxwell Coetzee who, in Waiting for the Barbarians, devolves the power struggle to the peripheries to show that in the history of human conquest of the “dark” world “the outside” has been irreplaceable for this is where the authority begins. To avoid Conrad’s “tragic limitation,” he refrains from specifying what that “outside” might be. He leaves it up to the reader to decide.

Understanding The Power and the Glory requires watching for the forms of pain, its embrace (the peasants, Captain Fellows’ daughter), and the matching attempts to escape it (Padre José, Fellows and wife), or end it (the Lieutenant). The Socialist programme, for which all the executions, violence, and destruction are inflicted, is to permanently end human suffering, the great Enlightenment project. So the Lieutenant is like a priest:

There was something of a priest in his intent observant walk—a theologian going back over the errors of the past to destroy them again. … [His room] looked as comfortless as a prison or a monastic cell …. He was a mystic too, and what he had experienced was vacancy—a complete certainty in the existence of a dying, cooling world, of human beings who had evolved from animals for no purpose at all. He knew. 

This matching, and mutual causation, of opposites, especially these two, Catholicism and Marxism, is characteristic of Greene’s thinking as it is also of Charles Williams in his history of the Holy Spirit in the Church, The Descent of the Dove.
The first words of The Power and the Glory speak of a cylinder of ether, vainly sought, and, when not found, declared not worth the trouble: “It did not matter so much after all: a little additional pain was hardly noticeable in the huge abandonment.”  The ether symbolizes all the searches to avoid pain, and their good and evil concomitants, with which The Power and the Glory is concerned: it keeps the Whiskey Priest  from surrender to the state authorities, it drives his search for brandy, it motivates the Marxist politicians and police to exterminate priests and close the churches, it enables the manipulations of the hypochondriac Trixie Fellows, and prevents Captain Fellows, her husband, from checking her evil, it brings the archetypical pain-giver, the dentist, into the beginning and end of the novel, in the latter he joins the vultures watching the execution of the Whiskey priest.
It also produces, in contrast, the martyr priests, and the martyr Indians who protect and die for them, and the Indians on their knees at Mass, arms cruciform to intensify pain, and, by that, find the intensification of their participation in the Mass as the priest’s making present and effective again the sacrificial suffering and death of the Son of God. Thus the Mass, understood in this way, becomes, the underlying reason of the work. This list is only a suggestion of the many forms the search to avoid pain, and its correlative seeking of it, take in a novel where conversion to Christianity is conversion to the embrace of pain.
As we have discovered and to my surprise, Graham Greene does not describe his passage from the godless and churchless Anglicanism of his school and university years to Catholicism as “conversion.” Intellectual, it lacked the integration of his professional life and his religion as well as emotion. However, the Catholicism of The Power and the Glory belongs to his “conversion.” We explore how Greene uses the term and how he comes to his conversions.

The present study aims to make a clear understanding of the science fiction. This study focuses on the theme of Journey of exploration as a major theme in science fiction that Joseph Conrad dealt with in his novella Heart of Darkness. This study tries to analyze three themes in Heart of Darkness: the theme of exploration of the unknown continent as well as exploration of the self, the development of medical science, and the metaphorical language. These three themes equate heart of darkness to science fiction. This paper deals with the dream of exploration that was inside the mind of Joseph Conrad during his childhood and how this dream became the truth of today. This research study used qualitative research methodology and the data collected from books, journals, articles, magazine, and relevant website.

This piece, originally written during my postgraduate studies of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Anglo-American University in Prague, is a comprehensive overview of Joseph Conrad's classic "Heart of Darkness" (2006 Norton Critical Edition), covering the context of the work, the plot, selected critical interpretations, and adding a Heideggerian reading of this text.

Postcolonial literature consists predominantly of works written over the last few decades, there are still many discussions concerning the status of authors who wrote at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Of these, one of the most frequently discussed is, of course, Joseph Conrad, whom most contemporary scholars see as being one of the first postcolonial writers — someone who criticized the sometimes ruthless and pointless colonial expansion of European empires and the concept of the “White Man’s Burden.” The works which attract particular attention are, of course, those which relate to Conrad’s African experience: An Outpost of Progress and the excellent, albeit over exploited novella Heart of Darkness.

A small paper on the metaphor of "Africa" in J. Conrad's novel stands for the uncharted "darkness" of the inner world of man and explores the text as a highly spiritual (Not religious!) narrative, questioning what it really means to be human.