Literary Analysis #3

Heart Of Darkness

by Joseph Conrad

1.Briefly summarize the plot of the novel you read.

     Marlow is a sailor who travels up the Congo River to meet Kurtz.  During his travel to Africa, Marlow realized the brutal  treatment in Central Station, run. Later,  his steamship sank and waited until it was fixed. Marlow and other agents pursue a long, difficult journey up the river. They discover a hut stacked with firewoods along with a note that they should be cautious. Shortly, the gang arrive at Kurtz’s Inner Station, expecting to find him dead, but a half-crazed Russian trader, who meets them as they come ashore, assures them that everything is fine. Kurtz lied to the natives that he was a god and went on brutal raids in the to search ivory. The skulls placed around the station is the consequence of his nefarious actions. Marlow listens to Kurtz talk. Kurtz hands Marlow personal documents. Later on, Marlow becomes ill and barely recuperates. He comes to Europe and goes to see Kurtz’s Intended. Even though it has been over a year since Kurtz’s death, she is in melancholgy. She asks Marlow what his last words were, but Marlow couldn't break her heart, so he tells her that it was her name.
2. Succinctly describe the theme of the novel. Avoid cliches.

One of the themes in this book is madness which is tied with imperialism. It is defined as being removed from one’s social life and allowed to be the sole arbiter of one’s own actions.

3. Describe the author's tone.  Include three excerpts that illustrate your point(s).

The overall tone of the novel is pessimistic. Marlow refers to darkness, madness, and fear throughout the story. Judging from my view, it is probably based on Conrad’s own negative experience to his voyage up the Congo River.

"A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth."

"I came upon a boiler wallowing in the grass, then found a path leading up the hill. It turned aside for the boulders, and also for an undersized railway-truck lying there on its back with its wheels in the air. One was off. The thing looked as dead as the carcass of some animal. I came upon more pieces of decaying machinery, a stack of rusty rails. To the left a clump of trees made a shady spot, where dark things seemed to stir feebly."

"The great wall of vegetation, an exuberant and entangled mass of trunks, branches, leaves, boughs, festoons, motionless in the moonlight, was like a rioting invasion of soundless life, a rolling wave of plants, piled up, crested, ready to topple over the creek, to sweep every little man of us out of his little existence. And it moved not."

4. Describe five literary elements/techniques you observed that strengthened your understanding of the theme and/or your sense of the tone.  Include three excerpts that will help your reader understand each one.

1)Imagery : Helps me to visualize the text when I'm reading along. It leaves a better memory of the story.

2)Symbolism:  In this story, light eludes to darkness. Darkness represents the myteries of life. Lightness is darkness, darkness is lightness. It's complicated.

3)Foreshadow: This Doctor foreshadows the upcoming danger and eventual madness that Marlow will face in the interior. Measuring Marlow’s skull is something akin to taking scientific observations of his brain.

4)Allusion: Some references to the devil and Dante: The Divine Comedy allow the story to have a darker tone.

5)Metaphor: The use of this device allows me to make connections between the person being compared to the noun.

"Then I noticed a small sketch in oils, on a panel, representing a woman, draped and blind-folded, carrying a lighted torch. The background was somber – almost black. The movement of the woman was stately, and the effect of the torchlight on the face was sinister." 

"Two women, one fat and the other slim, sat on straw-bottomed chairs, knitting black wool. The slim one got up and walked straight at me – still knitting with downcast eyes – and only just as I began to think of getting out of her way, as you would for a somnambulist, stood still, and looked up. Her dress was as plain as an umbrella-cover, and she turned round without a word and preceded me into a waiting-room."

“The brown current ran swiftly out of the heart of darkness, bearing us down towards the sea with twice the speed of our upward progress; and Kurtz’s life was running swiftly, too, ebbing, ebbing out of his heart into the sea of inexorable time. . . . I saw the time approaching when I would be left alone of the party of ‘unsound method.’”