Lit Anal: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

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

Charley Marlow talks of when he went "freshwater sailor". He got a job as a steamboat captain very quickly and it took him some months to reach his actual steam boat. Once he arrived to pick it up they informed him that it was at the bottom of the river and that he must wait 3 more months for it to be fixed. When there, he describes the "cannibals" or "criminals" that are put to work producing ivory. He speaks of their physical state and their mental state as well. You can tell he thinks himself better than them because of his skin color but not as much as the other white characters. Kurtz, a man known for producing the most ivory from all the stations and Marlow shows interest in meeting this legend and becomes somewhat obsessed with the idea because it seems he has nothing to look forward to. Marlow gets his boat fixed and sets out with some "pilgrims" and "cannibals". They come across a hut where there is fire wood left for them and Marlow takes a old book. They are then attacked by natives from the jungle but make it out of there. They survive and finally get to Kurtz's station but find a Russian man instead who tells them that Kurtz has established himself as a god with the workers and goes on territory raids as a method of obtaining more ivory. After trying to escape back to the natives, Kurtz is moved into the steam boat where he is dying. He leaves Marlow with documents and a pamphlet on civilizing the savages. His last words are "The Horror! The Horror!" which Marlow later lies about to his Fiancee and says his last words were her name just as Europeans in Africa used to lie about what was actually happening in Africa because they knew the truth was harder for Europeans who lived in Europe to grasp.

2. Succinctly describe the theme of the novel. Avoid cliches.

The fine line between light and darkness. This is not just in a sense of color tones but black and white, good and bad, African and European. Through out the novel, you find your selves greeted with phrases like "so dark green as to be almost black. Fringed with white surf..." or "paddled by black fellows. You can see from afar the whites of their eye balls glistening." where black is described and is immediately followed by white. "It looked startling round his black neck, this bit of white thread from beyond the seas." We also see the theme when he describes his black helper and how he finds himself wondering if this cannibal actually might have humanity in him. This shows that although one is dark skinned and the other light skinned, they are both humans. Essentially, we always choose to see the differences between black and white, light and darkness and Conrad paints a picture where both are intertwined and the differences are blurred. 

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

The author has a detailed tone. He doesn't describe everything in as much detail as possible but only the most important pictures and with selectively picked out words which make the work all the better.  

 “Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees leaning against the trunks, clinging to the earth, half coming out, half effaced within the dim light, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair. Another mine on the cliff went off, followed by a slight shudder of the soil under my feet. The work was going on. The work! And this was the place where some of the helpers had withdrawn to die. "

The auother also has a candid, outspoken and open tone. He speaks of the horrors of Africa without omitting some of the more graphic descriptions and he doesn't hold back about what the white people did to the natives. 

"It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind—as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much."

 "It came in sections during the next three weeks, each section headed by a donkey carrying a white man in new clothes and tan shoes, bowing from that elevation right and left to the impressed pilgrims. A quarrelsome band of footsore sulky niggers trod on the heels of the donkey; a lot of tents, camp-stools, tin boxes, white cases, brown bales would be shot down in the courtyard, and the air of mystery would deepen a little over the muddle of the station."

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

Metaphors are widely used by Conrad to describe many sorts of aspects in the book. The use of metaphors when describing the wilderness or the natives are some of my personal favorites. He compares the natives to phantoms and corpses in order to show that they were sure of death. He presents the wilderness in different lights and compares them to different things to show that the wild has many sides to it. 

"One, with his chin propped on his knees, stared at nothing, in an intolerable and appalling manner: his brother phantom rested its forehead, as if overcome with a great weariness; and all about others were scattered in every pose of contorted collapse, as in some picture of a massacre or a pestilence."

"A frightful clatter came out of that hulk,and the virgin forest on the other bank of the creek sent it back."

" the playful paw strokes of the wilderness." 

Imagery is very important in Conrad's work because his work is based on images and not on dialogue.

 "It had become a place of darkness. But there was in it one river especially, a mighty big river, that you could see on the map resembling an immense snake, with its head in the sea, its body at rest carving afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in depths of the land.”

"The tidal current runs to and fro in its unceasing service, crowded with memories of men ships it had borne to the rest of home or to the battles of the sea."

“I could see every rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking”

Similes are also an important tool and can be found everywhere along the text. The similes help the reader imagine what the narrator saw and by using similes the reader has an easier time grasping every picture the narrator captures. 

"A lot of people, mostly black and naked, moved about like ants." 

 “A beardless, boyish face, very fair, no features to speak of, nose peeling, little blue eyes, smiles and frowns chasing each other over that open countenance like sunshine and shadow on a wind-swept plain.”

"Perhaps on some quiet night the tremor of far-off drums, sinking, swelling, a tremor vast, faint; a sound weird, appealing, suggestive, and wild—and perhaps with as profound a meaning as the sound of bells in a Christian country."

Personifications is a way that Conrad brought to life the themes and established his sense of tone. By using personification, the author helps the imagination of the reader grasp the characters of the ships or the water for example.

 "But the ships wouldn’t even look at me."

"We called at some more places with farcical names, where the merry dance of death and trade goes on in a still and earthy atmosphere as of an overheated catacomb; all along the formless coast bordered by dangerous surf, as if Nature herself had tried to ward off intruders; in and out of rivers, streams of death in life, whose banks were rotting into mud, whose waters, thickened into slime, invaded the contorted mangroves, that seemed to writhe at us in the extremity of an impotent despair."

“And outside, the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion.”

Symbolism is important to the story in that it gives the work another layer that the reader has to dig through in order to completely understand the author's piece as a whole. He uses symbolism in describing subjects that come out just once and also that stretch the length of the book. 

 "She seemed to know all about them and about me, too. An eerie feeling came over me. She seemed uncanny and fateful. Often far away there I thought of these two, guarding the door of darkness, knitting black wool as for a warm pall, one introducing, introducing continuously to the unknown, the other scrutinizing the cheery and foolish faces with unconcerned old eyes. Ave! Old knitter of black wool. Morituri te salutant. Not many of those she looked at ever saw her again—not half, by a long way."

The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky—seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.

"...a woman, draped and blindfolded, carrying a lighted torch. The background was sombre- almost black. The movement of the woman was stately, and the effect of the torchlight on the face was sinister."