Post your results here!

Writers:

Here is the place to post your paragraphs and any notes you care to include. Do it as soon as you can, so that your colleagues (myself included) have an opportunity to read your work and compare ideas. We can spend part of Monday in conference with others who've tackled similar themes if you do your part now.

JD

PS: This is no time to delay action until the last minute. If your work doesn't appear until after 7 p.m. Sunday it will do no one any good. Remember—you've had a head start on this. The idea is to put you in the best of shape possible for your essay. I don't want the assignment to cause misery for you during winter break.

Where's my assignment?

Dear fellow explorers of the Congo & the Heart,

If you want me to suffer as you have, several of you must e-mail me with a pair of related quotations. I'll take it from there and post the results this weekend so that everyone can have a good laugh.

But I can't make a move until I hear from you.

JD

Synthesis

This is not quite a blog posting. Instead we're beginning to ease into essays, starting with this little exercise. And we'll help each other understand and deal with this difficult work in a way that pays us all real dividends. Using the set of themes I compiled for Part 1 and to which you began to add in class today, select one theme that is relevant, interesting, and/or potentially fruitful to you, and two quotations that illuminate that theme—that seem to express in their different way a common idea. Then…

1. Examine and outline the thoughts that occur to you in contemplating the words you selected, both in context and in relation to each other.

2. Devise a "prompt" that relates to the quotes to the theme they hold in common. This can take the form of a thematic or "thesis" statement.

3. Write a body paragraph (probably an extended one) that uses the quotes in a thematic discussion.

Bring all this material with you to class on Thursday. We'll discuss Part 2 of Heart of Darkness and also look the paragraphs over & critique them.

If we do it right, Thursday's class will be a very productive session.

JD

Lying & dying

I would not have gone so far as to fight for Kurtz, but I went for him near enough to a lie. You know I hate, detest, and can’t bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies—which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world—what I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do.

What lie does Marlow tell for Kurtz, and why does he tell it? How does Marlow become entangled in a lie when he signs on as a steamboat captain in Leopold's Congo?

We came close to this question during Friday's discussion. We identified many of the flabby devils and what repels Marlow about them. Look in the Part 1 text to see where Kurtz's name comes up and in what context. There are reasons why Marlow would be attracted to him even without setting eyes on the man—and also reasons why he would be appalled.

Though we're inching up the Congo, we're getting somewhere!

I hope, I truly hope, our last two discussions have been helpful to you in developing a sense of what Heart of Darkness is all about. I think we've been doing pretty darned well. We've kept the whole work in sight and we've also delved into it and come up with some relevant and substantial passages.

I don't want to leave anyone behind in Matadi as we make our way to Kinshasa and Kisangani (some of the real names for the places along the river that Conrad avoids naming).

What I mean is, I want the whole class to feel they're getting it, or getting enough of it that we're all on the same boat and all of us can make out the main features of the landscape. I will spend time with anyone who wants clarification. If we can do this and stay together, we're set for the rest of the year.

This weekend's blog posting follows.

J.D.

Two kinds of devils

In Part 1 today we looked briefly at ¶ 38. For this blog, consider Marlow's curious statement about devils.

You know I am not particularly tender; I’ve had to strike and to fend off. I’ve had to resist and to attack sometimes—that’s only one way of resisting—without counting the exact cost, according to the demands of such sort of life as I had blundered into. I’ve seen the devil of violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire; but, by all the stars! these were strong, lusty, red-eyed devils, that swayed and drove men—men, I tell you. But as I stood on this hillside, I foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of that land I would become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly. How insidious he could be, too, I was only to find out several months later and a thousand miles farther.

What sort of man or men fit this description of a "flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly"? Are there examples of them in Part 1? If so, who and why? Why does Marlow prefer the "strong, lusty, red-eyed devils, that swayed and drove men" over this breed? Are there any examples of the strong & lusty sort to be found in Part 1, or anywhere else for that matter? Who, if any—and why?

Sorry I didn't post this at 2:30. The Prowl got in the way, as I should have known it would. But I'll extend the deadline to 11 p.m. Thursday.

For discussion purposes Friday we'll use this topic as a starting point. Think also about these:

• Contrasts of dark & light
• Contrast between the representatives of "civilization" and the wilderness that surround them
• Atmosphere: a nebulous yet distinct product of diction, phrasing and description. In this work it is especially powerful
• Striking pairs. Examples—Marlow’s ¶13 with the 1^st narrator’s ¶ 6. The torch becomes the “idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea…” OR Two black hens, ¶21 and the two “Fates” ¶23 & 25
• Irony that borders on humor. Examples—The death of Fresleven, ¶21. “The supernatural being had not been touched after he fell.” OR The old doctor who measures heads ¶27 OR ¶51 The drunken officer “looking after the upkeep of the road…” though, Marlow says, “Can’t say I saw any road or any upkeep, unless the body of a middle-aged negro, with a bullet-hole in the forehead, upon which I absolutely stumbled three miles farther on, may be considered as a permanent improvement.”

These and other issues will be our topics of discussion Friday. We'll gather in a circle and I'll be noting participation.

See you then.