amychen
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“But the wild things cried, “Oh please don’t go—we’ll eat you up—we love you so!”
Posts: 47 
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Post by amychen on Mar 23, 2014 7:25:01 GMT
DON'T PANIC I HAVEN'T FINISHED READING YET EITHER. I just wanted to make sure this exists. So, I hope you're all enjoying the break. Feel free to post river-related passages on here as you get to them, or ponder the meaning of the river outside of all time being all time. Near the end of the week we should probably become more conclusive (you know, to teach). But for now, keep working on that Conrad. Also, if you happen to be in this group please respond to this thread so we actually know who's in the group 
[We] should be prepared to deliver a mini-lesson on your assigned topic related to Heart of Darkness. [Our] discussion should include a walkthrough of several passages that deal with your topic and how these passages work to create meaning and effect in the book as a whole. Don’t just point to passages; describe specifically how they work in the context of Conrad’s greater purpose. If you are having trouble getting started, try filling in the blanks of the following sentence: Conrad uses (insert comment about your topic here) in order to help reinforce his idea that (insert your understanding of Conrad’s overall purpose here).
From there, any discussion of text should focus on how it develops and refines the idea in your completed sentence. Aim for about ten minutes of presentation time.
LOVE, Amy |
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amychen
New Member
“But the wild things cried, “Oh please don’t go—we’ll eat you up—we love you so!”
Posts: 47
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Post by amychen on Mar 25, 2014 6:22:02 GMT
USING ALL MY WILLPOWER, I finally finished reading Heart of Darkness.
Table of Contents: 1. Amy on why Heart of Darkness is rad. 2. Amy on Rivers because that's what we're supposed to be talking about. PART ONE: AMY ON WHY HEART OF DARKNESS IS RAD
I liked it. I feel like I'm not supposed to like Conrad's novel because it portrays women and Africans questionably, and because every time someone mentions Heart of Darkness they proceed with moans or stories about how their friends/family/pets hated it, and maybe because my spitefully rebellious unconscious wants to flip everyone the bird, but I liked it. I know I like a book when I find myself writing down quotes because I don't want to forget them. They're beautiful---And not always beautiful in the sense of pure description. Sometimes Conrad came off Vonnegut-esque, and other times his writing reminded me of The Great Gatsby, all with the odd framing structure we found in Wuthering Heights and Ethan Frome. In other words, Conrad's tone was humorous when it should be, and "deep" when it should be. It was balanced. Yes, Conrad does use symbolism constantly like in The Scarlet Letter, but his usage appears more warranted (and realistic) than Hawthorne's. A few of my favorite quotes: Vonnegut-esque: - On colonialism: "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. What redeems it is the idea only" (Conrad 4).
- On the chief accountant: "His appearance was certainly that of a hairdresser's dummy; but in the great demoralization of the land he kept up his appearance. That's backbone" (Conrad 14).
Gatsby-esque
- On the shore: "Watching the coast as it slips by this ship is like thinking about an enigma...always mute with an air of whispering, Come and find out" (Conrad 10).
- On death: "And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible" (Conrad 63)
In other words, Heart of Darkness is beautiful and engaging. Although the framing sometimes makes the book hard to follow, the moments when Conrad is spot-on make it worth minor confusion.
PART TWO: AMY ON RIVERS BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT WE'RE SUPPOSED TO BE TALKING ABOUT
My mom just told me to go beddy bye, so this will happen another time. Probably tomorrow.
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amychen
New Member
“But the wild things cried, “Oh please don’t go—we’ll eat you up—we love you so!”
Posts: 47
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Post by amychen on Mar 25, 2014 22:07:24 GMT
So I had written a much longer post, and then somehow my backspace button made me go back three pages when I was trying to delete a typo. Thanks, internet. Anyway, the gist of my post had been that the river serves as a kind of "blood" for the heart of darkness, and thus we can read the steamboat and sailors as representations of two different things: 1. Viruses or mutations in the blood of the wilderness. 2. As people from "civilized" land, we can interpret the industrial goals and drive as a product of/fueled by their backgrounds from the wilderness---hence the "they're not so different" contrast with the people of the land. Conrad likely uses the sailors (who do have a bit of an elitist view towards the land) to make this observation because they walk the line between land and sea. A few quotes that brought me to these interpretations: - "The brown current ran swiftly out of the hear 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 this heart into the sea of inexorable time" (60)---fitting to the heart analogy and my fuel theory.
- "I steamed up a bit, then swung down-stream, and two thousand eyes followed the evolutions of the splashing, thumping, fierce river-demon beating the water with its terrible tail and breathing black smoke into the air" (59)---fitting to my virus theory.
- "...it was only lately that Mr. Kurtz had come down to the river, bringing along with him all the fighting men of the lake tribe. He had been absent for several months---getting himself adored, I suppose---and had come down unexpectedly, with the intention to all appearance of making a raid either across the river or down stream. Evidently the appetite for more ivory had got the better or the---what shall I say?---less material aspirations" (50)---fitting to the idea that being away from the river is representative of greed and wealth, and adding to the virus theory.
In other words,
Conrad uses rivers as a representative of blood in order to help reinforce his idea that civilized society is dependent on yet slowly destroys the "wilderness," or humankind's own nature.
This conclusion, however, is mostly fueled by the last section of the book. I'll look into earlier sections of the book later to see if I need to make changes to it. Looking forward to getting a dance partner or two Amy |
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Post by mitralebuhn on Mar 26, 2014 2:17:35 GMT
Amy! Hi! Great work! I'm in the river group as well, but because I'm A2 I'm assuming we should divide this motif into 2 separate threads?
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Post by samwerner on Mar 26, 2014 8:21:15 GMT
Amy you are a shining star. I look forward to the commencement of our work together once I finish reading tomorrow.
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amychen
New Member
“But the wild things cried, “Oh please don’t go—we’ll eat you up—we love you so!”
Posts: 47
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Post by amychen on Mar 26, 2014 21:19:09 GMT
mitralebuhn Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think we're supposed to figure out what exactly the river motif means on the forum and then make our lessons by class
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Post by elizabethmeyer on Mar 27, 2014 2:41:19 GMT
Wow, Amy! Thanks so much for getting this ball rolling!
I have no idea if we're supposed to do this by class or just by group or by group within class... all that jazz... so I'm just going to respond here and hope everything works out alright in the end.
This was one of the most confusingly-written, hard to follow stories I've ever read, therefore I have no idea what to think about anything. At first I wondered if the river was some kind of symbol of Marlow's struggle in life - the snags in the river symbolizing his troubles in life or something - but then Marlow would just go and skip around and not talk about things and focus on other things that didn't seem all that important, or other things that were important but just weren't about the river. For a while towards the beginning it seemed as though Marlow would talk about all his different struggles like not having enough bolts to fix the steamer and whatnot, and that at the end it would become more obvious as to how the snags and difficult spots in the river would turn out to be just like the snags and difficult parts of his life. (Maybe that's just some lingering Siddhartha-analyzing hanging around in my mind.) But then he'd just skip over things - for instance, I didn't get the sense that he was frustrated by not having the bolts he needed to fix the steamer - just sort of vaguely unhappy because things weren't going very easily and he was stuck in one place for so long - therefore I started to think that maybe that connection between the river and his life wasn't there after all.
So then I wondered if the same thing could hold true for Kurtz. But Marlow never gave us readers a clear enough picture of Kurtz to be able to make that connection either.
So then I wondered what possibe significance there could be about the river other than a convenient mode of transportation, albeit with a boat that apparently moved at a snail's pace. I found several quotes about the river or the river and the countryside or the river and the people or the river and the boat.... all of which I'm afraid I haven't the patience to type up here. And still I couldn't see much of a pattern - maybe I was looking too hard - except for the fact that Conrad/Marlow keeps contradicting himself. "...over the somber and glittering river" (Conrad 67). At least to me this seems to be a contradiction, or at the very least some sort of juxtaposition. "Somber" and "glittering" seem to at different ends of the spectrum. And so my confusion continued.
So at last I came here to see what some other insightful, intelligent readers had seen in the river because I am at a complete loss. And I found Amy's insightful findings! And I think the idea of the river being the blood of the heart of darkness, and the sailors and steamboat being viruses in the blood is perfect. Not only are they ruining and destroying the land, but they are bringing pollution to previously unpolluted waterways (literally) and to people's ways of life (figuratively). Just like a virus is something foreign in the body and should not be there, the sailors and steamboat - frankly all the Europeans - are foreign to the land that they are trying to conquer and they should not be there.
Once again, thanks so much Amy - some of my confusion is finally going away!!!
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Post by rubyking on Mar 30, 2014 22:24:34 GMT
Okay, here is a passage I remember--
"Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings." (29)
From the writing, I feel like the river is regarded in this really romantic way, almost like the native people, as something to be conquered. They see a certain beautiful savageness in it. I guess it sort of goes along with the whole We're humans and we're entitled to our imperialist ways thing. Ughh I feel like I need to read the whole novel again
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Post by adamgrace on Mar 31, 2014 2:45:56 GMT
I'm not exactly sure how the two rivers contrast, but the Congo River has some definite significance in the story. I love Amy's interpretation that it acts as a sort of circulatory system for the actual Heart of Darkness. The river is a sort of vein that flows out easily because it is pumping the "blood" out of the heart. The river flows downstream out of the continent faster than it flows up stream. It's essentially trying to rid the continent of the invading colonists.
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Post by mitralebuhn on Apr 2, 2014 3:28:39 GMT
I agree with Adam. Amy's interpretation of the circulatory system is really interesting, especially the connection to viruses! The quote Amy provided to back up that point was spot on, as virus' fight to get into the heart. But it led me to consider Kurtz's character. He found his way into the heart, but was transformed by the people in the wilderness, becoming like them, as a cancer cell might copy and change. I feel like on only is the steamboat, that fights to get into the heart, a toxin, but so is the heart itself, as it changes those who enter it. Just as the title suggests, it's a Heart of Darkness.
I think the two might be toxic to one another: the heart, and everything outside of it. They both need things that the other has (i.e. ivory, or medical care) and have a lot to teach one another, but they cannot live coehsively.
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Post by rubyking on Apr 7, 2014 2:51:58 GMT
A4 lovelies--are we just picking two quotes from the book individually for tomorrow?
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amychen
New Member
“But the wild things cried, “Oh please don’t go—we’ll eat you up—we love you so!”
Posts: 47
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Post by amychen on Apr 9, 2014 5:27:20 GMT
Hey A4---I won't be at school until next week. If the presentation happens without me, feel free to use my earlier forum post as what I would've said, had I been there. Facebook message me if you have any questions/need help organizing, and I don't respond on the forum right away.
Good Luck!
Amy
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