¶13-16: The African Queen. The spirit of the wilderness?
¶18-21: Kurtz vs. the Manager: Choice of nightmares…”As it happens, I am Mr. Kurtz’s friend—in a way.
¶23-29: a descent into Hades? An encounter with the Fates?
¶29: Compare with Pt. II, ¶29.
¶33: Wistfulness and hate
¶36: The manager’s triumph. “Unsound method.”
¶48: Marlow’s valedictory on Kurtz
As I said in class Wednesday, this is a blog in which your group posts its findings. Make the entry as complete as you can, and sign everyone's name at the bottom. Should be very interesting…
To re-cap, here's the prompt from class:
Heart of Darkness is not Kurtz’s story, but Marlow’s. In your group discussion, work to develop a better understanding of our enigmatic narrator. Start by re-reading his account of his job interview in the “Sepulchral City” (also the conversation with his aunt).
Note this later statement:
Part 1 ¶ 62
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 the Congo?
What is the nature of his attachment toward—loyalty for—Kurtz? Just a preference for hot-running devils?
Can you find any clue to the effects—physical & spiritual—of Marlow's experience in the Congo in Narrator One’s description of him?
Read ¶ 38 of Part 1. 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?
• • • • • • • • • •
That's the blog assignment. For Monday's conversation in class, think also about these topics and note the appropriate passages in your text:
Think also about these:
From Part 1, ¶ 9:
The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical (if his propensity to spin yarns be excepted), and to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine.
From Part 1, ¶ 14:
We looked on, waiting patiently—there was nothing else to do till the end of the flood; but it was only after a long silence, when he said, in a hesitating voice, “I suppose you fellows remember I did once turn fresh-water sailor for a bit,” that we knew we were fated, before the ebb began to run, to hear about one of Marlow’s inconclusive experiences.
In the narrator’s indirect way (Marlow’s experiences are “inconclusive,” the meaning of his yarn is “not inside” but “outside”) he—with the author—is warning his audience about the tale Marlow will relate.
[And if you're confused, note that an unnamed narrator starts our tale, then turns it over to Marlow for most of the duration.]
What do his warnings lead us to expect, and not to expect, from the tale Marlow tells? Can we assign exact meaning and interpretation to utterances like, "The horror! The horror!"?
Remember—your response to this is one paragraph, tops!
By now you should have read the three essays on Oedipus Tyrannos by Marjorie Barstow, S.M. Adams and Robert Cohen.
Marjorie Barstow’s essay identifies the crucial differences between Aristotle’s concept of an ideal man and his concept of a tragic hero. She wrote the essay during her sophomore year at Cornell University, 1909-1910. Later she revised and re-titled it (excitingly) “Oedipus Rex: A Typical Greek Tragedy.” In that form the essay was included in Lane Cooper’s The Greek Genius and Its Influence [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1917.
The other two essays were written much later. They do not align with each other in many respects: Cohen has a point to make about the relevancy of Sophocles’s work to the 20th century concept of absurdism. His reference to Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot makes clear his familiarity with what came to be known as the Theatre of the Absurd, a post WWII phenomenon of plays written by (says Encyclopedia Britannica)…
“…certain European and American dramatists of the 1950s and early ‘60s who agreed with the Existentialist philosopher Albert Camus’s assessment, in his essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” (1942), that the human situation is essentially absurd, devoid of purpose.”
I hope this explanation clears up any confusion you might feel about Cohen’s use of the word “absurd.” His is a different view on the nature of Oedipus’s role as tragic hero than the one that Adams presents. How you react to them very much depends on your own perspective.
Which of the three writers expressed for you the most stimulating and revealing ideas and insights. Were any of your own ideas overturned? Did you learn anything about Oedipus, or about interpreting Oedipus, that might affect your own future writing?
That’s the blog post for Monday. Apologies for failing to get it up sooner.
Esteemed Thespians (for that is what you are):
Read a third or so of Oedipus, so that you come to the stage with at least a third of the awareness a traditional Greek audience (we won't even mention the players) would have in launching the drama.
Mark any notable examples therein of dramatic irony—the kind that creates its own variety of suspense, or might excite an apt audience to fear and pity. Be prepared to point such things out, even if it means stopping the show.
And remember: the closer you hug the walls of the room, the more I'll be inclined to drop a major role on you. As they (probably) say at Intel & Nike—be a team player.
Yours,
J.D.
O you,But Lenina, hardly comprehending such highflown language, responds this way:
So perfect and so peerless, are created
Of every creature’s best!
‘Put your arms round me,’ she commanded. ‘Hug me till you drug me, honey.’ She too had poetry at her command, knew words that sang and were spells and beat drums. ‘Kiss me’; she closed her eyes, she let her voice sink to a sleepy murmur, ‘kiss me till I’m in a coma. Hug me, honey, snuggly…’As John becomes violent, he searches his store of Shakespeare for words that express his anger and disappointment at finding his Juliet is a mere “strumpet.” From the love-smitten Ferdinand he turns to the the insanely jealous Othello: ‘O thou weed, who art so lovely fair and smell’st so sweet that the sense aches at thee. Was this most goodly book made to write “whore” upon? Heaven stops the nose at it…’
Near the end of Chapter 2, you will find this short paragraph (another sentence fragment, by the way—guess they're not so bad after all, provided you know how to use them):
Not so much like drops of water, though water, it is true, can wear holes in the hardest granite; rather, drops of liquid sealing-wax, drops that adhere, incrust, incorporate themselves with what they fall on, till finally the rock is all one scarlet blob.
Explore this simile and decide what it signifies.
Then find examples in the Brave New World in which the rock nearly breaks through the wax, or where the wax layer is so thin that the rock can be perceived, even if only for a moment. Start with the characters you explored in class and branch out if you have other examples you'd like to cite. You can do this as a group if you can figure out how to make a joint statement.
I'll do likewise and report my findings in Monday's class.
Enjoy the weekend!
JD
Man is about to be an automaton; he is identifiable only in the computer. As a person of worth and creativity, as a being with an infinite potential, he retreats and battles the forces that make him inhuman.
The dissent we witness is a reaffirmation of faith in man; it is protest against living under rules and prejudices and attitudes that produce the extremes of wealth and poverty and that make us dedicated to the destruction of people through arms, bombs, and gases, and that prepare us to think alike and be submissive objects for the regime of the computer.
—Justice WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS, Points of Rebellion, pp. 32–33 (1970)
Justice Douglas (1898-1980) was a dedicated champion of civil liberty and an outspoken opponent of censorship of any kind. His words of warning came nearly 40 years after Brave New World appeared. What does his message have in common with Aldous Huxley's novel? Were the two writers correct?—are individual rights in danger? Is dissent itself dangerous to the individual?
