Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

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Heart of Darknessby Joseph Conrad
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GRAHAM GREENE, Journey without Maps (1936)

• I thought for some reason even then of Africa,
  not a particular place, but a shape, a
  strangeness, a wanting to know. The unconscious
  mind is often sentimental I have written a
  shape, and the shape, of course, is roughly that
  of the human heart.
• Africa will always be the Africa of the Victorian
  atlas, the blank unexplored continent the shape
  of the human heart.

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CONGO FREE STATE (1885)
1879-1885 Henry Morton Stanley explores the
region for Leopold II of Belgium 1890 Conrads
expedition to the Congo (Before the Congo I was
a mere animal)
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Democratic Republic of the Congo (1997)
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Democratic Republic of the Congo
1908 Belgian Congo 1960 Independence 1964
Peoples Republic of the Congo 1971 Republic of
Zaire 1997 Democratic Republic of the Congo
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HEART OF DARKNESS

• NARRATIVE FRAME
• LEVELS
• OF INTERPRETATION
• IMAGERY SYMBOLISM

• Conrads Experience
• Narrative Construction

Conrad as Hyphenated white man cf. M.L. Pratt
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HEART OF DARKNESS

• MARLOWS TALE
• SEARCH FOR KURTZ
• The Idea of Empire
• The Journey ? Quest

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BLANKNESS-DARKNESS

• Blank SpaceSpace of Darkness
• Emptiness / Primitivism
• DISORDER

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The Imperial Map

• A passion for maps
• A large shining map, marked by all the colours
  of the rainbow
• RED (cf. use of colours)
• RAINBOW (cf. Harlequin)

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Places

• White City / Sepulchral City (Brussels)
• Outer Station (Company Station-Matadi)
• Central Station (General Manager-Kinshasa)
• A hut of reeds (a curious outpost of civilization
  halfway up the river)
• Inner Station (Stanley Falls-Kisangani Cf. heads
  on stakes )

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The African Landscape

• MYSTERY-ENIGMA
• WILDERNESS personified
• COAST (formless)
• RIVERSNAKE (devil?)
• FOREST (impenetrable)

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The African Landscape

• Inferno
• Primeval MUD
• Wall of vegetation
• Unknown PLANET

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DARKNESS Imagery

• River Thames-River Congo
• Jungledark and foreboding
• Night-Death
• SUNLESS HOLE (ABYSS)
• His was an impenetrable darkness. I looked at
  him as you peer down at a man who is lying at the
  bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines

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Mental-Physical Illness

• Mental changes that individuals would undergo
  while in the wilderness (cf. doctor)
• Various illnesses, fever, delirium, death
• Kurtzs weakness of mind (his nerves went
  wrong) and body
• Corruption, degradation

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OTHERNESS

• The people of Africa and the land they live
  remain inscrutably alien, other
• Idea of Intrusion (impenetrable and treacherous
  nature)
• Inhumanity of the blacks
• This suspicion of their not being inhuman
• Language ? Silence (Cf. Sounds)

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The African Woman

• THE BODY OF AFRICA
• Cf. female characters
• They the women are out of it should be out
  of it
• Cf. The Intended
• Cf. the aunt, the two women knitting black wool

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CHARACTERS

• COLONIZERS-COLONIZED
• Pilgrims (Eldorado Expedition ? to tear
  treasure out of the bowels of the land)
• EUROPEANS-AFRICANS
• WHITE-BLACK

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Main Issues

• Exploitation
• Evil
• Miscegenetion
• Going Native
• Civilization vs. Savagery
• ?
  AMBIGUITY