Nomination in Heart of Darkness

1
Nomination in Heart of Darkness

• By Megan Ryan, Elizabeth Schlesinger, and Amy
  Torbert

2
People

• The Narrator
• He was silent for a long time.
• The Intended
• They the women are out of it. We must help
  them to stay in that beautiful world of their own
  less ours gets worse. You should have heard the
  disinterred body of Mr. Kurtz, My Intended.
• The Manager
• It survived his strength to hide in the
  magnificent folds of eloquence that barren
  darkness of his heart.

3
The Heart of Darkness

• p. 9 and 10 This has been one of the dark places
  on earth
• p. 12 The Continent
• p. 34 Anything can be done in this country
• p. 37 We penetrated deeper and deeper into the
  heart of darkness
• Reflection Everything about the place in
  Marlows recollection is sinister and dark,
  literally. The place is described by colors
  those of the people and the surroundings. The
  profound darkness of the place contrasts starkly
  with the fires that blaze in the forests,
  symbolic of the life within the void. The place
  is never named specifically perhaps because
  imperialism ran rampant all over the world, and
  similar conditions could have existed anywhere.
  Also, this lack of specificity allows the reader
  to connect personally with the experience of the
  characters, by not specifically tying the events
  to one place or set of people

4
Jump Between Decades

• P. 11 I dont want to bother you much with
  what happened to be personally
• Now when I was a little chap I had a passion
  for maps.
• True, by this time it the place Marlow wanted
  to visit was not a blank space any more
• P. 48-49 he was very little more than a
  voice he was silent for a long time. I laid
  the ghost of his gifts at last with a lie

5
Marlows Reaction to the Jungle

• P. 37 trees, trees, millions of trees, massive,
  immense, running up height, and at their foot,
  hugging the bank against the stream
• Through Marlows vivid descriptions of the jungle
  and the surrounding area, one can not only
  picture the jungle but because Marlow describes
  the feelings that it creates in people, one can
  place themselves right in the jungle, reacting to
  things through their own imagination.

6
The Nature of Ceremonies

• p. 56 He came to them with thunder and
  lightning.
• p. 58 I do not want to know anything of the
  ceremonies when approaching Mr. Kurtz.
• p. 59 as if the forest that had ejected these
  beings so suddenly had drawn them in again as the
  breath is drawn in a long aspiration.
• p. 68 The horror! The horror!
• Kurtz is referred to by name many times by those
  who do not know him, but his nearest contacts
  refer to him mythically. First, the Bacchus
  reference ties to his thundering entrance into
  the Congo. The people of the forest also emerge
  and withdraw to the beat of the ceremonial drum,
  aligned to Kurtzs last breaths and the beat of
  Marlow's heart.

7
Reflections

• Conrad uses this method in order to allow the
  reader to use their imagination, developing the
  characters based upon the readers own perception
  and not the perception of the author

8
Bibliography

• Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. Norton
  Critical Editions New York, New York. 1988.
• Weiss, James. Monarch Critical Notes on Joseph
  Conrads Heart of Darkness. Simon Schuster,
  Inc. New York, New York. 1997.
• www.classicnotes.Com.