Blog Post #2: What's the deal with Heart of Darkness?

I'm going to start out with throwing my own personal opinion out there as to whether or not we should read Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Anything that provokes multiple discussions, critical essays and entire classes based off of one man's work, must be deemed worthy of reading. I've heard multiple references to this text, and now I can hold my own in a conversation because I know what the hell people are talking about. This book can be broken down not only for it's literary structure, such as the themes, metaphors, symbols, character development, etc. but for the feelings it invokes in those that read it. This book is not necessarily something I would want to read again, but I feel that in the discussions we've had in class, it's enough to prove that this piece of literature is worth the arguments and analysis that have been thrown around for the last 100 + years.

I'm going to bring up Chinua Achebe, clearly this guy is not a fan of Conrad's. His use of the term "racist" while referring to HoD show's one man's opinion of the issues brought up within the text. In his critical essay 'An Image of Africa' he claims that "Heart of Darkness projects the image of Africa as "the other world," the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization, a place where man's vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant bestiality." (338)Not necessarily the opinion I share, but it is an opinion. His own literary work, Things Fall Apart, shows a more personal approach to the life the Africans lived and we are introduced to some traditions and means of survival within African tribes rather than learning of their culture through brief refrences of the savagery and bare feet.

J. Hillis Miller brings up an interesting point in his essay 'Should we read "Heart of Darkness?"' when he states "There are certainly ways to read "Heart of Darkness" that might do harm".(474) It is easy to pick out certain examples from the text that could make it easy for people to call Conrad racist, misogynistic, ignorant or whatever else you want to blame him for. But he does go on to say that it is up to the reader as to whether or not we should read it.

Back to my opinion, why wouldn't you want to read it even if only to get into an interesting/heated discussion? Everything that this book entails can be scrutinized many different ways. For example, I don't think Marlow is all that great. To me, he is a simple man that becomes corrupt due to his obsession with Kurtz. He appears to be all noble, yet I see very little emotion in him. In Francis Ford Coppola's Apocolypse Now, Martin Sheen really captures Marlow the way that I read him. The opening scene shows him going obsolutely insane and then as soon as he's given a job, he has something to focus on. As I read this, I kept thinking of Johnny Depp's character in The Ninth Gate. Depp plays Dean Corso, a book dealer that specializes in rare editions and prints. The guy really doesn't have much to offer other than his expertise in book dealing but is given a task to locate books to have been written by the Devil himself. He becomes obsessed with his task just as Conrad does and people die in his search.

I'm getting off topic now, but this is just my illustration of how there are many ways to interpret this work. Even Buffy the Vampire Slayer makes reference's to Conrad's work. In season 4, episode 22 entitled 'Restless', Xander makes a suggestion that the gang watch Apocolypse Now and Willow replies "Can't we watch something a little less Heart of Darkness-y?" Xander then has a dream that is straight out of the film and you get to see Armin Shimmerman (Quark from Deep Space Nine) recapture his role as Principle Snyder playing Marlon Brando's Col. Kurtz. If you happen to be a giant nerd like me, I suggest you watch it. Pretty funny.

That concludes this weeks blog assignment. I think people should read Heart of Darkness then talk about it. It won't be a boring discussion.