Joseph Conrad’s short story, Heart of Darkness was published in 1902 by Signet Classic in New York City. The book is a story within a story - being told from the perspective of an anonymous narrator listening to Marlowe, an old and weathered sailor. The narrator and Marlowe, along with others, are on a ship on the River Thames, sailing to an unknown destination. Marlowe suddenly begins to share the story of his time sailing in Africa in the Congo (to the resigned acceptance of the others), and it is from there that our story begins. Marlowe’s story shares many parallels with Joseph Conrad’s own time in the Congo with a Belgian company in 1890.
Explore how the theme of darkness is presented in The Heart Of Darkness and Blood River Tim Butcher’s ‘Blood River’ which detailed Butcher’s struggle through the Congo and Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’, a fictional novella both explore the theme of darkness. However, due to the lapse of one hundred years in the printing of the two texts, the theme has been presented differently. Blood River- classed as a travelogue- is a first person account of Butcher’s everyday experiences as he travels through the Congo following Henry Morton Stanley’s footsteps, the ‘world’s best-known journalist’. On the other hand, Heart of Darkness is a Modernist novella which is a frame narrative that exposes the realities of brutal European colonialism that jarred with the predominant prevailing belief of the righteousness of imperialism. Heart of Darkness’s frame narrative begins on a Thames river boat with an unknown narrator.
There, he worked briefly on a plantation before being sold to a British officer and commencing an active naval career during the Seven Years’ War and after. Purchasing his freedom after eleven years of slavery, he continued his maritime career and became a keen proponent of Methodism. A fairly prominent African in English society, he became heavily involved in the campaign to abolish the Atlantic slave trade, and published The Interesting Narrative largely to promote this cause. Although born in Africa, Olaudah Equiano was clearly a product of the European Enlightenment. The Interesting Narrative reveals this influence through the book’s radical arguments in favor of individual equality and its opposition to slavery as a cruel and inhumane practice contrary to enlightened society.
The books Heart of Darkness and Blood River both show connotations of physically and emotionally challenging dangers that they are faced with during their journey through Africa. Heart of Darkness is a work of fictions, whereas Blood River is a work of non-fiction that describes Butcher’s journey through the Congo. Blood River’s primary purpose is to entertain however its secondary purpose is to inform and Heart of Darkness’s purpose is to entertain; however shows subtle hints of a secondary purpose of informing. Heart of Darkness presents a war like environment and Conrad employs a lower register in comparison to the rest of the text, to convey the fact that the narrator is in a dangerous situation; this is seen in the use of the minor exclamatory, ‘Arrows, by Jove!’ and the simple sentence ‘We were being shot at!’. This shows that the narrator is in shock and there for his use of language is less considered than in other parts of the narrative where a higher register has been employed.
In the book, enslaved Africans are crudely treated in white owners’ plantations; furthermore, the conditions of salves are inferior in real history. Beyond doubt, the Book of Negroes has strong connections with actual history. Aminata is sent onto the deck of a huge vessel with a rotting smell after months of marching. This part of plot is related to history because salves were truly transported by slave ships from Africa to the Americas; “the earliest ships used to transport human beings from Africa to enslavement in North America were converted merchantmen; later, special vessels were built, equipped with air scuttles, ports, and open gratings” (Mannix, “Slave Ships”). While Aminata is going down into the ship, she finds the living conditions of black people in the dark, stinking place are excessively disgusting; she describes “[their] corridor [is] nothing but a narrow footpath separating the men to [their] left and right.
Modernity in Robert Hayden’s “Middle Passage” Robert Hayden’s work, “Middle Passage,” highlights the events that took place when Africans were forcefully taken from Africa and enslaved as they were brought over to America like chattel. Hayden uses many characteristics of Modernism in his work. The narrator discusses the isolation, brutality, and hardships experience on the slave ships during the Middle Passage. The narrator tells this story from his personal interpretation of the happenings of the Middle Passage, which is characteristic of modernity. He also makes loose references throughout the text that go unexplained.
The realism movement of the late nineteenth century produced works in literature that were marked by reduced sentimentality and increased objectivity. The goal was to let details tell the story, and remove noticeable bias of the author through scientific and detailed descriptions. While this form of storytelling undoubtedly is most accurate, it creates difficulties for authors to incorporate their themes into the story. This resulted in an increase in symbolism in realist works. The objects and descriptions within the story are the author’s vehicle for displaying the values and themes of the work.
The book, Heart of Darkness, and the movie, Apocalypse Now, are very similar and different in many ways. Heart of Darkness was a book that was published in 1902 by a man named, Joseph Conrad. The novel is about a man, Marlow, who travels to Africa to find out what has been going on over there. He is sent to find a man named Kurtz, who apparently has gone mad from the “darkness”. Apocalypse Now was a movie made in 1979 by Francis Ford Coppola.
Heart of Darkness Extract This extract was taking from the novel “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Cornell. The novel is set in the 1890’s, and the extract shows a European man telling someone, or some people, about his trip to the Congo, where he went looking for his friend. The themes of man versus nature and imperialist belief, and the changes in tone as the pace of the extract quickens are evident throughout the extract through the use of various literary devices that also help to create vivid imagery for the reader. The theme of man versus nature is apparent from the beginning of the extract “when vegetation rioted” as the narrator travelled up the river. The paradoxical description of the trees shows that the narrator feels powerless surrounded by “a mob of wooded islands” and senses that he is unwelcome in the Congo.
Poe put much effort and thought into the details of his literature, he painted a descriptive picture for the reader matter how dark and dreary. The name “Fortunato” means fortune/fortunate, which is symbolic because it is the complete opposite for the character in this story since his fate has been decided for him, “derivation from the verb fortunate, blessed by the goddess fortuna, or random fate. Naturally, to embrace fortuna was unthinkable in the Reformed traditions. Fate was not random” (87). Montresor is constantly smiling at Fortunato so he will have no suspicion of his bad intentions.