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| Conrad looks cheerful! |
We will begin the second semester reading Joseph Conrad’s
Heart of Darkness in our textbook,
pages 369 to 429 (60 pages). The paragraphs can be long, but this is good practice for next year’s densest texts. We will read some of the 60 pages in class (sometimes silently to yourself) and the rest you will read at home—but not late at night when you are done with all your other homework. Some descriptions of the jungle can seem long, but pay close attention to the main thrust of the passages, the moody or
atmospheric words, and the sarcasm of the narrator, Marlow.
When we are finished we will read
Psychoanalytic Criticism (by Ross Murfin, pages 48-53 in our College Reader) and then
Frederick Karl’s psychoanalytic analysis of the novella (pages 53-60). Like a college discussion, you are meant to read this very dense text for ideas that you can share in class discussion and that you can use to write an essay. Come to class every day prepared with
one comment or question.
Conrad Reading schedule:
• 369-373 (4) by Thu. Jan 5 blog due on #2 p429
• 374-380 (6) by Mon. Jan 9 blog due on #6 p430
or instead choose #'s 4, 5 or 6 on page 431
• 381-390 (6) by Tue Jan 10
• 391-404 (6) by Wed. Jan 11 + blog
• 405-411 (6) by Thu Jan 12 + blog
• 412-417 (6) by TUE. Jan 17 + blog
• 418-429 (6) by WED JAN 18 blog due
• 48-53 (4, in
Coll. Reader)
Ross Murfin by
Thu Jan 19 •
53-60 (7, in Coll. Reader)
Frederick Karl by
MON. Jan 23 + blog due on Karl
We will be using a psychological window through which to view Marlow’s journey. We used the Oedipal Complex to try to make sense of Hamlet’s obsessive relationship with his mother, Gertrude. As you read Conrad, see how the journey is both a physical one from London to Belgium to the west African coast and then up the Congo river and a psychological one, as Marlow descends into the dark, unknown unconscious that is usually hidden from us. Study the basic tenants of Freudian psychology, the id which is the hidden part of us with libido and other drives, the superego, which is shaped by society, parents, and teachers that tries to control the id, and the ego, which is the “I” we experience and negotiates between the id and the superego trying to satisfy the appetites without engaging the guilt.
Examine the unconscious itself, which we can only see through dreams, Freudian slips, Rorschach tests or inkblots, free association, psychoanalysis, or hypnotism. Unacceptable urges and desires through repression get removed from the conscious mind and stuffed into the unconscious, only to re-emerge in dreams or seemingly unmotivated desires which we can’t explain rationally yet are indeed powerful. You can analyze your own dreams or read novels like Heart of Darkness as if they were dreams, interpreting each event symbolically.
PAGES & PARAGRAPHS TO NOTE:
367 How much does culture influence who we are?
367 Do we
create an identity or inherit one?
367 What is the impact of colonialization on the oppressed and oppresor?
371 parag 9 to him the meaning of an episode
372 parag 11 imagine a Roman in England (why start with this?) (1st blog)
373 parag 18 white patch becomes darkness (color symbolism?)
374 parag 21 Fresleven's remains (M's
tone here? why?)
376 parag 27 MD: 'Good for there.' (why slightly
comic?)
377 parag 28 like an emissary of light (does M believe this?)
377 parag 29 women
378 parag 31
French steamer: tiny projectiles
379 parag 36 railway-truck (what does this say about efficiency in Africa?)
380 parag 38 strong lusty red-eyed
devil vs flabby one
381 parag 42 and before: diction: '
loitering in the shade'
381 parag 43 miracle. . . hairdresser's dummy: admired? juxtaposed to death? #6 p.431
IMPRESSIONISM (compare the art with the writing)
A literary or artistic style that seeks to capture a feeling or experience rather than to achieve accurate depiction
“My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see.” --Conrad
FREUD, UNCONSCIOUS, ID, EGO, SUPEREGO
Interpretation of Dreams and
Heart of Darkness (1899)
id: unorganized, basic drives, pleasure principle, inaccessible part of our personality except through dreams, contrary impulses exist side byside, knows no judgements of good or evil, libido, drive to create, also Thanatos,
ego: reality principle, defensive, intellectual, sense of self, reality testing, memory, reason, common sense, serves three severe masters: external world, super-ego, and the id, balances primities drives and reality and morality, employs defense mechanisms, denial displacement, regression, repression, sublimation, dissociation
super-ego: parents, teachers, role models, conscience, guilt, punishes, father figure,
CONRAD PSYCHOANALYTIC ESSAY ASSIGNMENT
Conrad Essay Due: (to Turnitin.com before midnight)
3-5 pages. Include a Works Cited page, MLA citation and headers, a reference to Frederick Karl (or Ross Murfin.)
Purpose
Investigate Heart of Darkness through Fredrick Karl's psychoanalytic criticism. Make an interesting and narrowly focused claim--well supported by evidence from the novella and Karl's article.
Psychoanalytic criticism: literature and the other arts as well as daydreams night dreams and neurotic symptoms, consist primarily of the imagined fantasy fulfillment of desires which are either denied by reality or are prohibited by the standards of morality and propriety that have been established by society.
Using Karl, further investigate Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and how to say more about a novel than first strikes you after reading it. Organize and polish a college-type essay.
Background
What fresh insights can Karl’s psychoanalytic reading of Heart of Darkness give us? Pick one event or scene or aspect of the novel and explain how psychoanalysis gives us new insight.
Writing Task
Read Freud (below), Murfin, and Frederick Karl. Reread portions of Heart of Darkness. Then, in writing your essay, be sure to have one clear fresh answer to the following broad question:
To what extent does psychoanalytic criticism (as exemplified by Fredrick Karl, Freud, or Ross Murfin) give us insight into any one aspect of Conrad's Heart of Darkness?
Be sure to have ONE CLEAR, FRESH INSIGHT into the novel. Have one central point that is interesting. Be sure to reread parts of Conrad (and Karl) carefully, select relevant sections, and support and develop an interesting argument. Focus narrowly. Find your own small topic within the larger one.
Shedding some light on Heart of Darkness (sample intro)
Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness allows the reader to join the narrator, Marlow, in his retelling of a journey through the Congo. Just as Marlow is captivated by the "darkness" of Africa and what secrets lay in its midst, we too find ourselves drawn to its mystique. Frederick Karl claims that, “what draws us as readers to a text is the secret expression of what we desire to hear, much as we protest we do not." He goes on to say that these repressed wishes and desires, ironically, become evident in the darkness—through its symbolism and through cryptic dreams. Indeed, Karl is correct in suggesting that just as Marlow enters the "heart of darkness," the reader cannot help but wonder about their own darkness, as though they are joining him on his journey.
The concept of darkness is, in itself, a paradox. Though Marlow fears the darkness, he still possesses an innate sense of awe and even an ironic attraction to it.
Questions to Ask: (or blog about)
- How is Marlow's a physical as well as psychological journey?
- What does it mean to descend into one's unconscious?
- If you had a chance to explore your dark side, would you? Why or why not? (good blog)
- How does the frame narrator affect the telling? See page 389.
- Why does Marlow descibe what 'seems' to be rather than what is? see pages 403 What is the effect?
- Why does Marlow describe his first perceptions of something then what is really true? see page 408-413 What is the effect?
- How does T S Eliot's poem "Hollow Men" relate to Heart of Darkness?
- What do we know about defense mechanisms and why they're used? Does Marlow's joking, sarcastic cynicism seem to be a defense mechanism? Against what?
- If he uses sarcasm more as he enters deeper into the Congo, what psychological state is he in?
- What are the 'external restraints' that Freud and Conrad believe keep us from transgressing?
- When the external restraints are removed, what is unleashed? Give examples from Kurtz and the European 'pilgrims.'
HOLLOW MEN T. S. Eliot
Mistah Kurtz—he dead.
A Penny for the Old Guy.
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when 5
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar 10
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost 15
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom 20
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are 25
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom 30
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves 35
No nearer --
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land 40
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this 45
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss 50
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley 55
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river 60
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom 65
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear 70
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act 75
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion 80
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm 85
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow 90
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends 95
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
(MORE) Important passages in Heart of Darkness
367 How much does culture influence who we are? (editors)
367 Do we create an identity or inherit one?
367 What is the impact of colonial comination on the oppressed and oppresor?
369 “The Nellie. . .” first sentence sets a tone of stasis and waiting
371 parag 9 “to him the meaning of an episode” hints on what to look for in Marlow’s style of storytelling.
372 parag 11 ‘imagine a Roman in England’ (why start with this?) Reversal of assumptions about who is civilized (even before we begin)
373 parag 18 ‘white patch’ becomes darkness (color symbolism?) Note how color symbolism is destabilized so that we can’t assume white and black always symbolize the usual ideas.
374 parag 21 Fresleven's remains (M's tone here? why?) is joking about death the beginnings of his defense mechanism?
376 parag 27 MD: 'Good for there.' (why slightly comic?)
377 parag 28 ‘like an emissary of light’ (does M believe this? Does his Aunt?)
377 parag 29 ‘how out of touch with truth women are’
377-78 parag 31 French steamer: tiny projectiles=futility, hypnosis, down the rabbit hole
379 parag 36 ‘railway-truck’ carcass of some animal = symbol (what does this say about efficiency in Africa?)
380 parag 38 strong lusty red-eyed devil vs flabby one Choice of nightmares
381 parag 42 and before: diction: 'loitering in the shade' Note his tone
381 parag 43 miracle. . . hairdresser's dummy: admired? juxtaposed to death? #6 p.431
383 200 mile tramp
384 ‘steamer was at the bottom of the river’
384-5 Manager ‘he inspired uneasiness’ ‘he was never ill’ ‘no external checks’ hollow men
386 fire and a beating, First class agent, brick maker, does nothing
387 Kurtz’s painting of blindfolded woman ‘carrying a lighted torch’
389 ‘I hate, detest, and can’t bear a lie’ Moral code? Will it hold up in Africa?
389 frame narrator intrudes. Why here? Marlow faltering?
392-3 overhearing ‘bizarre remarks’ show perception of the mind, uncle and manager ‘Anything can be done in this country’
394 ‘Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings’ down the rabbit hole
395 ‘Fine fellow—cannibals—in their place.’ Marlow partly means this, even though it’s also sarcastic or snide.
396 “The earth seemed unearthly.’ ‘they were not inhuman’ ‘admit to yourself’ Should we feel a responsiveness in us?
399 ‘white fog’ symbol of ignorance/blindness
400 ‘three pieces of brass wire’ is an ‘extravagant salary’ his tone? his point?
401 ‘restraint’ how important is this word? For Conrad? For Freud?
403 ‘little sticks’ are found to be ‘Arrows, by Jove!’ comment on perception.
404 ‘gripping the spear like something precious’ mad helmsman ‘seems’ to be attached
405 ‘even the girl herself’ Marlow’s narrative is becoming non-chronological and fragmented. Why now?
406 ‘the butcher and the policeman’ Without these external checks, what would we do?
407 from ‘unbounded power of eloquence’ to ‘Exterminate all the brutes’ What condition is Kurtz in?
409 binoculars (glasses) ‘round carved balls’ on the fence posts
411 Russian’s ‘devotion to Kurtz’
412 Kurtz’s secret weapon ‘good lot of cartridges’
413 Binoculars: ‘food for thought’ ‘hollow at the core’
416-7 ‘unsound method’? ‘Choice of nightmares’
418-420 dreamlike sequence saving Kurtz’s soul; ‘no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself’
421 The Intended dances proudly on the bank of the river
423 Kurtz’s last word. ‘buried something in a muddy hole’ self knowledge
425 Back in Brussels: ‘a splendid leader of an extreme party’
426-429 The other Intended
in College Reader
p54 Karl: ‘Conrad and Freud were pioneers in stressing the irrational elements in human behavior’ and both ‘penetrated into the darkness when people sleep or when their consciences sleep’
