Please see the link above for Johann's summary of Chinua Achebe's "An Image of Africa." The summary is a Word attachment, so you will need to open or download it.
By the way, below is a picture of a young Achebe with Langston Hughes. It is from Hughes' 1962 visit to Lagos, Nigeria.
Also, Rudyard Kipling's "The White Man's Burden" will be on the midterm:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/kipling.html
I didn't know that this poem was inspired by the Spanish-American War. This war heralded the U.S.' entry into imperialism as it took over several of Spain's colonies: the Phillippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, for example.
We also discussed the impact of historical context. Note that over eighty years separate Heart of Darkness and Fitzcarraldo. These more than eighty years include both World Wars, independence for a very many former colonies, and the Civil Rights movement. Then we can also look at cultural differences. Conrad was a former Russian subject who chose to become a British citizen. Herzog was born during WWII, grew up in West Germany, and now lives in Los Angeles (but is not an American citizen). One might also call him a citizen of the world as his work transcends the category of German or American cinema.
Note that Heart of Darkness has a frame narration. An unnamed Englishman narrates the frame story. In this story, his friend Marlow tells about his journey on the Congo River to rescue Kurtz, an agent for the Belgian company that Marlow once worked for. Can we trust the unnamed Englishman? Who is he? Can we trust Marlow?
Below is a picture from Apocalypse Now. Here Kurtz (played by Marlon Brando, the shaven-headed man) and Willard (Marlow's name in the film) are conversing.
On Monday (7/19), we continued our exploration of Heart of Darkness, using Joseph Campbell's monomyth, Chinua Achebe's "An Image of Africa," and Werner Herzog's comments on the jungle to help us get further.
How does Marlow's story follow the hero's journey? And, if it does, what is Marlow's elixir? How does it not follow the hero's journey? Is he a hero? Would Campbell consider him to be a hero? Or is he more of an anti-hero?
Below is Dr. Kenneth Wheeler's definition of an anti-hero:
ANTIHERO: A protagonist who is a non-hero or the antithesis of a traditional hero. While the traditional hero may be dashing, strong, brave, resourceful, or handsome, the antihero may be incompetent, unlucky, clumsy, dumb, ugly, or clownish. Examples here might include the senile protagonist of Cervantes' Don Quixote or the girlish knight Sir Thopas from Chaucer's "Sir Thopas." In the case of the Byronic and Miltonic antihero, the antihero is a romanticized but wicked character who defies authority, and becomes paradoxically ennobled by his peculiar rejection of virtue. In this sense, Milton presents Satan in Paradise Lost as an antihero in a sympathetic manner. The same is true of Heathcliffe in Emily Bronté's Wuthering Heights. Compare with the picaro {or "knave or rascal who is the protagonist in picaresque novels" or novels about a young man's misadventures}.
Below is Gustave Dore's illustration of Satan in Paradise Lost. Dore was active during the 19th century.
We also began to look at Marlow's depiction of women, beginning with his aunt (one of his helpers) and moving onto Kurtz' African mistress and his European fiancee. Why does Marlow depict these women (especially his aunt) the way he does? Why does he take pains to say that women are removed from the "world" and that they should not run things? Why does he lie to Kurtz' Intended (the fiancee) about her beloved's last words?
Here are some pictures of the New Woman (1890s/1900s). The first is from 1911 and was part of a paper published in ...Nineteenth Century Gender Studies. See the link below for the paper itself: http://ncgsjournal.com/issue32/roundtable.htm
The other pictures are earlier, dating from the 1890s. Although we take for granted women's ability to work outside the home and to exercise, these activities were once radical! Again, remember what I said about the corset, which physically deformed and confined women.
We then examined some passages from Heart of Darkness, using Achebe's essay and Herzog's comments to find the effects of racism and the jungle. Could Herzog's comments be in and of themselves racist or imperialist? How might Marlow's fireman look from another perspective? (The picture below is from Mother Jones and depicts Congolese "dandies.")
Note the effect that work has on both Marlow and his subordinates. (You may also want to see what he says about the Europeans and their attitude towards work.)
I'll conclude here with notes from Tuesday (7/20) since we finished up Heart of Darkness and we will be beginning Things Fall Apart on Wednesday (7/21).
At the beginning (or near beginning of class), Michelle gave her presentation on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes stories (i.e., The Hound of the Baskervilles) *and* The Crime of the Congo, an expose of Belgian (mis)rule. Unlike Conrad, ACD was a very prolific, popular writer. As Michelle pointed out, he wrote not only the Sherlock Holmes stories but also science fiction, romances, and non-fiction. He trained as a physician and went to Africa as a ship's doctor, but he chose to write instead of practice medicine after his return to Great Britain. ACD wrote The Crime of the Congo in 1909 after both Rudyard Kipling and Joseph Conrad turned the assignment down. Not only did ACD write this book but he also publicized it, meeting with world leaders and lecturing on it to the public.
Below is his portrait from 1897.
I will be posting Michelle's PowerPoint as soon as I am able to. In the meantime, here is a link to the site where The Crime of the Congo is posted.
The picture above is of a Polish translation of Heart of Darkness although the translation is not one of the ones mentioned by Ewa Kujawska-Lis in her comparison of translations from English to Polish. (Polish was Joseph Conrad's first language.)
In "An Image of Africa," Achebe fiercely criticizes Conrad for relying on racist stereotypes of Africa and Africans as well as working to perpetuate these stereotypes in his Heart of Darkness. Furthermore, Achebe maintains that, for the most part, Conrad refuses to let Africans speak in his novella. Then, he notes that when they are allowed to, their few words confirm European prejudice. He also criticizes readers for the degree of prejudice that has allowed them to gloss over Conrad's depiction of Africa and Africans. Achebe particularly censures readers who gloss over Africa, regarding the continent as " merely a setting for the disintegration of the mind of Mr. Kurtz." For Achebe, Conrad's novel is especially dangerous because it is so central to our conception of literature in English.
And it is so false.
Indeed, the picture below is an 17th-century engraving of a procession through Benin City, the capital of the Edo kingdom in what is now Nigeria.
Below is a picture of a bronze bowl dating from the ninth or tenth century CE. (The bowl is from the Igbo, another group or, as Achebe states, "nation," in Nigeria.)
British author Caryl Phillips interviewed Achebe in 2003. Here, in this article from the Guardian, Achebe expands on his criticism of Conrad.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/feb/22/classics.chinuaachebe
Kujawska-Lis does mention the challenges of translation, specifically the translator's inevitable fingerprints on the text. For the most part, she focuses on how racial terms and descriptions of Africa and Africans are translated into Polish. As Conrad's first language was Polish, she argues that Zagorska's translation may provide a window on Conrad's attitude towards race. Yet, being the author's cousin and friend, she also would have had an interest in representing him and his work favorably. Kujawska-Lis suggests that Zagorska recognized the harshness of the English terms that her cousin used to describe Africans. Socha's translation, on the other hand, reflects current readings of Conrad's work, particularly Achebe's, and perhaps even a reaction towards Conrad's current status in Poland. (Ironically, during his lifetime, Conrad was criticized for "abandoning" Poland to live in England and write in English.) More recently, she observes, Polish readers view Conrad as a moralist and a "national treasure" whose characters inspired readers during WWII.
It seems like we've just begun,but I'd like to start posting our midterm guide as soon as possible. The take home midterm is due July 27, but since it will cover what we've discussed in class, I want to make up this guide sooner rather than later.
As it turns out, there are more than two hundred ethnic groups or tribes in the DR Congo, so this entry will do much less than scratch the surface. However, I thought that this topic would complement today's class and Chinua Achebe's lecture nicely.
For more information about Ellen Brown's project, see this link:
Or you may prefer music:
The Chokwe are also known for their chairs and stools:
Out-of-Class Essay #1– Due March 27, 2009I think I know what one of my summer projects will be....to read (and reread) more of Conrad's novels. This week I read his first novel, Almayer's Folly. I wish that I had been able to find a picture of one of the covers, but I couldn't find one that was the right size. The picture above is from the Earth Hope Action Network's site and shows one of the rivers that run through the island of Borneo. Below is a map as well to show you where it is.
Here is a map of the island itself from Orangutantrop, another conservation site.
I think that I have probably included enough about the setting of Almayer's Folly.
This novel is the story of Almayer, a Dutchman who has lived all of his life in the colonies. (He was born in Java, a part of Indonesia, which was then a Dutch colony.) At the time the story begins, he is a middle-aged merchant whose ambitions have always gone astray. In fact, he had married his wife in the hope that he would inherit her foster father's considerable wealth. (He does not.) He is waiting for a younger man, the son of the sultan from Bali, to return from an expedition. This expedition, he hopes, will give him enough money to leave Borneo for the Netherlands. He fantasizes that he and his beautiful daughter, Nina, will enjoy Europe...and that he can leave his wife behind in the colonies. Dain Maroola, the younger man he is waiting for, on the other hand, has fallen in love with Nina and wants to bring her with him to Bali. Nina loves him madly, and her mother is more than happy to spoil Almayer's schemes.
Below is a blogger's photograph of a Balinese wedding:
In some ways, Almayer's Folly is a very modern novel, especially if you are used to reading 19th century British novels like Jane Eyre or Pride & Prejudice or David Copperfield. Almayer has failed at life, and the narrator makes it clear that his neighbors laugh at him, take advantage of him, or both. His wife, a Filipino, is clearly contemptous of him even as he looks down at her in a passive aggressive way. Nina is much more sympathetic towards her father, but she has chosen to align herself with her mother, in part because of the way she was treated as a young girl by Europeans. Nina is also very resilient, and I really like the way that Conrad depicts her as skillfully rowing here and there as she needs to.
In 2004, there were plans for a film version of Almayer's Folly. It hasn't made it to imdb.com, but here are some links to stories about this production:
http://www.balifilm.com/almayer.htm
http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Saturday/Columns/2454977/index.pda
http://www.lebrocquyfraser.com/index/film.php?id=8&status=4
Apparently it is still in development!
I don't like writing super long Multiply entries, so here is part two of my entry on the lives and works of Joseph Conrad.
The picture above is of Conrad with his wife and younger son. I think that it fits John Batchelor's bio nicely since this biographer does a better job of putting Conrad in context than Stape did. Also, I suspect that Stape might have lost patience with Conrad. Unsurprisingly, this can be an occupational hazard with biographers, and if one shies away from Conrad's work and hones in on his letters, it is easier to lose patience with him.
Since Stape, however, does a better job of writing about Conrad's earlier life (in Poland, France, and the merchant marines), this entry will focus on his later life as a writer.
I wonder how an ESL teacher or theorist would look at Conrad's work. After all, he was writing in a language that he did not learn until he was an adult. (English was his third or fourth language, perhaps even his fifth. I suspect that living in an area that Russia occupied, he had to know some Russian.) An ESL teacher or theorist would shed interesting light on Conrad's struggles with writer's block and his collaboration with native writer Ford Madox Ford during the 1900s.
Also, of course, a large part of Conrad's life in England was his attempt to establish and sustain an identity. I imagine that this added to his tension. Early on, Polish writer Eliza Orzeszkowa criticized him for writing in English even though he had not lived in Poland since he was a teenager. Later, English natives such as Lady Ottoline Morrell & Bertrand Russell and would-be natives such as Henry James patronized him as an exotic foreigner. When Conrad and his agent Pinker were quarrelling in 1909 & 1910, the agent struck back at him by claiming that he did not speak or understand English well enough. Conrad, of course, responded with a stinging retort. He also changed agents for a time. Moreover, when Conrad did go to Poland in 1914, as Batchelor notes, his customary depression and anxiety lifted, only to return once he was in England again.
Here is a quick outline of some of Conrad's work. Although Heart of Darkness is perhaps his most celebrated and read work, he wrote many other novels, novellas (short novels), and short stories. In fact, Marlow (the chief narrator in Heart of Darkness) narrates several other of Conrad's works: Youth, Lord Jim, and a later novel, Chance. Some critics speculate that Marlow may have been Conrad's English-self or the Englishman he would have liked to have been.
In part 1 of this entry, I mentioned Almayer's Folly (1894), Conrad's first novel. It is set in Borneo, quickly establishing Conrad's identity as an author who set his stories in exotic places. At this point, Conrad had been a British citizen for 14 years, but he had spent most of this time at sea in the merchant marine.
Here is a picture from Borneo, a place known for its rainforests and wildlife.
As with Marlow, Conrad would continue to revisit one character from Almayer's Folly, Lingard, in "An Outcast of the Islands" (1895) and The Rescue (published 1920 but begun in the mid-1890s).
Both Batchelor and Stape discuss Conrad's habit of beginning novels only to drop them and begin a short story that would ultimately become a novel or novella. Heart of Darkness (1902) began this way, as a short story called "An Outpost of Progress." Similarly, his novel Lord Jim (1900) began as "Jim: A Sketch." However, as I have mentioned above, Conrad struggled with writer's block, and moving from project to project seemed to be his best way of dealing with it...even though this strategy was annoying to his agent and his publishers.
Below is a picture of the cover of Lord Jim, a novel about a young man who attempts to redeem himself after he jumps ship. Batchelor compares the novel's protagonist, Jim, to Hamlet.
Nostromo (1904), The Secret Agent (1907), and Under Western Eyes (1911) are Conrad's most overtly political novels. The first is set in South America; the other two are set in England and Europe. In each of these novels, Conrad views political radicalism and intrigue with extreme skepticism.
With Chance (1914), Conrad had his first popular success. This novel, like several of his earlier works, is set at sea, and it concerns a captain's attempt to ship explosives safely. (The story that became Chance was titled "Explosives.") However, unlike his earlier works, Chance includes a love story between an Englishman and an Englishwoman that ends happily. Prior to this, women did appear in Conrad's work, but as you may notice from "Heart of Darkness," they are often vehicles for the author's social criticism or, as with Winnie Verloc of the Secret Agent or Emilia Gould in Nostromo, voices for this criticism. In Victory (1915), Conrad's next novel and another success, he places a love story between Heyst, the son of a cynical philosopher, and Lena, a prostitute, at the center of his work; however, she is killed, in part because her relationship with Heyst probably could not exist outside their island.
Conrad continued to write during and after World War I. His works received much acclaim and respect, perhaps more than their share. He also tried his hand at adapting several of his works for the stage. Probably his most successful adaptation was of his late novel Victory, which "ran for eighty-two performances" in 1919. In 1923, he traveled to the United States. When he died in 1924, Conrad was working on a novel set during the Napoleonic era in the early 1800s.
