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3.03 AVERAGE
3.03 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
We live as we dream - alone. While the dream disappears, the life continues painfully.”
Me reservo a decir algo de este libro hasta que lo haya podido procesar, basically.
Me reservo a decir algo de este libro hasta que lo haya podido procesar, basically.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Eloquent author, felt like there were 100 words I've never seen before in here. Overall, my feelings are positive but I'm having a hard time understanding why. The novel feels like a study in ambiguity.
It's interesting that this has the cultural importance it does - the story is a common thread in media. Apocalypse Now and Spec Ops: The Line come to mind. Man goes deeper into the jungle (physically, mentally, spiritually) and is forever changed. The metaphors are vague enough to let the reader map onto it what he considers his own jungle imo. It could mean life, sanity, good/evil, a commentary on colonialism or racism or imperialism. That openness makes it interesting.
Kurtz far more a figure in the minds of other characters than he was a character himself. He had very little dialogue and his theories/teachings were largely left out. Again, it leaves the reader to imagine.
"'[Kurtz] was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name any more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream - making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that co-mingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams...'" p.37
It's interesting that this has the cultural importance it does - the story is a common thread in media. Apocalypse Now and Spec Ops: The Line come to mind. Man goes deeper into the jungle (physically, mentally, spiritually) and is forever changed. The metaphors are vague enough to let the reader map onto it what he considers his own jungle imo. It could mean life, sanity, good/evil, a commentary on colonialism or racism or imperialism. That openness makes it interesting.
Kurtz far more a figure in the minds of other characters than he was a character himself. He had very little dialogue and his theories/teachings were largely left out. Again, it leaves the reader to imagine.
"'[Kurtz] was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name any more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream - making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that co-mingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams...'" p.37
Do not even get me started on this. But I had to read it for class
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Take a shot every time Conrad alludes to the titular metaphor. He really stresses it until one almost sees him as riddled with anxiety and insecurity— contrasting to his style, that is so overwhelmingly masculine. So I shall concur with Leavis, that it does suffer from “adjectival insistence” upon such.
I found the substance of this work to be aside from its comments on the intercourse of “civilised” and “savage”— which again, Conrad rather convolutes, as if he means to speak on the “Horror of the West” one would think some emphasis would be placed on the essential humanity and civilisation of these peoples outside of European interference; it reaffirms racist stereotypes, and white saviour complexes— but instead in its treatment of the female aspect.
There’s this section in Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man (I’ve got it on the brain, I’m afraid) where he says that one minority is exchangeable for the other in that the roots of prejudice are essentially that— prejudice. I am not sure to what extent I agree with him, there’s definitely more nuance, and at some points this view can be felt undermining, but that’s besides. In The Orwell Mystique, Patai makes a similar point in showing the paradox of Burmese Days as being that though Orwell acknowledges the lack of reasoning in hatred of the Burmese, he reasserts a biological difference in the man and the woman— and so fails to emancipate either group, and continues in oppressing each. I think Conrad was rather ahead of him.
Especially in the emphasis on the female aspect at the opening of Marlow’s narrative, Conrad excels in acknowledging that darkness is their land too— due to male oppression. Contrastingly, they find ways to live in a land of light (something maintained by androcentric materialism) that is truly the darkness. This is what Conrad affirms in the very end of his novel. In suggesting the similarity, and as some have claimed, not advocating for the superiority of the white man over the black man or the woman, he understands that both are oppressed in a similar sense, though they face different experiences and forms of that oppression?
This is perhaps very poorly expressed, but I hope one can understand what I am driving at.
I found the substance of this work to be aside from its comments on the intercourse of “civilised” and “savage”— which again, Conrad rather convolutes, as if he means to speak on the “Horror of the West” one would think some emphasis would be placed on the essential humanity and civilisation of these peoples outside of European interference; it reaffirms racist stereotypes, and white saviour complexes— but instead in its treatment of the female aspect.
There’s this section in Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man (I’ve got it on the brain, I’m afraid) where he says that one minority is exchangeable for the other in that the roots of prejudice are essentially that— prejudice. I am not sure to what extent I agree with him, there’s definitely more nuance, and at some points this view can be felt undermining, but that’s besides. In The Orwell Mystique, Patai makes a similar point in showing the paradox of Burmese Days as being that though Orwell acknowledges the lack of reasoning in hatred of the Burmese, he reasserts a biological difference in the man and the woman— and so fails to emancipate either group, and continues in oppressing each. I think Conrad was rather ahead of him.
Especially in the emphasis on the female aspect at the opening of Marlow’s narrative, Conrad excels in acknowledging that darkness is their land too— due to male oppression. Contrastingly, they find ways to live in a land of light (something maintained by androcentric materialism) that is truly the darkness. This is what Conrad affirms in the very end of his novel. In suggesting the similarity, and as some have claimed, not advocating for the superiority of the white man over the black man or the woman, he understands that both are oppressed in a similar sense, though they face different experiences and forms of that oppression?
This is perhaps very poorly expressed, but I hope one can understand what I am driving at.