Joseph Conrad Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski 1857 Berdichev, Poland now in the Ukraine 1924 Kent.
-
Upload
ethel-carter -
Category
Documents
-
view
214 -
download
0
Transcript of Joseph Conrad Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski 1857 Berdichev, Poland now in the Ukraine 1924 Kent.
![Page 1: Joseph Conrad Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski 1857 Berdichev, Poland now in the Ukraine 1924 Kent.](https://reader036.fdocuments.net/reader036/viewer/2022082712/56649ea25503460f94ba67a9/html5/thumbnails/1.jpg)
Joseph ConradJozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski
1857 Berdichev, Poland now in the Ukraine
1924 Kent
![Page 2: Joseph Conrad Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski 1857 Berdichev, Poland now in the Ukraine 1924 Kent.](https://reader036.fdocuments.net/reader036/viewer/2022082712/56649ea25503460f94ba67a9/html5/thumbnails/2.jpg)
Heart of Darkness1899/1902
• Personal experience: 1890 comander of a vessel on the Congo River for a Belgian company.
• Marlow, the narrator, tells the story of a journey he made in the Belgian Congo.
• He is horrified by the greed of the ivory traders and by the way they exploit indigenous people.
![Page 3: Joseph Conrad Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski 1857 Berdichev, Poland now in the Ukraine 1924 Kent.](https://reader036.fdocuments.net/reader036/viewer/2022082712/56649ea25503460f94ba67a9/html5/thumbnails/3.jpg)
„back to the earliest beginnings of the world“
• He learns about Mr. Kurtz, the company‘s best agent, who has set up his camp in the very heart of the ivory country.
• Kurtz is ill and Marlow sets off to find him.
• Travelling up the river he has the sensation of going towards the dark heart of humanking and „back to the earliest beginnings of the world“
![Page 4: Joseph Conrad Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski 1857 Berdichev, Poland now in the Ukraine 1924 Kent.](https://reader036.fdocuments.net/reader036/viewer/2022082712/56649ea25503460f94ba67a9/html5/thumbnails/4.jpg)
„The horror! The horror!“
• He learns that Kurtz has become like a god to the tribesmen.
• As the ship approaches, Marlowe finds evidence of human sacrifice. He deduces that Kurtz has gone beyond the limits of civilisation.
• He takes Kurtz back, but Kurtz dies on the journey back
![Page 5: Joseph Conrad Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski 1857 Berdichev, Poland now in the Ukraine 1924 Kent.](https://reader036.fdocuments.net/reader036/viewer/2022082712/56649ea25503460f94ba67a9/html5/thumbnails/5.jpg)
interpretations
• Pro-imperialist: a story about colonialism in the stream of imperialist fiction, travel and adventure writing,
• popular among his contemporaries who shared the idea of a project of civilizing people.
• They ideologically supported the idea of the growth of the British Empire.
• A critic of imperialism: as a denunciation of the mechanisms of empire.
• The destructive process of colonialism in Africa, ist cruelty and exploitation.
![Page 6: Joseph Conrad Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski 1857 Berdichev, Poland now in the Ukraine 1924 Kent.](https://reader036.fdocuments.net/reader036/viewer/2022082712/56649ea25503460f94ba67a9/html5/thumbnails/6.jpg)
Marlow, a conventional hero?
• more ambivalent and problematic than the typical adventure hero
• His journey is the quest of the mythic hero who faces obstacles and trials to acquire knowledge for himself and his people (Homer, Aeneas, Dante)
• he has to face difficulties connected with both: the dark environment and the dark nature of people, both black and white
![Page 7: Joseph Conrad Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski 1857 Berdichev, Poland now in the Ukraine 1924 Kent.](https://reader036.fdocuments.net/reader036/viewer/2022082712/56649ea25503460f94ba67a9/html5/thumbnails/7.jpg)
Marlow and Kurtz
• Marlow• Strives to hold on to
his integrity• Work and duty
become the value of a moral principle
• Kurtz• Progressive and
liberal• An artist• yields himself to
instinct• A first example of
moral nihilism and inner hollowness
![Page 8: Joseph Conrad Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski 1857 Berdichev, Poland now in the Ukraine 1924 Kent.](https://reader036.fdocuments.net/reader036/viewer/2022082712/56649ea25503460f94ba67a9/html5/thumbnails/8.jpg)
Heart of Darkness
• unknown and wild country
• darkness of human nature
an interior journey into human consciousness
Civilized man, freed from the restraints of society at heart is savage and instinctual
![Page 9: Joseph Conrad Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski 1857 Berdichev, Poland now in the Ukraine 1924 Kent.](https://reader036.fdocuments.net/reader036/viewer/2022082712/56649ea25503460f94ba67a9/html5/thumbnails/9.jpg)
English adopted me
• Conrad‘s first languages were Polish and French, but he chose English because:
• No English word is simply a word but an instrument for exciting blurring emotions.
• No English word has clean edges so it was ideal to express his complex vision of life.
![Page 10: Joseph Conrad Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski 1857 Berdichev, Poland now in the Ukraine 1924 Kent.](https://reader036.fdocuments.net/reader036/viewer/2022082712/56649ea25503460f94ba67a9/html5/thumbnails/10.jpg)
Exotic, secluded settings
• Congo or China, not because people are different there, not conventional adventure stories. But
• The individual, their complex character and problems stood out clearly against an exotic setting.
• Not the interaction between individual and society was to be focused on, but the isolated character and his inner conflicts.
![Page 11: Joseph Conrad Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski 1857 Berdichev, Poland now in the Ukraine 1924 Kent.](https://reader036.fdocuments.net/reader036/viewer/2022082712/56649ea25503460f94ba67a9/html5/thumbnails/11.jpg)
Aim: why do I write?
• No amusing
• No teaching
• Catch the complex pattern of life
• Present the fleeting moments of life to explore the meaning of the human situation.
• > Joyce: epiphany
• > Woolf: moments of being
![Page 12: Joseph Conrad Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski 1857 Berdichev, Poland now in the Ukraine 1924 Kent.](https://reader036.fdocuments.net/reader036/viewer/2022082712/56649ea25503460f94ba67a9/html5/thumbnails/12.jpg)
an „oblique“ style
• Not the plot is important
but
• The effect of the events on the character.
• Conrad‘s characters = tragic heroes
• Solitary figures without past or future, viewed through the mind of others or through their actions.
![Page 13: Joseph Conrad Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski 1857 Berdichev, Poland now in the Ukraine 1924 Kent.](https://reader036.fdocuments.net/reader036/viewer/2022082712/56649ea25503460f94ba67a9/html5/thumbnails/13.jpg)
narrator
• No omniscient narrator
but
• several points of view: 1st-person-narrator, an invisible narrator, journals, letters
in order to
• distance the author/narrator and leave the reader free to decide for himself (relativism
of moral values)
![Page 14: Joseph Conrad Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski 1857 Berdichev, Poland now in the Ukraine 1924 Kent.](https://reader036.fdocuments.net/reader036/viewer/2022082712/56649ea25503460f94ba67a9/html5/thumbnails/14.jpg)
time
• no chronological sequence
but
• time shifts to show how past, present and future are superimposed in human mind.
![Page 15: Joseph Conrad Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski 1857 Berdichev, Poland now in the Ukraine 1924 Kent.](https://reader036.fdocuments.net/reader036/viewer/2022082712/56649ea25503460f94ba67a9/html5/thumbnails/15.jpg)
themes
• Conflict: professional duties – personal feelings.
• Organized society gives men confidence.
but
• confidence is deceptive because when man is alone and surrounded by a wild and hostile background