Connecting Achebe and Heart of Darkness

Do you ever read a story and the descriptions are so vivid that you can picture the scenery and the characters? These are the best stores ever...

Achebe says that the most interesting and revealing parts of Conrad's Heart of Darkness are his descriptions of people. I agree and I would add the setting. Conrad gives precise details like the ones that we discussed in class on Tuesday.

While the descriptions sometimes are confusing and it is hard to distinguish what he is talking about because of the difficult language, they are still, I think, the best part of the novella and I think it is essential to think of Heart of Darkness in this way rather than looking at it solely as a difficult text that is hard to decipher. Here is an example that I like:

"...It was paddled by black fellows. You could see from afar the white of their eyeballs glistening. They shouted, sang; their bodies streamed with persperation; that ad faces like grotesque masks - these chaps; but they had bone, muscle, a wild vitality, an intense energy of movement, that was as natural and true as the surf along their coast. They wanted no excuse for being there. They were a great comfort to look at..."

While it may be hard to sometimes understand the signinficance of what descriptions Conrad decides to include and expound upon, one thing I noticed is that his descriptions of the native Congolese are the best. I think this is essential to accomplish what I think his goal is...to expose the situation of colonization in the Congo.

Heart of Darkness

As I read through Heart of Darkness, I was amazed at the tone of the narrator. He speaks in language that seems to me to reveal the situation in the Congo at the time. The writing is many times written awkwardly, or at least it seems that way to me. It is often unclear exactly what is happening, who is present, and why it is happening.

An example of this is in the second section of the story when Marlow tells the story of what he overheard on the steamboat. As he is lying down, he hears the manager and one of his nephews talking and begins to listen in. He figures out that they are talking about Kurtz and then later about someone who supposedly was with Kurtz. He grasps on to their feelings about these two persons and he decides to keep his curiosity to himself.

I think this obscurity of language aids Conrad in portraying the darkness that is eluded to in the title. As a reader of Marlow's tales of his journey, I am brought into the situation with the infrequent dialogue and sometimes careful descriptions of the surroudings. I think it helps me take on the feelings of fear, mistrust, confusion, etc. that Marlow was feeling. And as much as I don't like this style of writing, I do think it is genius on Conrad's part for taking the reader into the story of such an awful time in the history of Africa.

Going Against the Grain!

As I was reading the chapter David and Goliath in King Leopold's Ghost, I was so excited that a hero finally arrived! E. D. Morel appeared to at last give a voice to the Congolese people, a people that lost their voice to a greed-stricken group of Europeans, specifically King Leopold II.

I was amazed that Morel had such an influence on King Leopold from London and that he never left home; he received all of his information from reporters and missionaries and others who returned home to Europe from spending time in the Congo. I wanted to laugh at Leopold for thinking that he could stop all of the bad publicity from leaving the Congo....his biggest critic lived all the way in London and never even traveled to the Congo.

It intrigued me and encouraged me later on when I found out that Morel didn't stop speaking out for important issues. He took up issues in his own country when war was threatening and took up action again. Here is a document that I found concerning Chapter 18:

I hope that more of us can be like Morel. I hope that we can be enactors of change and work for the good of all people. Today in Allen's class and afterwards, we were talking about the power of words. I think that Morel is a prime example of how powerful words are and what we should do with them.

I give Morel credit for leaving his job and taking on full force the defense of a people he had never met. I don't think I could have done that.

Stanley

As a soon-to-be teacher, I can't help looking at situations with those eyes. Besides that I just came out of a very passionate class where we were discussing students situations and fostering them....aka, I'm still wound up and Stanley's character has had me thinking for a while.

Hochschild tells the story of Stanley's early life. He is born a bastard child to a mother who doesn't seem to care about him because as a newborn, she leaves him with his uncles and grandfather. What kind of life would that have been for him? No caring, or at least not a whole lot, and living with people who believed that a boy needed a "sound whipping" if he misbehaved. Not only that, at five years old he was passed off to another family who also got rid of him by lying that he was going to visit "Aunt Mary," when in reality they were going to leave him at a workhouse!

I have constantly been amazed that a child like that went on to become a great explorer, successful in his choice of occupation. However, this also came about through lie after lie and disappointment after disappointment. He changed his name countless times and then when he desired to marry (after he had been sexually abused as a child), his fiances would take off on him and marry someone else!

I am also amazed that he wrote for the newspaper, yet constantly remind myself of the lies that he kept up, even when a good many people doubted the truth of his claims. So why wouldn't he be able to tell a story well enough to have it published in the newspaper.

I mentioned at the beginning that I look at this from a teacher-like perspective. I guess his story encourages me. Even when I have students who come from the worst family situations and maybe don't make the choices that I think are appropriate or even correct in society, that even these people can go on in life and be successful and amazing people. Stanley became a great explorer that was noticed by people in high places (Ruler of Belgium, King Leopold!!).

And then it makes me think to myself that I can do with life what I want, in a sense. Stanley decided that he didn't want to live the life that he was expected to because of his childhood. He decided that he wanted to be successful and do something exciting and new with his life. And when at first he didn't succeed, he tried again and again and made his life something that others read about.

Now I don't know if he was ever a real person, but his story can still inspire us all to do what our hearts desire and to become what we know we can be. We shouldn't ever let the world hold us back, because Stanley showed us that even the seemingly impossible can happen if we work at it with all of our being.

P.S. As I was looking for information to link to this blog, I found a blog that is maintained by a class of students in New York who read some of King Leopold's Ghost and had a few questions of their own to ask to the world.

Dutch & British Slave Trade

From the information I have found, it seems that the British were first attracted to Africa because of gold and ivory, not slaves. the Dutch followed them to Africa for this reason, as did many other nations such as France and Sweden. However the Dutch were more assertive than the British and made their way into the slave trade more quickly.

According to a JSTOR article on this topic, the Dutch slave trade in reality only consisted of about 5% of the total Atlantic slave trade and spanned over three periods of time from 1600 to 1800. During the first period, the slave trade transported the most slaves, apparently because the French and the English had not established their own slave trade.

In the beginning, the Dutch used larger, older ships to transport the slaves which resulted in large numbers of slave deaths, however this fact changed once those ships were banned and better ships were implemented to reduce mortality. Not only was the change in the ships responsible for reducing the morality, they also shortened the middle passage.

In Africa, both the Dutch and the British built forts. The Dutch were first with their fort at Elimina in 1642 and the British followed them with their fort at Kormatine in 1651 and ten years later another fort at Cape Castle. Constantly at war, the Dutch destroyed the British forts, except the largest one at Cape Castle. This didn't discourage the British, however, who were attracted back to Africa becuase of profits from the slave trade.

Yet even in this crazy fight for Africa, the British had their own problems back home. The public was astonished at the inhumanity of the slave trade and had it abolished in 1807. Yet this didn't end the British presence in the slave trade, only private companies. The British government was still involved.

The interesting thing that I found is that in February of 2006, the Anglicans apologized for their role in the African slave trade. They say they recognize that they were responsible for what happened to many slaves because they were at the heart of what was happening in Africa during that time.

Exploring the Village of Umuofia

During my first visit to the village of Umuofia, I was struck at the differences in the buildings in the village.

The first building I went to visit was the Meeting Hall. It appears like it was built by the people and was made with materials that were native to the area. I remember the book saying that the weather there was hot and dry for a portion of the year and rainy for another portion, therefore it makes sense that the building would be close to the ground and have such a large covering.

I decided to enter the Meeting Room and was amazed at how detailed it was compared to the appearance of the Meeting Hall from the outside. The Meeting Room has intricate painting on the walls and what I am assuming are gods in the center and corners of the room. It also appears like there is seating the the people who come to meet.

I then thought it was interesting to view the Christian Mission. It is built with different materials and has walls on the sides. It also has a front section with an overhang which I assume is the entrance. The building seems to have a solid foundation and more diversified construction than the Meeting Hall. As I thought about these differences, it made sense to me that this building would be different than the Meeting Hall because the missionaries arrived a long while after the Ibo people had settled and probably brought their ideas about the construction of buildings with them.

The final building that I looked at was the District Commissioner's Headquarters. This building, to me, seems the most advanced. It has two levels and a staircase. There are square windows and pillars to support the building. The thatched roof is still present, but that is about the only thing that truly signifies that this is a building in Africa.

Things Fall Apart

When I began reading Things Fall Apart, I started to dread the assignment. The simple language and the diverseness of the culture (many hard-to-pronounce names), as well as the slow plot, signaled a slow read for me. However, as I trudged on in the book, the plot got better and I found myself curious to find out how the story would end.

When I reached the second half, I felt like there was a sudden turn. The Christians arrived and the Ibo people were all shook up. As a Christian myself, I was curious how they would be portrayed and how the Ibo people would react. I wasn't surprised when the Ibo people began to resist their arrival, nor that some of the Ibo people broke from their villages and families and converted to Christianity.

I did not suspect, however, that the ending would occur as it did. Things truly did fall apart for the family of Okonkwo and the Ibo people. Even though he had received help from friends and neighbors to change his life earlier, in the end he made choices that he later regreted and I think it finally hit him that he never would be the successful man he dreamed of, not with 2 murders to his name.

Because the arrival of the Christians changed the tone of the novel, I decided to find out more about the Christian missionary influence in Nigeria. Apparently Christianity was introduced by Catholic priests who arrived with traders and officials at Benin along the West African coast in the 1800s to serve the Portugese community and a small number of African converts, but left when the Portugese did and then was reintroduced later by the British Church of England Church Missionary Society and were followed by other Christian groups.

I was also amazed to find in my search a blog about 2 missionary families that had to leave Nigeria in 2006 after having been there since 1920 because the people there threatened to kill them and ended up destroying their village and killing many of their people.