Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad, in his story Heart of Darkness, portrays the journey to the inner evil within all of humanity, and how it can be avoided, hidden, and kept in check if one so chooses. The novel’s dominant theme was that of good versus evil, and how we are faced with a choice between the two everyday of our lives. Marlow, the narrator of the novel, is faced with this task in his quest to find Kurtz, who symbolize his own hidden and evil nature. The novel also addresses the issue of colonization, and the imperialist nature of the white men as they take away the identities of the native Africans around them. It is in the conditions of the interior that the true nature of man is revealed, and the inhumanity of man to his own fellow man is shown.
In this story, the use of descriptive words was a very important part of its overall theme. Of the many passages and quotes throughout Heart of Darkness, the one that I found to be the most effective was on pages 105 to 106. Conrad writes:

Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of over-shadowed distances. On silvery sand-banks hippos and alligators sunned themselves side by side. The broadening waters flowed through a mob of wooded islands; you lost your way on that river as you would in a desert, and butted all day long against shoals, trying to find the channel, till you thought yourself bewitched and cut off fir ever from everything you had known once—somewhere far away—in another existence perhaps.

I found this passage to be very strong in conveying its message because of how the natural things can be compared to aspects of a person’s identity. The adjective use of this passage makes its purpose clear, particularly the use of impenetrable, lost, bewitched, and gloom. These words all work together to create the sense of darkness and evil that is surrounding Marlow as he makes his journey up the river, searching for who he really is inside. The river is a symbol of his soul, and all the snags that he hits are showing the problems that Marlow is experiencing in his internal struggles. This quote was full of symbolism and I found it to be a good description of the journeys people take to discover who they are.
This story was definitely one that, although it was, as Mr. Klimas liked to say, “dense,” it had a very strong symbolic nature to it. I connected with its focus on the quest for identity, because most people go through a period where they have no idea WHO they really are underneath all the layers that they build up to please those around them. It offers a glimpse into the darkness that Conrad feels we all have within us, while pointing out that we are capable of overcoming this evil side of our conscience. The true heart of darkness is within us, the little piece of our life that we do our best to hide from those around us, and at some point we all have to choose between the dark and the light. Kind of like Star Wars, we have to make a choice between good and evil within ourselves.

Invisible Man

When Ralph Ellison wrote Invisible Man, he definitely had to have put a lot of thought into the symbols and themes that he used in his novel. The novel is so packed with symbolism and recurring motifs that it is impossible to discover them the first time around. A major aspect of this novel was the focus on man’s inhumanity to man, particularly white man’s inhumanity to the black race. Invisible Man depicts the mechanical treatment of black men by the whites around them, particularly when Mr. Norton addresses the car that the narrator is driving as a machine, as though the vehicle drives itself. The leg shackle is also important in this novel because it is showing how the black race is still controlled by those around them. Although they are physically free, mentally they are still suffering the punishment of slavery, and Ellison wants to show the difficulty faced by the black man as he tries to overcome adversity. At the time when this novel was written, race should not have been an issue, and yet it drove so many things, from what college a person could get accepted to, to the jobs that people could hold, and the way that they had to carry themselves around others. The affects of the inequality faced, and the unused power people had to overcome it, are what Ellison seemed to want to point out with Invisible Man.
A quote from this novel that I really liked was on page 249, where the narrator says:

It was as though I were acting out a scene from some crazy movie. Or perhaps I was catching up with myself and had put into words feelings which I had hitherto suppressed. Or was it, I thought, starting up the walk, that I was no longer afraid? I stopped, looking at the buildings down the bright street slanting with sun and shade. I was no longer afraid. Not of important men, not of trustees and such; for knowing now that there was nothing which I could expect from them, there was no reason to be afraid. Was that it? I felt light-headed, my ears were ringing. I went on.

After the narrator’s “rebirth” in the paint factory hospital, he comes to find that he no longer fears those around him. He can handle the pressure from authority figures, and he finds himself a changed man. It is as though he is seeing the world through a new pair of eyes, and everything is clear. I think that what I like about this quote the most is the realization that he can make a difference in the world, because every person needs to feel as though they can make a change at some time in their lives. The changes that the narrator can make are ones that will not only benefit him, but also his race as a whole if he succeeds, and it’s an amazing metamorphosis.
I had a hard time getting through this novel and as valuable it is in the literary world, it is not one of my most liked pieces of this year. It was so packed with information and symbols and allusions, and other references that it was almost too much to handle. As I read the end of the novel I came to better understand its purpose, however, the preceding pages left me feeling confused and unmoved. I have a feeling that Invisible Man is going to be one of those novels that I have to read a few years from now, at a different time in my life, to understand the true impact of it. I know that it’s good, and I honestly feel guilty for not being able to be as enthusiastic about it as some of my classmates were, because I feel like I missed out on something. Hopefully Ellison will understand that this just wasn’t the time for me to read his novel, and maybe I will appreciate more after a few more times around

Player Piano

Player Piano, written by Kurt Vonnegut, was a novel meant to serve as a warning of what could become of American society if it wasn’t cautious about the advancements that it was making. The time period that this novel was written in was a time of technological advancements, with the assembly line beginning to remove people from their jobs. This mechanization of society was a dominant theme throughout the novel, was definitely solidified by Vonnegut’s use of dark humor, which, although causing a chuckle, caused an uneasy feeling to rise up when the laughter was gone. As unbelievable as the situation portrayed in the novel was, it had a foreboding sense to it that was warning against the dependence on machines, otherwise they would take over our lives. Purpose is the one thing people search for in life, and Vonnegut used Player Piano to show how without a purpose, we are nothing.
My favorite quote from Player Piano was a scene later on in the novel, when one of the young men that Proteus met at the Meadows turns up at a different point of the story, and offers his advice. The quote, on page 279 of my copy, reads:

“I have heard every word you’ve said,” said a young redhead thickly. He wasn’t drinking Benedictine and Pluto water, but sloshed around instead a puddle of whiskey and water on the table as he sat down by buck, facing Doctor Roseberry, uninvited. Beneath his open-necked shirt the red of a Meadows T-shirt showed plainly. “Heard it all,” he said, and he laid his hand on Buck’s shoulder gravely. “Here you are at a crossroads my boy. You’re lucky. Not many crossroads left for people. Nothing but one-way streets with cliffs on both sides.”

I really liked this quote because it says so much about the world in which these people are living, where your options are laid out for you, and there is no way out of anything. The use of the cliff analogy was used to emphasize the desperation of people to succeed, and the horrors that people face if they are deemed below the necessary IQ level. To live in a constant state of fear and obey all commands from those more intelligent than you seems to be the driving force in this society, and freedom of choice has become a lost concept.
This novel, as a whole, was one of my favorites. I really liked Vonnegut’s use of dark humor to create his satire of our society. It was also interesting that the way he created this world was not much different from our current society. Although the machinery in the novel may have been slightly exaggerated in their scope of usage when compared to current times, the exaggeration is a good literary tool for when we turn and look at our own lives. Examining how many machines we have doing our work for us today, it is amazing just how set our world seems on mechanizing the entire work force. People are getting laid off because machines are more efficient, computers are overtaking many job fields, and life is becoming increasingly mechanized. Although Vonnegut was from a different time and place, he had an insight into how the world was progressing that is so accurate in the present times.

Acrobat

U2's song "Acrobat" can be directly related to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale through certain parts of the lyrics of the song. One of the refrains that stood out to me was:

"What are we going to do now it's all been said
No new ideas in the house and every book has been read"

I thought this piece of the lyrics was relative to the novel because in the Republic of Gilead of The Handmaid's Tale, the social order is set in stone, and seemingly immovable. It is reverting back to older times, denying the introduction of new ideals and system arrangement, keeping anyone from changing the societal norms of the Republic. The significance of the books in this novel is also relevant to the song because the only book that is permitted to be read is the Bible, and only men are allowed to read from it. Because the same book is being read over and over, there are no new ideas in the "house", or the government, and the society is becoming restricted in its effectiveness. Although the society began with possibly good intentions, it is clear that the redundancy of the same parts of the same stories of the Bible is wearing on the members of Gilead.

The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale, constructs a society that is governed by its warped views of religion. Rather than seeing the whole picture of biblical stories, the society instead chooses to focus only on the excerpts that justify its actions. Through this society's biblical social code, the government has taken rights away from its people, and eliminated the basic rights of women and all who violate the newly established social order. It is in this society that men are deemed superior, and the women are one of four main potential positions. There are the Wives, women who are at the top of the societal food chain. Then come the Marthas, the women responsible for housekeeping, child rearing, as well as any other menial task that can be found for them. Then there are the Unwomen, those women who cannot have children, who have reached their prime, the women who refuse to conform to the new society's instructions and rules, or who previously violated the codes of the society. The most important, yet seemingly least liked of the groups of women in the story, are the Handmaids, women seen only for their potential as viable surrogate mothers. The Handmaids are, in a sense, merely walking uteruses, and if they become pregnant a celebration is in order. This society is absolutely ridiculous in how it controls, limits, and denies women basic rights, with its only defense being the Bible. Although the Bible is a valid learning tool, and something that people can use as a guideline to live their life, this society takes their interpretation too far, and in many instances is totally violating the basic principles set out in the Bible.


In this book, one of my favorite passages is:

If I turn my head so that the white wings framing my face direct my vision towards it, I can see it as I go down the stairs, round, convex, a pier glass, like the eye of a fish, and myself in it like a distorted shadow, a parody of something, some fairy-tale figure in a red cloak, descending towards a moment of carelessness that is the same as danger. A Sister dipped in blood. (Atwood)

Some of the key words of this passage, that make the tone of the passage are distorted, parody, and fairy-tale. The use of "distorted" is vital to this passage because it is reflecting the distortion of the Bible for the basis of the ideals of this society. Parody is also an important word choice because it is showing how the Republic of Gilead is a joke in itself, twisting the Bible to fit its own values, and ignoring the rest of the stories that are against what has been implemented. The reference to a fairy-tale is also important because it is emphasizing the surreal nature of the society of the novel, showing how the Handmaids are just like Little Red Riding Hood, running from the Big Bad Wolf, or society in this case.

Overall, I really liked this book. although it addressed some very tense social issues, and showed a mocking view of modern day society's philosophies, this book was serious and thought-provoking. I like books that make me think, and relate them to our current social situations, and The Handmaid's Tale is definitely relative to modern times.

We

The novel We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin, is set in a society centered around the seemingly infinitesimal power of mathematics. A major theme of this novel was that of whether or not a Utopian society is a possibility with humans as we know them. Can our thoughts and actions be controlled and kept steady by a governing body? Or are our minds uncontrollable, completely independent of the constraints of society? Zamyatin seemed to show that the human mind is its own entity, emotional and uncontrolled by anyone other than its possessor. This idea of ownership over one's thoughts is found throughout the novel, and is definitely one of the mor important themes.

My favorite passage from this novel is:

I am looking at myself, at him, and I am absolutely certain that he, with his ruler-straight eyebrows, is a stranger, somebody else, I just met him for the first time in my life. And I'm the real one. I AM NOT HIM. (Zamyatin)

This passage signifies D-503's realization that he is not the person he has convinced himself to be. He comes to see that he is more than what people see of him on the outside, that the real him is within. This process of self-actualization is both traumatic and enlightening for D-503, who cannot decide whether to be pleased or disgusted by his sudden break from his "original" self. I like this passage mainly because it is showing a struggle that most people experience at one point or another in their lives, where they do not know who exactly they are.

I found this novel to be very interesting, and I particularly liked the contrast between the old times and the current times of the story throughout the novel. I also really liked the point of view that a person is not able to be controlled by anyone else as long as their emotions are intact. With our imaginations, we are still capable to function as independent human beings, and we are free.

Anthem

One of the key concepts of Ayn Rand's novel Anthem was the idea of creation. In this society, the people seem to have been thrust back into a modern Dark Ages, devoid of all the amenities, ideas, and philosophies our society currently has. But there is one man, the main character, who finds the means to create something that the rest of his society can no longer remember. He produces light. Using his basic human curiosity, this young man finds an underground entryway filled with tools and materials of the past, and he figures out ways in which to use them. After a period of experimentation, Equality discovers a chemical combination that creates a glow equivalent to that of the sun. It is with this light that Equality brings enlightenment to the dark ages. the light that is created symbolizes the knowledge and realization that independence can form within a person, and it shows that natural human curiosity cannot be destroyed.


My favorite passage from Anthem is:


"We say to ourselves that we are a wretch and a traitor. But we fell no burden upon our spirit and no fear in our heart. And it seems to us that our spirit is clear as a lake troubled by no eyes save those of the sun. And in our heart -- strange are the ways of evil! -- in our heart there is the first peace we have known in twenty years."


I love this passage because it is showing the discovery of oneself. People go through their lives striving for something, not always sure what that something is. Some people may never quite figure out their purpose, and they will go through life a turbulent spirit, feeling without a place and without a cause. The main character of Anthem finally is at peace with himself because he has figured out what he can od in life, and what his path may be. The self-actualization of this character is what every other person on this earth has strived for (or is still striving for). I found it very significant, not only to the character's life, but also to our own lives with its ins and outs.



I really enjoyed this novel, mainly because it uses a contrasting view on a Utopian society and structure. It goes against the usual view of futurisitic conformity, and puts a modern society back into the times of no electricity and no basic knowledge of everyday scientific processes. I think this perspective makes the novel more intriguing because it shows self-discovery in an entirely different light. Rather than discovering what he had forgotten about himself, Equality finally figures out who he is, and experiences an internal revolution.