Open Response #2 — Actually Responding

Responding to 2008 Open-Ended Prompt

In Hamlet by William Shakespeare, Laertes acts as a foil to Hamlet. By having both of their fathers be killed and strive for revenge, Laertes reveals the flaws of Hamlet as well as reflecting the consequences of not taking action after waiting for too long.

Throughout the play, it was explictly mentioned that Hamlet’s goal was to get revenge by killing his uncle, King Claudius. Not only did his uncle kill his dad, Claudius took the throne, which was Hamlet’s inheritance from his dad, married his mother, and had his friends betray him. These reasons are okay reasons for Hamlet to take revenge. However through out the play, he continues to hesitate due to his morals conflicting against his goal. This causes the conflict between King Claudius and Hamlet to go longer than it should have. Hamlet lets go of all of the opportunities to kill his uncle whenever it was given. This is especially seen when King Claudius was praying. Hamlet could’ve killed him, and he was about as well. But, Hamlet doesn’t do so, using the excuse of Claudius going to heaven, and avoids killing him.

Even though King Claudius doesn’t die until the end, the relationship between Hamlet and Laertes becomes rocky as time passes. Although they weren’t the best of friends in the beginning of the play, they held mutual respect towards each other and treating each other as prince and noblemen.  But after the death of Polonius, Laertes swore to get his revenge on Hamlet. It wasn’t until Ophelia’s death did Laertes and Hamlet interact with each other, with one trying to kill the other. Although Hamlet tries to apologize to Laertes, Laertes still was set on killing Hamlet.

The two ended up fighting each other. King Claudius had the poisoned cup while Laertes had his sword be smeared with poison. With this being said, as Hamlet and Laertes were fighting, Hamlet wins two points and rests. During that time, Laertes slashes at Hamlet, which cause Hamlet to become angry and fight Laertes. However, Hamlet steals the sword that was poisoned from Laertes and stabs him back, while Hamlet’s mother drinks the poisoned cup.  In his dying breath, Laertes begs Hamlet to forgive him and reveals how Claudius was the one who set the whole fight up. Finally, after realizing how things went to far, Hamlet kills Claudius and dies.

Through the fight with Laertes, the negative consequences of waiting on something for too long is seen through the play of Hamlet. Despite the fact that this play was written mainly as a tragedy play, the play also reflects the moral conflicts people face before taking action, as well as the habit of making excuses to avoid something they really don’t want to do. Hamlet didn’t want to kill Claudius since it’s morally a big crime. With this in his mind, he continued to make excuses, especially when he was given the chance as the king was praying. However, later Hamlet realizes how his hesitation and internal conflict caused the situation to spread, causing others to get dragged into the mess.  Although Hamlet didn’t directly caused the death of the people around, he becomes aware of how he should’ve taken action sooner and not wait the situation out. As Laertes reveals how main cause for the others to be dragged into the mess was due to Claudius, Hamlet was reflecting how he should’ve taken King Claudius out before the situation spread. Seeing that his indecisiveness caused this to spread, he was able to finally to kill Claudius before he died as well.

 

 

Summary and Analysis Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

Theme statement: In Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Stoppard uses wordplay and character awareness to discuss the meaninglessness of life and the inevitability of death.

In Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, there were lots of emphasis in repetition. Such as the lines “give this day our daily ____ “.  Guildenstern repeats this about 4 times during the play. This could be due to Guildenstern reminding himself and Rosencrantz the daily needs they would daily as they continue to live. It’s live Theatre of the Abstract, when having a character or couple characters repeat something that’s meaningless. There were also the repetition of using the puns and death. True, it was meant to be funny, but it was acted as a reminder to Guildenstern and Rosencrantz  how they won’t be able to avoid their death.

Summary: The play is basically a spin-off of Hamlet, except it’s written about Guildenstern and Rosencrantz. The play starts with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern playing against each other by tossing coins. They continue to play until Guildenstern gets annoyed, and reminds Rosencrantz that they were sent for. Soon, they’re heading towards Elsinore. As they travel, the duo meets the tragedians and the player. At first, the two were entertained by the group until the issue of mistreatment towards children rises. Guildenstern bets against the player, who ends up losing against Guildenstern. Suddenly, the two were watching the scene when Hamlet freaks Ophelia out. The Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, bewildered by the scene, exchange a few words only to suddenly have King Claudius enter, forcing the two to speak the lines Shakespeare had intended for them to say. This led the duo to struggle over how they were going to get info out of Hamlet, including the root reason of why Hamlet had gone mad. Soon, they started acting out how they’ll get Hamlet to answer their questions, only to get to the bottom of it themselves. Little later on, they meed Hamlet who was acting mad in front of Polonius. They tried to initiate their plan, only to have Hamlet catch on what they were trying to do. They get stuck with Hamlet for sometime, until Polonius arrives to announce that the tragedians and the player had arrived. After Hamlet and Polonius leaves, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern re-unite with the Tragedians, discussing about Hamlet’s strange behavior.  After the discussion, the protagonists announces that Hamlet had a play ready for the family once the King, Queen, and co. decided to show up. Then the play is performed the group, until the King became furious and leaves. The scene changes and Claudius orders Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to get the dead body of Polonius from Hamlet. They tried but failed, which led them to get the mission of dragging Hamlet to England. While on the boat to England, the two were acting out how they will behave in front of the king of England, only to find out that Hamlet was going to be killed. The two flips out for a while, then fell asleep. As they were sleeping, Hamlet switches letters. The two then were woken up by pirates attacking, which brought them to get their swords out, join the player and Hamlet to fight only to hide in the barrels in the ship. After the attack, R&G appears in one barrel, while the other barrel had the player. Hamlet was missing with the other barrel. In the end, R&G disappears and the play ends showing the scene of the ambassador talking to Horatio, the only one alive.

Characters:

Rosencrantz— the best friend of Guildenstern as well as the character known to be gullible most of the time.

Guildenstern— The “smarter” friend of the two. Both are extremely smart seen in a few scenes, but mostly act immaturely.

Hamlet — The friend of R&G and the protagonist from the play “Hamlet”

the player — the leader of the tragedians and the one who sort befriends the strange duo

Tone:

Humorous and comical, since there many usage of puns and the use of stupidity that was mentioned from the Theatre of Comedy. However there were seriousness in the play such as when R&G realized they would be dying or how they felt distressed by the fact they can’t get any sense of anything.

Rhetorics:

Puns, repetition, and allusion

Response to Course Material

I really enjoyed reading Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, which was written by Tom Stoppard. It was humorous most of the time and cute(?) as we see Rosencrantz and Guildenstern interact with each other. What was really interesting though, was how Stoppard had Rosencrantz and Guildenstern talk using modern syntax while having the two be aware that they were part of a play. There were also parts where the two breaks the fourth wall, such as when the stage direction has Rosencrantz and Guildenstern look to the audience and talk directly to them.

Through out the play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern can be seen as two characters wanting to have freedom of behaving the way they wish to act. However, they are unable to do that  as seen when they reenact their parts from Hamlet. This shows how  no matter how much they wish to know more about themselves, they won’t be able to since Shakespeare didn’t give them a chance to appear more.

With this being the case, one motif of this play would be unchangeable fate. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern desperately tries to change their fate of dying by trying to find ways for them to gain a free will that wasn’t already created for themselves.  But no matter how much they wish to gain their free will and worked to do so, in the end they weren’t able to because of how Shakespeare create them to do as well as their limits.  They ended up being dead in the end.

Although both of them were implied to be dead in the play, they were explicitly dead. In the play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern disappears. However, the two are both seen being hanged. This slightly confused me why the author of the play, who is also the director of the movie, change the scenes of the movie. Sure, there’s censorship, I’m still confused on the ending. I think that Stoppard was trying to help his audience understand where in the play of Hamlet Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were, however the lines of the ambassador could’ve explained the reason for the disappearance.

There’s also the fact of how Rosencrantz and Guildenstern speaks. In both the movie and the play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern talk in postmodern language, not using the famous Shakespearean language. This could’ve been due to Stoppard wanting to have audience understand where everything was going as well.

 

Open Prompt #2

This is written in response to the 2008 Open-Ended prompt‘s sample essays:

Student 3A‘s essay was very in-depth, answers the prompt, and easy to follow and read. Although in the beginning of the essay, the student’s response seem like it was a summary at first, probably confusing any who was reading in the perspective of an AP essay grader. Keeping this in mind, this would’ve been the reason why Student 3A received an eight instead of a nine. However, that doesn’t mean it tarnished the overall essay. The minute student was done with the summary, student 3A pulls everything together. The student was able to point out how a minor character brought the main character’s strengths by discussing the direct interaction between the two. For example, the ill-treatment the minor character brought on the protagonist allowed the protagonist’s unknown traits of cleverness, and the discovery of her’s worth as a human. And to support his/her claims, the student refers to the events that happen between the protagonist and the minor character from the book. The usage of syntax and the overall organization of the essay was really well structured as well.

Student 3B‘s essay wasn’t structured as well as student 3A’s essay, but was still an okay essay. Student 3B’s focused mainly on how the protagonist was able to become a new person and discover her talents and her true self. And this was what caused the student lose some points from her essay as well as gain points for his/her essay. The prompt mentions how the qualities of the main characters are enhanced and revealed through the minor character/the foil. However, the problem was that the student mentioned too many minor characters, and didn’t focus on one minor character until the end. Although the end perfectly explains the minor character that was introduced first in the beginning was the foil the student intended to use, they dragged in another character which caused many readers to be confused who the foil was suppose to be. With this being the case, student 3B didn’t really answer the other half of the prompt.

Student 3C’s essay was very simple and didn’t go in-depth. The student just mentions that character traits of the minor character they used to act as the foil of the main character, including the main character’s traits. However, the prompt asked how does the minor character interact with the main character and how the minor character brings out the protagonist’s traits, not how the two were comparable. With this being said, the student very vaguely answered the prompt’s questions and the requirements. Not only that, the writing itself is very basic. The syntax and diction could’ve been improved, as well as the structure.

 

Summary and Analysis to Hamlet

Plot summary: In the play Hamlet, Horatio is three other guards are introduced in the beginning in the play, by seeing them on look out. They soon meet the ghost of Hamlet who wouldn’t respond to Horatio when Horatio demands the ghost to speak to him. But just as the ghost was about to actually respond, the ghost disappears which led Horatio to make the decision on telling Hamlet what they have seen. Soon, the scene changes to the court room, where King Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle, gives a speech to the court as well as his blessings to Laertes, who will soon travel to France to finish his studies. Afterwards, the king questions why Hamlet continues to act grim and depressed (sort of like an emo) as well as his mother, Queen Gertrude (she remarried to Claudius a month after the death of late King Hamlet). Claudius points out how Hamlet’s father has died for a month now, and Hamlet should just get over it as well as the queen. After the king and queen leaves (with Hamlet sassing back at them), Horatio tells Hamlet about the ghost. Hamlet joins Horatio and the guards that very night at the guard’s watch tower, where Hamlet meets the ghost of his father. Although Horatio and Marcellus (a guard)  tries to prevent Hamlet from going with the ghost alone, Hamlet goes after ghost. The ghost reveals how his father was murdered by  King Claudius and then orders Hamlet to get vengeance. After Hamlet promises to get his revenge, the ghost disappears and Horatio and Marcellus catches up to Hamlet. Hamlet then gets the two to swear never to tell anyone about his meeting with the ghost. After this, Hamlet starts acting as if he has gone crazy mad, freaking Ophelia (who happens to like Hamlet) by acting piteous and coming out of her closet. This causes King Claudius to get Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to try to get Hamlet to tell his reasons why he has gone mad. Although they come back unsuccessful, Polonius hypothesize that it was because Hamlet was feeling heart broken from Ophelia, since she was ordered by her father not to talk to him. The king and Polonius soon tests this by spying on Hamlet as he talks to Ophelia, only to have Hamlet get angry at Ophelia and say harsh things to her. Later, a play is played for King Claudius, which reenact how Claudius became king. This causes the king to get furious and stop the play from continuing and brought down the decision to send Hamlet to England. It doesn’t help that Hamlet accidentally kills Polonius thinking it was the king when he was talking to his mother. After this, the start of everyone’s death begins. Hamlet, who was suppose to travel with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to England, escapes and heads back to England. Before he comes back thought, Ophelia goes mad after her father’s death and Laertes comes back from France to get his revenge for his father’s death. This lead to Laertes and the king to conspire against Hamlet and get Hamlet killed. After Hamlet comes back, he finds out that Ophelia died. He confesses his love for her at her funeral. Soon, he and Laertes fight each other in a fencing match. However, as Hamlet was fighting, a poisoned cup that was made for Hamlet was drunk by Queen Gertrude, who dies while Hamlet was trying to get back at Laertes for his injury. Laertes, then, gets poisoned by the same sword that he used to poison Hamlet. Hamlet stabs the king and forces him to drink the rest of the poison cup and then dies in the arms of Horatio.

Characters:

• Hamlet: He’s the protagonist of the play. He is seen to be indecisive since he hesitates every time he’s about to kill King Claudius. However, it’s due to his personality of following his moral ethics that he has learned and disciplined himself to follow. Yet, he greatly respected his father and feels betrayed by his mother as she gets remarried a month after his father’s death.
• Queen Gertrude: The mother of Hamlet, the ex-wife of late King Hamlet, and the current wife of King Claudius. She marries King Claudius a month after King Hamlet’s death. She cares for her son, and feels guilty since she’s aware that she’s part of the reason why Hamlet goes mad.
• King Claudius: King Hamlet’s brother and murderer. He’s the uncle of Hamlet and tries to get Hamlet killed by sending him to England and then by getting him poison since he’s getting the hint that Hamlet’s aware that he killed his brother
• Ophelia: The daughter of Polonius, and sister of Laertes. She loved Hamlet but soon goes mad after finding out that Hamlet killed her father, who she often follows. She’s innocent and naive about “love” works in the royal palace as well as society in general.
• Polonius: King Claudius’s chief counselor and father of Ophelia. He seems to be very nosy to others, but still has a caring heart for his children. He spied on Hamlet, which led to his end while still believing that Hamlet was in love with his daughter.
• Laertes: Son of Polonius and brother of Ophelia. He’s very loyal to his family and protective of his sister. He was studying in France only to come back after finding out that his sister had gone mad and his father was murdered in the royal palace. He causes the death of Hamlet as well as his own, since he poisoned his sword that was used against him and for him.

Theme Statement (attempt to go solo) : In Hamlet, Shakespeare reveals that relationships causes madness, suspicion and paranoia.

• In the play, it could be assumed that Hamlet does go mad for real, not just acting, due to his internal conflict of trying to keep his promise with his father while also questioning the moral standards of killing a person
• It can be assume that both King Claudius and Hamlet goes paranoid since both are trying their best to get rid of one another, knowing that only one can remain standing in the “game” they’re playing.
• Hamlet gets suspicious with anyone who seems to be siding with the king, going far lengths to persuade them that he’s gone mad and trying to make it seem like he’s not after the king
• Hamlet and Ophelia go mad after the death of their family member, behaving like they can’t be controlled.

 

Background:

• Written during the dark periods of Shakespeare’s life
  • May have been due to:
  • Shakespeare’s father’s death, which happened 2~4 years before Hamlet was written
  • His heart break of his mistress going after his best friend and not to him, despite that fact that he was already married…

Point-of-View (P.O.V):

• The play was written in the point-of-view of the audience, however, it seems to be written more on Hamlet’s side since there’s a chance that Shakespeare might’ve added some of his personal emotions into the play

Tone:

• Lots of tension, sorrow, and other negative emotions makes up the tone of the play
  • The heartbreak of family breaking apart and innocent love turned into sorrow and madness
  • betrayal and death adds to the tone as well

Imagery:

• Dark and gloomy
  • Can assume that the play was set during the fall/winter since in the beginning, the soldiers mentioned it was colder in the night
  • Also, the English often thought of Denmark as a cold and snowy place at the time
• The tone also influences this imagery since the story brings a lot of negative emotions into play

Diction + Syntax:

• very exaggerated words used by the characters to get their point across
  •  Laertes says “To cut his throat in the church!” when asked how willing was he to kill Hamlet
  • Hamlet says “I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum.”
• The characters change the way the speak when talking those of equal status and those of lower status

Important quotes to consider:

• “I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum.” – Hamlet
  • It isn’t clear if Hamlet did actually love Ophelia or he just saw her as a younger sister. It can be argued both ways, although Ophelia may have hinted that they were lovers when she sings her valentine song as she was going mad
• “To be or not to be- that is the question” – Hamlet
  • In Hamlet’s soliloquy, Hamlet may have been questioning himself and his position in this whole conflict. He can also be questioning humans if they act themselves or not.
• “Something is rotten in Denmark” – Marcellus
  • Marcellus could be foreshadowing the fall of Denmark and injustice that has been committed by the king. He could also be talking about other suspicion that rises as well.

 

 

Response to course work

After finishing Hamlet including the clips from different  versions of the film, I feel like my views on Hamlet has changed. Hamlet, the protagonist, truly behaves as a troubled teen. From reading the articles, especially the one with the African natives, I can see what morals might’ve caused him to feel confused and why he would continue being indecisive. The audio we were suppose to listen to as well, allowed me to rethink the characters and reflect on them.

The movies we watched were very… interesting. I feel like the David Tennant version could’ve been better considering the fact that it was produced by BBC. I just assumed that since BBC is an English TV producer, they would’ve produced the movie in the setting like the one with Kenneth Branagh or Sir Olivier.

Response to Open Prompt

Northrop Fyre mentioned how a tragic hero and their flaws often affect the characters around them. And it’s wrong. In the story of Hamlet, which was written by Shakespeare, the characters that once interacted with the protagonist, Hamlet, all meet an unfortunate ending due to Hamlet’s indecisiveness. Because Hamlet waited too long on achieving his goal to get revenge for his father, he brought suffering to others when it could’ve been prevented.

In the story, Hamlet is given so many opportunities to kill his father’s murderer, King Claudius. When the king was eating, Hamlet could’ve poisoned the king’s drink. When he was sleeping, Hamlet could’ve slipped into his bedroom and directly poison him. But the biggest opportunity that was given to Hamlet was when king was kneeling in the church. Despite the fact that this scene was a dramatic irony, since Hamlet thought the king was praying when he actually wasn’t, it doesn’t justify the fact that he could’ve straight out kill him. With all of this being said, Hamlet just couldn’t make up his mind whether it was a good time to kill Claudius or not. This very flaw led to other characters’ lives to be affected.

Polonius’s death was, by no means, on purpose. It was an accident. Just when Hamlet was finally confident on killing King Claudius and mistakenly thinking that it was said king behind the curtain, he stabs Polonius, who was the person behind the curtain not the king. If it weren’t for Hamlet’s hesitation to kill the king before this happening, Polonius wouldn’t have died. It certainly doesn’t help that it caused an instant chain reaction of death in the royal palace.

The death of Laertes and Ophelia was caused by Hamlet’s indecisiveness. Hamlet could’ve ended this whole problem on killing the king by taking immediate action, but he didn’t. Instead, he ends waiting the problem out until he was absolutely confident that he could kill Claudius. This hesitation also led to Hamlet becoming mad since he continued to have his internal fight on the morality of killing his uncle, King Claudius. But after Hamlet kills Polonius, that was the final straw for Ophelia’s sanity causes her to become mad as well. This also led to her death due to her trying to hang some flower garlands while standing on a weak willow tree’s branch, which broke under her, causing her to drown.

Laertes also faces death, as he duels Hamlet because he wanted revenge for his father’s death. Unlike Hamlet, who wouldn’t take action until the near end of the story, Laertes instantly took action, wanting to get his revenge quickly satisfied. This leads to another dramatic ironic scene, where Laertes gets killed by the poisoned rapier that was meant for Hamlet.

The indecisiveness of Hamlet led to all of these characters death. Even though it was not Hamlet’s intention to kill these characters nor was it done on purpose, if Hamlet killed the king sooner, it would’ve prevented the death of these characters. Hamlet just couldn’t decide when, where, or even how to kill the king when he was given so many moments. During or even before the match between Laertes and himself would’ve been a perfect time to kill the king. This would’ve also prevented his mother’s death since she wouldn’t have drunk the cup of wine that the king had poisoned that was meant for Hamlet to drink.

All of this causes the story be a tragedy. The story reveals the death of those who are innocent and should’ve not been part of this conflict between the protagonist, Hamlet, the antagonist, King Claudius, and the goal of killing each other off. If Hamlet had taken immediate actions and quickly achieve the goal of killing Claudius, many of the deaths that were unintentionally occurred could’ve been prevented.

Open Prompt #1

Student LLLL  did a fantastic job with tying Gatsby to the tragic hero that was described by Northrop Fyre’s quote. The student described each of Gatsby’s flaws, that materialism will get him everything and him trying to place the past into the future, was amazing. Not only does the student pull evidence from the novels as well as warrants, the students was able to synthesize how it affected the other characters. For example, Student LLLL mentions how Gatsby wanted Daisy to break up and leave Tom and go back to Gatsby, which holds the tragic flaw of his unrequited love for Daisy. The student also comments how these flaws causes many lives of the characters in the book to become altered. Tom Buchanan’s mistress, Myrtle and her husband George, both die unintentionally. Gatsby didn’t want to kill them nor knew who they were from the start. But, mentioned by Student LLLL, he indirectly caused both to die because the car that killed Myrtle was Gatsby’s and the misunderstanding of Gatsby being Tom caused George to kill him and kill himself.

Student C did a fair job with using King Lear to going with the theme of tragic hero. Student C introduces their claims and flaws of King Lear that might’ve affected him becoming a tragic hero, as well as the fact how other might’ve been affected by his flaws. The next paragraph was basically a summary on King Lear, with the generalization of the plot and characters that the student wanted to know since they might refer to it in the next few paragraphs or so such as King Lear’s daughters Goneril and Reagan and how they helped feed King Lear’s ego and Gloucester, King’s loyal guard/servant who wanted to save the king but ends up getting betrayed by his own son. The student only refers to how King Lear’s flaw led to every characters death, not fully explaining how his flaw affect a character and their “new” life specifically.

Student FF talks about the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest, mentioning Randle McMurphy as a tragic hero. Although the student claims that McMurphy was a tragic hero, there wasn’t enough evidence and support by the student to prove that the claim was legitimate. The effect  of McMurphy’s flaw towards other characters was mentioned by the student, such as the death of Billy, however what McMurphy’s flaw was was not even hinted. It doesn’t help that the student’s entire response was similar to that of a summary for the book, not a response to the question on tragic hero. There’s a lot connections of other characters and what their overall outcome was, such death of another or suffering of another. Yet, it was never revealed what McMurphy’s flaw was and how his flaw contributed to the demise of other characters.  With this being said, Student FF’s essay can be seen as a plot overview not as a response to the question.

Summary and Analysis of Heart of Darkness

Plot Summary:

The story starts off with the Accountant, the Lawyer, the Director, the unnamed Narrator and Charlie Marlow on a ship that’s travel along River Thames in England. There, Marlow starts his story of his journey through the Congo. Marlow gets a job to join a trading company through his aunt, and travels to the Congo where the trading business was stationed at. There he’s given the job to deliver a report to Kurtz by the manager, causing Marlow to travel deeper into the Congo. On his way to Kurtz, he stops at a station where he meets a man who plots with his uncle to become Chief of the inner station and a brickmaker who lies about giving Marlow rivets. He also witnesses a cabin burning along with an African being blamed and beaten for doing it. Soon he travels with a group of African natives, some Pilgrims (white men from the station who wants to start trading ivory) and the man who was talking with his uncle  to Kurtz. Just before he gets close to the Inner station, Marlow and his crew are attacked by the natives, causing some of the natives in the crew to die, while the Pilgrims just use some sort of smoke screen to at least hide themselves. After the attack, Marlow lands at the Inner Station and meets a Russian man who’s a follower of Kurtz and continues to praise Kurtz. Then, finally, he meets Kurtz only to find out that he’s the one that ordered the natives to attack his ship. Also the rumors Marlow heard while on his way to Kurtz didn’t seem to matter anymore seeing that Kurtz was severely ill. From there, Marlow seems to become closer to Kurtz, from finding out that Kurtz had a fiance back in England to discovering that he had a mistress and being allies with his mistress’s tribesmen. And all of this occurred as Kurtz was traveling on the ship to the Central Station with Marlow and his crew. In the end, Kurtz dies while entrusting Marlow with papers he didn’t want other person to have, while Marlow meets the Intended and lies that Kurtz died while repeating her name when he actually said “the horror, the horror”.

Characters:

• The Accountant, the Lawyer, The Director- 3 insignificant minor characters that were on the ship that’s traveling through the River Thames
• The Unnamed Narrator- the one telling what’s happening at the current time
• Charlie Marlow- the protagonist of the story and the narrator of the story of Heart of Darkness
• Kurtz-the chief of the Inner Station and the person Marlow is delivering a report from the manager of the Central Station
• The Intended- the fiancee of Kurtz
• The African mistress- The native woman that lives in the Inner Station and Kurtz’s mistress
• The man and his uncle- a person who wanted the position of being chief of Inner station and plots with his uncle to achieve his goal
• Pilgrims- they were a group of white men who wanted to start a trade of ivory for themselves and get a commission
• The African natives- the natives living in the Congo. A group called the “Cannibals”  were part of Marlow’s crew as being the “sailors” of the ship
• Russian Man- a follower of Kurtz who would do anything for Kurtz and listen to every word Kurtz says
• The brickmaker- the brickmaker was literally a brickmaker who was close on getting the position of being Chief of the Inner station, and broke the promise of getting Marlow of rivets

Brief Bio of Author:

• Joseph Conrad wanted to travel across the sea and visit many places since he was young, inspiring him to study the life of a mariner in France
• Later on he joined the British merchant marine between the age of 15 ~ 16
• Although the book was suppose to show his view of being anti-imperialistic, he was also racist and anti-feminist (will be explained more in depth later)

Tone:

• Dark with slight horror
• Full of agony and misery
  • This is depicted by the continuous mention of how the African laborers are treated as well as the conflicts Marlow faces

Imagery

• Dark and slight horrifying
  • Seen like hell due to how terrible the Africans are treated, the behavior of the white men other than Marlow, and there’s that one scene where there’s heads on stakes near Kurtz’s dwelling place

Point of View

• A point of view inside another point of view, both being 1st point of views
  • The narrator (who’s unnamed) narrating Marlow narration of his story (which is the actual story of Heart of Darkness)

Diction+ Syntax

• All of Conrad’s diction were negative
  • Some of the diction used insults Africans
    • Example: “the insolent black head at the doorway”, “savage”, “cannibals”
    • This shows racism that was in Conrad
  • There’s also incredulity of putting women to work (meaning women shouldn’t get a job, it’s unlady-like)
    • Example: “I, Charlie Marlow, put a women to work”
    • The emphasis of what Marlow did was something big and taboo

Theme’s statement:

• In Heart of Darkness, Conrad uses the contrast between light and dark in Marlow’s journey to criticize contemporary ideas of civilization and the morality of imperialism
  • The idea of light and dark links to many motifs that links the the morality of imperialism
    • Examples: racism (white men vs black Africans), the Congo jungle and the English cities
  • Ideas of civilization is question through the depiction of how the African natives in the Congo are treated
  • The morality of imperialism is seen through how the white men all think about competition and how to dominate the trading business
    • Corruption is seen as well

 

 

Response to Course Work #3

When looking at the recent course work we worked on before break, I feel like we mainly focused on analyzing Heart of Darkness only, and not anything else.  Most of the articles given in class such as the one by Achebe or the lecture by the professor Dintenfass related back to piece. Even the poems related back to Heart of Darkness because Conrad alludes to them in his work.

Although lots of anti-imperialism was emphasized in the book, I can’t help but feel that Joseph Conrad was racist and anti-feminist. For example, Conrad indirectly tells us that he doesn’t support women working, as in getting a job outside of home when Charles Marlow, the main character of the story, mentions how he’s amazed that he caused his aunt to do work in the beginning of the plot. There’s also the fact that each women weren’t seen doing any sort of work women of today would do. The Intended wasn’t seen doing any paper work nor the women clad in black working as secretaries. Instead the Intended was just mourning for her lost fiance, while the women were knitting. Also, the African woman was given the role of being mistress not one of the laborers. Sure it may seem like a coincidence, but when looking at these women and the social “rules” during the late 1800s and early 1900s, this is showing how males disapproves the idea of females working.

Then regarding to racism, I was more surprised that I didn’t pick up the hint that Conrad was being racist than being surprised that Conrad was racist. Many Europeans were racist during the time frame when Conrad was alive, Conrad being no different. And I guess it was inevitable despite the fact that it was implied that he saw how the Africans were being treated by the English when he traveled to Africa, since the novella was written through his experience. The article by Achebe brought this emphasis on how Conrad was being racist especially with the diction Conrad used when describing the African at the door way: ” ‘the insolent black head in the doorway'”.

There’s also the fact that Charles Marlow is the symbolization of Conrad. Even though I don’t have a lot of evidence, but I feel that the way Marlow thinks and behaves with the others in the story would’ve been how Conrad behave and think. There were articles on how Marolow is the alter ego of Conrad since both were British sailors and traveled to Africa.