Heart of Darkness II

A brief analysis of Chinua Achebe's "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'" reveals that her paper should be read with some caution. First is that her paper is not fully accurate. For instance, she states the falsehood that the Great Wall of China is the only man-made object visible from the moon; in fact, it is not visible from the moon, due to its width (despite its length), and other man-made objects are visible from a significantly higher height than it. Whether or not this should indicate to a reader that she has not done all of the research is up to the discretion of the reader, but it does cast a shadow of a doubt on the inherent reliability portrayed by her position as a professor, as she has not done the research to recognize that at least one statement she claims in her paper to be true is false. Secondly, and more important than a minor inaccuracy, is her clear bias, as a teacher of African literature; given her position, she is inherently in a place to criticize others for their racism. While she is also in a better position than most to see the issues with society, her perspective undoubtedly also makes her overly perceptive, sometimes seeing racism where there is none. Both of these should be considered when reading her paper, but neither of them detracts from her main point of the general excessive focus of Joseph Conrad on race.

One might argue, as some have, that this focus is that of Marlow, not of Conrad. The issue, however, is more complex: present-day Marlow is likely obfuscating some facts to make his past self look better, and Conrad is likely doing the same. The analogue between Marlow and Conrad is quite multifaceted, and therefore it would seem likely that the author is, to at least some extent, represented in this narrator. However, despite that Marlow, as a narrator, is likely hiding some of the evils belonging to the earlier iteration of Marlow, he does not hide his own racism and thoughts of the continent as primitive and base, still claiming that "going up th[e] river was like travelling [sic] back to the earliest beginnings of the world" (105). Marlow does not consider racism to be immoral, and so does not try to hide it. Considering the equivalency between Marlow and Conrad, it seems likely that Conrad similarly does not believe racism to be immoral. That he does not have Marlow hide it means that Marlow did not learn that racism is wrong during his travels; regardless of whether the character is identical to the author, it is clear that their stories of their travels are parallel, and therefore that the lessons that Conrad learns would be transferred to Marlow. As Marlow did not learn a lesson about racism, as evidenced by the racism Marlow displays as a narrator, it would seem that to be against racism is not a lesson that the Congo had to offer; Conrad would not have learned this lesson either, or else he would have transferred it to Marlow, presuming Marlow would have learned it as well, having gone on a similar journey. Therefore, regardless of her bias and her paper's full accuracy, Chinua Achebe does have a point in referring to Conrad's racism, especially with respect to the lack of prior literature; despite the difficulty of withdrawing conclusions from the intricately layered narrative, it would seem that Marlow's racism is not a result of who Marlow is as a character, but rather of who Conrad is as a person.

Heart Of Darkness I

At the very beginning of Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad establishes a symbolic representation of light and dark that contrasts with most books' use of this motif. Whereas most traditional works of literature will use the color white, light and brightness to symbolize illumination of the truth, similarly using the color black, darkness and shadow to symbolize hiding the truth, Heart of Darkness uses light to symbolize what is unknown and black to symbolize what is discovered. Maslow exemplifies this symbol with his statement that Africa "had ceased to be a blank space of delightful mystery - a white patch for a boy to dream gloriously over. It had become a place of darkness" (71). Maslow is speaking of the white portion of the map as the unexplored portion and of the explored portion as a "place of darkness." In this way, he matches whiteness with a lack of knowledge. This indicates that the white people are similarly unknowing - that whites are unaware of the world. With Heart of Darkness being a story of the discovery of the evil of humanity, the whites' being unaware of this evil contrasts with the perspective of those who live in darkness - the blacks.

Furthermore, the general  scene sets this image. The scene is one of light turning to darkness - of sunset. Similarly, his story is about to transform the sailors from their white, light, unknowing selves to a darker crew more aware of the evils of humanity. The sun is described as in a "curved and imperceptible fall" (66). The sun is slowly going away, turning "from glowing white [in]to a dull red without rays and without heat" (66). In other words, the light is dimming, going from white to black. While the sailors hear his story and are "enlightened" (although an inverse term would seem to better fit with this symbol) to the evils of humanity, the sun drops below the horizon. As the shadows of knowledge overcome the white areas on their moral map, night sweeps over them, ending their light, blissful day with the dark truth.

Analysis of "Cross"

Thesis: The multiple denotations behind the title of the poem "Cross" lead to progressively deeper interpretations of the poem that illustrate a more and more dangerous world for the speaker.

• One meaning behind the title is that the speaker is a cross-breed of different races.
• His father is "a white old man" whereas his "old mother's black" (1-2).
• This would imply at best a difficult life any time prior to or within the lifetime of Langston Hughes.
• This interpretation of "Cross," being the simplest interpretation, tells us the least about the nature of the poem, and similarly only illustrates the danger of being half white, half black to a minimal extent.
• A deeper  meaning would be that the speaker is cross at his parents for creating him as a biracial creature.
• The speaker discusses how "if [he] ever cursed" his mother and father, then he would redact his statements (3, 5).
• This illustrates the emotional strife associated with being biracial: he does not have an inherent internal association with either race, and so he does not know which race he should choose to live as.
• This is a deeper interpretation of "Cross," and gives us a deeper understanding of the speaker; it allows us to understand the internal struggle that the speaker must live with every day.
• Finally, "Cross" is an answer to the final rhetorical question in the poem.
• The final stanza asks, "I wonder where I'm gonna die / being neither white nor black?" (11-12).
• Under this interpretation, Hughes is implying that the speaker is going to end his life by being crucified - an understandable fear for blacks if the speaker lives in the time of the KKK, when the idea of the amalgamation of the races terrified many whites.
• This is both the deepest and darkest interpretation of the title, elaborating on how being a biracial person in a time when racial mixing was feared is physically dangerous and could easily lead to the speaker's painful death.

Analysis of "Break of Day"

Thesis: The sudden use of a break at the end of each stanza illustrates with sound the wrongness of a lover leaving his or her companion immediately at the crest of dawn.

• The change in the meter from the first two rhyming couplets to the last couplet in each stanza causes the reader to stumble somewhat, emphasizing the wrongness and immorality of the conclusion of the stanza and thereby the night.
• In each stanza, the first four lines use iambic tetrameter, as in "Must business thee from hence remove?" whereas the last two lines use iambic pentameter, as in "He which hath business and makes makes love, doth do" (, 17).
• The change in meter towards the end of the stanza sounds improper compared in its abrupt shift, just as the abrupt shift from lover to a person with business is wrong.
• Furthermore, both of them take place towards the end of the event, but not when the event should end: the shift takes place near the end of the stanza, but not quite at the end, and the leaving takes place towards the end of the night, but not quite at the end.
• Similarly, the first stanza shifts from four lines of rhetorical questions to a statement, a shift that similarly emphasizes the contrast between the smooth beginning of the night and its rough ending.
• The rhetorical questions of "'Tis true, 'tis day; what though it be?" last the first four lines, providing a smooth, almost seductive tone to the beginning of the stanza that is interrupted by the implied command behind "Love [...] should [...] keep us together" (1, 5-6). 
• The seductive tone is best illustrated by "why should we rise because 'tis light? / Did we lie down because 'twas night?," because the speaker is arguing persuasively without seeming like arguing, just as seduction is persuasion without seeming to be; this contrasts harshly with the significantly less soft-spoken command-like conclusion
• The difference between the beginning of the night and the end is fully illustrated by the difference between the seductive question and the businesslike command.
• This line of questioning's end follows the same pattern as the metric shift, thus emphasizing the difference between the beginning of the stanza and the end, and thereby beginnings and endings in general.

Analysis of "Ballad of Birmingham"

Thesis: In “Ballad of Birmingham,” the greatest purpose of author Dudley Randall is to make the reader associate himself or herself with the mother in the poem, allowing the reader to gain a sense of empathy for the mother and by extension for the cause of civil rights.

• The use of direct quotations and the repetition within these quotations makes the mother and child relationship known to the reader, invoking feelings that are inherent to such a relationship.
• The child’s use of “mother dear” in the first line instantly allows the reader to understand the child as a child, and to feel the caring emotions that are inherent with children; this is reinforced with the later repetition of “mother” (1, 9).
• The specific repeated use of “baby,” a term of endearment that all mothers use, would allow any parent to understand instantly the worry the mother feels for the child (5, 13).
• The repetition of both of these terms in each quote, including the use of “baby” at the conclusion of the poem, reinforces the feelings that such a relationship creates by consistently referring to the relationships (31).
• The description in the fifth stanza either serves to enhance childlike innocence, causing the loss to seem even greater, or to emphasize the mother’s love for the child, depending on the interpretation of “she,” which refers ambiguously to either the mother or the child.
• If “she” is interpreted as the child, then an image appears of a child dressing up for church, enhancing the feelings of innocence that come inherently with children with the purity that comes with church, amplified by the use of “white” to describe her gloves and shoes (19-20).
• If “she” is interpreted as the mother, then the image becomes one of a mother carefully brushing her daughter’s hair, then dressing her up, kneeling down to the child’s height to do so; this image of a mother kneeling in front of her child to tenderly put on her gloves is a scene that could characterize the love between the mother and the child and thus act as an almost holy image that is shattered by the bomb at the end of the poem.
• The ambiguity causes one who looks sufficiently closely at the poem to see the ambiguity to see both of these images with similar effects, and even in one who simply reads over the poem sees, to a lesser extent, the image that doesn't correlate with his or her interpretation of "she," despite that the reader didn't actually understand the ambiguity as ambiguous.

Analysis of Tempest I.ii.70-200

I.ii.70-200, a flashback to when Prospero was ejected from his kingdom, shows Prospero as he was prior to his end-of-play epiphany when he accepts his responsibility, and as he is for most of the play. He blames his brother for his downfall entirely. He fails to recognize his own fault in not paying attention to his kingdom, saying that Antonio merely thought that he was "of temporal royalties [...] now incapable," rather than seeing that he genuinely was too absorbed in his study of magic to adequately maintain his kingdom (I.ii.131-132). Indeed, there would seem to be an inconsistency in the fact that he claims he knew "who to trash for overtopping" and yet he did not recognize the threat of his brother (I.ii.99-100). He discusses how "he did believe he was indeed the Duke, out o' the substitution," but doesn't realize how he is doing the same thing by deceiving himself into thinking that it is entirely his brother's fault (I.ii.122-123).

He is visibly not crazy, though, in that he doesn't blame everyone involved instinctively. He recognizes Gonzalo as "a noble Neapolitan" rather than simply blaming him as well for merely being one who accepted his exile (I.ii.192). He likes Gonzalo, despite the company he keeps, because Gonzalo aided him "out of his charity" (I.ii.193). Prospero is sane enough to recognize his friends, even if he can't recognize himself as his enemy; no man would recognize himself as his own enemy with so clear a scapegoat, so the audience can justify his actions as "righteous anger" from his point of view, despite the one ultimately at fault being Prospero himself, because Prospero has not crossed the line from "being in self-denial" to "being paranoid and attacking friends and enemies alike."