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I cannot tell you guys how much being the first one to answer these questions is freaking me out. Well anyway, as to the differences between darkness and light I believe we've come to an interesting reversal. Typically the hero uses light, white, or bright (heehee) things to symbolize his purity, chastity and overall wonderfulness, i.e. white horses, white light, white armor or white whatever-happens-to-be-there-at-the-time. Obviously in The Heart of DARKNESS this is not the case. For the most part black seems to symbolize pure, innocent, almost childlike, whereas the white is used as an almost disdainful adjective for the word around.
The part that particularly comes to mind is the chapter we have discussed in class, where the accountant shows up in his perfect white suit after Marlow has just seen an almost apocalyptic seen of human suffering and torment. The stark difference in the characters at this point in the novella is drastic. The accountant hates the savages of the Congo, he wants nothing to do with them, doesn't want to touch or see or speak with them because they are beneath him and beneath his notice. In my opinion black represents dirt, earth, life in this novella. These are all things that the liberating white men despise.
I say dirt, because this reminds me of a part in The Fountainhead (bite me TeNeal), where the main character gets in trouble for a church he has made(he is an architect). The church appears to everyone to be grovelling in the dirt,to be a part of the rock and earth from which it is made,to them it appears to be grovelling, because they are afraid to see that's it's reveling. This is the same situation. The black or dark "savages" are not cowering or rolling in the dirt, they are living in it. They are not worse or better than the whites, they are simply different. Instead of shackling the earth and everything else they cannot control, they embrace it, they laugh and dance and sing even when their brothers and sisters are being taken because it never really occurs to them to wage a war. Oh sure they fight, but (at least in this novella) only when they are commanded to by a white man, to wage a war, to shift your whole society into a pit of fear and despair as you fight, this never occurs to them, to stop living never occurs to them.
Unfortunatly this is just the tip of the iceberg, simply the difference found in skin color and clothing, but I believe that this is what colors the whole book's symbolism, black is life, and white is death.
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haha im glad you did it because i don't know how. anyways like you said mathew the difference between light and dark is reversed, which in a way to me makes me question the purity of what ever is trying to be portrayed that way. I guess i'm so use to white meaning pure and black meaning evil or death. But at the same time a bright white light reminds me of heaven while black could mean our clouded version of what we think is life.
ReplyDeleteone scene that comes to my mind where I got confused was when the two ladies sewing but they are both wearing black or making something with black yarn i forget but when i first had this image in my head i was thinking of the normal way black is portrayed, as evil. Well rereading and going back to page six where the difference is explained I figured it out and it made since after. But little things like can jumble things up.
In the topic of difference in skin color and black and white. To me it's like the black natives represent life in a way that is good for them. Because they are in their home and what they know it works for them so black=life. Since white men are coming to their lands it's killing the natives' culture. Because it is not the white man's land or his home their form of life doesn't work so white=death. Made since after we were done reading and discussed it in class.
Well obviously darkness is a big deal in this novel, hence the title "Heart of Darkness". I would've underlined that but I don't know how on here.. anyway. Darkness in this novel is portrayed differently, as Matthew said, opposite of what it's usually a symbol for. Instead of a representation of death it's more of a metaphor for blindness. Just because of the color of someone's skin it causes others to be blind to their potential and just their individual human nature. As to light, the "whited sepulchre", the headquarters, represents death, which is the opposite of what it is usually representing.... I'll finish this later, my computer is messing up.
ReplyDeleteWhat's going on with this group? Where are your other topics?
ReplyDeleteOkay we’ve definitely determined that indeed the colors are indeed switched from normal perceptions of good being portrayed as white or light and evil as black or darkness. I would like to point out however, that in some cultures, white does represent death. So these perceptions are Western and maybe wouldn’t seem so strange to one in another culture.
ReplyDeleteI find it very interesting that no one has brought up the ivory. Ivory is also white, white and bright. This is the thing that the white men are here for, the reason that they are in the Congo in the first place. I think the ivory represents the greatest evil, which is greed. Without greed, Kurtz wouldn’t have been in the Congo acting as a god and influencing the native people the way he did. Kurtz put them to work digging up ivory that had been buried, which is another example. The dark earth, as Matthew mentioned, represents good or pure, and the ivory being dug up destroys the earth. Which is what the white men are doing, they are destroying the Congo.
I was actually going to try and talk about the ivory, but then my computer froze. So you stole the subject right out of my mouth!
ReplyDeleteSorry!
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I’m sorry Mrs. Mahoney that this isn’t more of a discussion. Right now I’m trying to get my 300 words in before the deadline and it’s rather difficult to respond to people who haven’t posted.
ReplyDeleteConventionally light means knowledge and happiness, and darkness mean unknown and unhappiness. I believe that darkness was a very good choice in describing the Congo. It is a place that isn’t very well known and many bad things have happened there. So the Congo is like the Heart of Darkness of Africa. Light in this novel is best explained through an example. The first time that Marlow meets the Russian and they are talking, the light is illuminating them last while they are talking, but leaves the cottage and the rest of the natives in the darkness.
ehhh i don't know stash, used in that context it almost seems like the light is good, but still at the same time kinda makes sense. I like your thoughts on white as death, but even still I think white is generally use as a sign of the purity of passing or the tranquility of death. As my granddaddy would have said "there ain't no tranquility here", is there a single "happy" death in here?
ReplyDeleteI agree with white is a sign of puring or passing. That makes sense to me. If white represents death and black represents life..does that mean the congo being referred to the "heart of darkness" is a place of life, which is weird because people get killed all over the palce. geez
ReplyDelete