Joseph Conrad - Heart of darkness, Sintesi del corso di Inglese

Scarica Joseph Conrad - Heart of darkness e più Sintesi del corso in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! JOSEPH CONRAD Life Born in Russian-occupied Poland, Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) lost both parents during his youth. At the age of 17, he began a career as a sailor and travelled widely to the Far East and Australia, he also received a commission which took him to Congo, in Africa. He learned English during his voyages and became a British citizen in 1886. In 1894 he settled down in England and dedicated himself to writing: he used his own experience and the materials he had gathered during his journeys to write some of his most important novels. Some of his main works are: o The Nigger of the Narcissus (1897) o Lord Jim (1900) o Heart of Darkness (1902) o Nostromo (1904) o The Secret Agent (1907) o The Secret Sharer (1909) o The Shadow Line (1917) He died due to a heart attack in 1924. The writer's task and experimentation In the Preface to The Nigger of the Narcissus he stated that the writer's task should not be to try to amuse his readers or to teach them a lesson but rather to record the complex pattern of life as he saw it. His aim was to explore the meaning of the human condition. His main characters are all solitary figures, rooted in no past, committed to an uncertain future. Exotic settings Conrad set his novels and short stories at sea or in exotic latitudes. These were the places he knew well. His setting was usually the ship, or an African river, and the jungle. Various narrative techniques Conrad found chronological sequence inadequate and broke the normal time-sequence and used time shifts to create the illusion of life being lived by a number of very different people at the same time. He used various narrative techniques. Many of his novels and short stories are told by the same narrator, Marlow. The use of several points of view results from Conrad's wish to break free from the constraints of an omniscient narrator so that the reader is left to decide for himself. Main themes In almost all his works there is the recurrence of a situation in which a man who relies on the virtues of honesty, courage, pity and fidelity in order to achieve an ideal of conduct is confronted by a sense of evil against which these virtues seem powerless. It is organised society that gives man confidence, but this confidence fails when man is lonely and surrounded by a wild and hostile background. Thus, Conrad points out that reality is indeed the construction of individual consciousness through individual responsibility and self-control. HEART OF DARKNESS (1899) The story Heart of darkness is a novel set at the end of the 19th century, it consists of three parts and has a circular structure because it opens and ends on a boat on the Thames. At the beginning of the story there are five men who are waiting for the tide which will let the ship sail from London. While they are waiting, one of them, Marlow starts to tell a story about his journey in Africa. He worked for a Belgian company and his task was to carry raw ivory from the heart of the continent to the coast, where it had to be loaded on ships bound for Europe. While he was proceeding down the coast, he saw a French ship firing into the jungle, even though there was no enemy there. Then he reached the Company Station near the coast, where he was disappointed by the inefficiency and neglect of the organisation and also by the colonial exploration. Here, he heard someone talk about Kurtz for the first time. He was a company agent who had disappeared into the jungle. An expedition was arranged to find him and to bring him back to Europe, as he was severally ill Marlow joined this expedition during which he found out that Kurtz wanted to exterminate all the natives, they were considered as brutes. Then Marlow found him, but didn’t manage to interrogate him because he died, as he was ill. His last words were: The horror, the horror. Back in Europe, Marlow met Kurtz’ fiancée but he didn’t tell her the truth about what had happened in Africa, instead he told her that Kurtz uttered her name while dying. A quest for the self Heart of darkness is a journey of exploration of the African jungle and also a quest into the inner self. In fact, this journey becomes a quest for Marlow and becomes also the final discovery of his real nature. He comes to realise that the natives have more sense than the Europeans who have come to civilise them. The jungle is a metaphor for reality, for the dark truth hidden in the soul of man and this darkness represents doubt and uncertainty. The “heart of darkness” During his journey through the forest Marlow is silent and listens to other people, his worst moments are when he’s forced to understand that the great experience of his life in reality is a business of death. Marlow was looking forward to meeting Kurtz because people talked about him as a good man and as an interpreter of life. So, when Marlow finally meets him, he is disappointed by him because Kurtz has taken part in the exploration and extermination of the natives. The difference between Marlon and Kurtz is the Kurtz has made new experiences and has felt all the excitement that life can give, even if it was through brutal actions. Whereas Marlow feels like he has lived incompletely. They are the only characters to be addressed by their name. Chapter 1: The power of exploration Marlow has desired to travel all around the world since he was young; one region of the Earth, Africa, is the most fascinating as it is still an undiscovered country to him. But this place has a connotation of obscurity, which for Marlow is associated to its river. The Congo looks like a snake on the map,