Heart of Darkness: Part 2

Okay, I read it. But there's a problem: I hardly remember what I read (and i've already mentioned that I don't understand the novel anyway). Now, that's the usual for me but when asked a question SOME kind of info from my subconcious comes up; not with this book, though. So, what archetypal elements are prominent in the novel? Well, what I do remember are the two rivers, the Thames and the Congo (since they were in the beginning), and they can symbolize life and death, respectively. And the color black wherever the narrator (Marlow) goes? There is something black, something dark, mysterious and evil. And what about the Hero's Journey? As much as I know, only the bare bones of it exist in the novel and Kurtz is the (fallen) hero, I guess; you know A, B, and C.

Yeah.

Heart of Darkness: Part 1

"Here and there a military camp lost in a wilderness, like a needle in a bundle of hay--cold, fog, tempests, diesease, exile, and death--death skulking in the air"(68).

The colonizers (the ship crew) in this novel knew what they were getting into, knew their role in their conquest. The place they are going is depicted as a horrible place that promises little else other than trouble; but the trouble is still worth their goal, colonization. Colonization of a barren and savage "wilderness" that, as the sentence implies early on, is not the only "wilderness" to colonize on their to-do list. As described, this particular "wilderness", and probably any other land in need of their colonizing, is seen as a dark and menacing place full of savages, something that can and needs to be controled, by them of course. But this land has terrible things that may lead them to their death, which may already be "skulking in the air". So why stick around and colonize, then? Well, these men are sailors, bound together by "the bond of the sea"(65), and the sea is their home. They have little to live for and probably needed a booster upper in their lives. "Taming" the savages gives them this booster upper, and maybe even great resources.

Wide Sargasso Sea: Part 2

Well, the novel still sticks to its first person perspective, but now we have another player in this mad game: Rochester. In my previous blog I said that having Bertha (lets stick with that name) may become unstable therefore unreliable as our narrator, but now that problem has been solved by having Rochester's take on everything (even if it is a little biased); and when we do see Bertha's point of view on a subject that coincides with Rochester's, we know its there for a reason. But why would Rhys do this? Well, its not to confuse us, even though it seems like it ; Rhys changes the point of view with little to no indication of who's talking. It is to show us the two most important people's view on this barely mentioned backstory, giving the reader a chance to fully understand and sympathize with Bertha and Rochester. To me, the story is still Berthas, since it was mainly created to explain her side of the story, just now we have a perspective coming from Rochester that helps the reader to sympathize with Bertha even more.

Wide Sargasso Sea: Part 1

Not that it was unexpected, but "Antionette" is living a horrible life, on the down-low; I say that because she's mixed, so you'd think she'd have the best(or SOMETHING) of both worlds, but no, they both hate her and her family. The novel is in first person, so we see everything through Antionette's eyes which, as you progress through the novel (I predict), may become unstable and maybe even unreliable (since she IS a crazy lady in the making). The structure of the novel, to me, is similar to The Road: though the sentences don't feel truly fragmented like The Road, certain sentences come with a tag along "thought", but the thought is a sentence itself. Antionette, as early as the first page, shows how broken-ish she is by what is happening around her and the little life lessons she has been told. So far, nothing really major coincides with Jane Eyre yet.

Also, just to point this out, fire may be a major symbol, or even motif in this novel: it is something purifying, maybe?