A Comparison: Heart of Darkness and Waiting for the Barbarians

In Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad discusses the nature of colonialism and imperialism and the relationship between the protagonist, Marlow, and one such imperialist, Kurtz. In Waiting for the Barbarians, J.M. Coetzee, through his first-person narrator, explores the nature of empire and the necessity of an enemy to keep Empire alive. Thus, both novels have themes of forced submission, unexplainable racism, and a dichotomy of good vs. evil that is not as clear as it may first appear.

The Africans in Heart of Darkness and the barbarians in Waiting for the Barbarians serve as contrived foils to the “superior” race in each novel: Europeans in Heart of Darkness and the Empire in Waiting for the Barbarians. As Chinua Achebe points out in his article “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness,” Joseph Conrad perpetuates the European desire and necessity to set up Africa as a complete foil to Europe. Coetzee builds on this in Waiting for the Barbarians, and he points out the obvious flaw in Conrad’s argument. He discusses the need of an enemy—even an artificial one—to keep an empire alive. The magistrate in the novel says, “One thought alone preoccupies the submerged mind of Empire: how not to end, how not to die, how to prolong its era. By day it pursues its enemies” (131). Thus, Coetzee recognizes what Conrad fails to: that the reason the barbarians—or the Africans in the case of Heart of Darkness—are the enemy is not because they are inferior in any way to the race of the empire, but rather that they must be the enemy to keep the empire in each case alive.

In both Heart of Darkness and Waiting for the Barbarians, there is certainly a dichotomy of good and evil. However, the magistrate in Waiting for the Barbarians realizes that he is not all that different from Colonel Joll, and the distinction between Marlow and Kurtz by the end of Heart of Darkness is even less clear. When the magistrate says that he could have tied the barbarian to a chair and beat her, and it would have been just as romantic and personal, he is clearly recognizing that he really is similar to Joll, who literally does beat the barbarians. Similarly, when Marlow visits Kurtz’s Intended, he lies to her about Kurtz’s final words. Thus, as in Waiting for the Barbarians, the line between good and evil is very vague. Marlow does little to stop the racism, and though the magistrate houses a barbarian and tries to stop Colonel Joll at the end from beating them more, he is largely unsuccessful.

Philip Glass Half Full

Dear Mr. Coetzee,

You probably know by now that the great American composer Philip Glass has written an opera based on your novel Waiting for the Barbarians. And perhaps you find this as ironically appropriate as I do. After all, Glass is known for his minimalist compositions, characterized by often-repeating structures. And Waiting for the Barbarians, while focusing on a fundamental change in the “Empire” which the magistrate has not seen in his decades of serving, offers a much broader allegorical statement concerning the repetition of history. Glass saw the story of Waiting for the Barbarians in Iraq today, and perhaps he also recognized that his music would fit the story perfectly for this reason. As Glass says in his notes about his opera of the same name, “To reduce the opera to a single historical circumstance or a particular political regime misses the point. That the opera can become an occasion for dialogue about political crisis illustrates the power of art to turn our attention toward the human dimension of history.”

Indeed, Mr. Coetzee, I presume that this was your original intention in writing Waiting for the Barbarians. The facts that all of your characters—with the exception of the brutal Colonel Joll—remain nameless, and that the time and place remain ambiguous lead me to believe that you had something larger in mind than a story that occurred in a vacuum, in one time, and one place. I love what Glass says about the power of art, and I presume you would too. It may be overstated, but what other medium can “turn our attention toward the human dimension of history” besides art, whether a novel or an opera? I think the “human dimension” can be found in particular in the narrator’s physical yet sexless relationship with one of the barbarians. Whereas the harsh military officer (Joll) and the hopeless government aide (the magistrate) are stock character in nearly every historical story about the oppressor and the oppressed, the barbarian woman provides a deeply personal aspect to this story that Glass and I both apparently love. So thank you, Mr. Coetzee, for adding not one, but two works of art exploring the timeless themes of war and love.

Your fan,
Jack

PS. Just because I presume you have a fondness for works by Philip Glass and for saxophone quartet, please visit the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KI1iQfQT9K4

Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and Conrad's heart of darkness

Chinua Achebe, An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness

-Conrad's Heart of Darkness most fully embodies the desire (or need) of Western psychology to set Africa up as a foil to Europe
-Though Conrad sets up layers of insulation between himself and the moral universe of his history, he neglects to even hint at an alternative frame of reference by which we may judge the actions and opinions of his characters
-"The point of my observations should be quite clear by now, namely that Joseph Conrad was a bloody racist."
-Achebe says that because of this, Heart of Darkness cannot be called a great work of art
-Conrad's own diary is evidence that he and Marlow have similar theories
-Though Conrad did see and condemn the evil of imperial exploitation, he was strnagely unaware of the racism on which it sharpened its iron tooth

Caddy and Quentin, Sitting in a Tree...

We have already spent nearly an entire class period discussing how troubling and puzzling the last two pages to The Sound and the Fury are. Now, however, I find myself in the much more difficult position of arguing the opposite: how the ending in fact provides resolution. The first thing that comes to mind is the beautiful paralleled imagery of the pear tree. At the beginning of the novel, Caddy climbs up the pear tree to the window of her room. In fact, this image was Faulkner’s conception of the novel—he built the rest around this image. At the end, Quentin, Caddy’s daughter, who sleeps in the same room that Caddy did when she was a girl, escapes out the very same window, down the very same pear tree. When Jason and Mrs. Compson enter her room, they see that “The window was open. A pear tree grew there, close against the house.” And, the tree “brought into the room the forlorn scent of the blossoms.” Both of these images explicitly force the reader to recall Caddy’s relationship with Benjy, perhaps the central storyline of The Sound and the Fury. The scent of blossoms, of course, is how Benjy recognized Caddy, and the lack thereof was how he knew that she had lost her virginity. Faulkner beautifully ties together the entire novel, because when she lost her virginity, she gave birth to Quentin, who now causes the rest of the family to once again take note of the pear tree and its smell. In this way, Faulkner resolves the novel enough to show that the downfall of the Compsons continues, and in fact is now complete.

The Sound and the Fury; the Confusion, and the Masterpiece

Martha Winburn England wrote an article entitled “Teaching The Sound and the Fury,” which discusses how a high-school or college teacher should tackle the convoluted sense of time in the Benjy section and the intertwining plot of each of the four sections. According to England, Faulker did not intend for it to be read “within such a rigid chronological framework, and it is a dangerous thing to violate an author’s evident intention.” She helped me to understand that is normal not to have a total grasp on Benjy’s thought process, which quite frankly was good to hear. England knows from personal experience; she says that she “set out in cold blood to ruin the Benjy section in the hope of making available the other three sections of the book.” Prior to reading the article, I was having a hard time putting my finger on the principal difference between the Benjy section and the Quentin section, but England elucidated this difference for me by saying that in the Quentin section, “abstract nouns occur in great numbers,” which “shows the contrasting omission of abstractions in the Benjy section…” Finally, England discusses a more universal theme that applies to The Sound and the Fury. She poses the rhetorical question, “How difficult can a work of art be and still be worth the trouble? Where for me lies the point of diminishing returns?” This was my favorite part of the article, for it reminded me of my experiences in music. I think it is common for any type of artist or anyone who witnesses art to wonder if it is worth trying to understand such an abstraction, yet Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury taught me (and many of England’s students) that it is often worth the struggle to comprehend Benjy’s section; the reward in the rest of the masterpiece makes it completely worthwhile.


Teaching the Sound and the Fury
Martha Winburn England
College English, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Jan., 1957), pp. 221-224
Published by: National Council of Teachers of English

Why YouTube and Adultery Can Never End Well

Padsax1 and Ms. Dent: Two Life-Changing Influences, or Just Two Crazies?

This week in class, while discussing John Cheever’s short story “The Five-Forty-Eight,” we began to discuss whether Blake changed at the end, and really took what Ms. Dent said to heart. Several people in our class said that because Dent is mentally unstable, Blake would dismiss her without a second thought. I disagree with this blanket statement, because regardless of the source, I believe it is human nature to carefully consider insults and take offense to them. It would be impossible for Blake to absolutely disregard Dent, even though Blake is aware of her unstable state of mind. Blake most likely did change at the end, and he does not want to show it because he does not want to seem to be giving the ideas of an insane person any credence.

Let me begin by sharing a personal example that demonstrates a similar scenario. About a month ago, I created my own YouTube account. I posted one video of myself playing saxophone in a concerto competition from last May, and included in the video description, “please, leave a comment.” In the first few weeks it was up, I got a few comments, each of which was very positive and complimentary. Then, last week, a user calling themselves “padsax1” posted on my video, “way 2 many mistakes...bend up to altissimo Bb at end of cadenza was deeply unmusical.” Now, I had no idea who this person was (though they clearly had at least some knowledge of the piece), and I have been taught for a long time that bad auditions, rejection, and criticism are all parts of being a musician, but I still could not help but feel dejected over their comment. I started reconsidering whether or not I was cut out to be a professional musician, first because I was told that I was “deeply unmusical,” and then because I was so offended by the comments of a person whom I did not know. I even made the hasty decision to take down the video, so that nobody else would insult me. The fact is, as immature as it may be, I do not like the thought of people I do not know criticizing me for the entire world to see.

Now, back to the story. Ms. Dent says that since Blake thoughtlessly left her, fired her, and then avoided her, he cannot know “what [she has] been through” (60). Clearly, he has had an effect on her, and I know that his effect on her must in turn have an effect on him. It would be impossible to hear that you had influenced a person in such a profound, terrible way and not feel some guilt or weight on your conscious. Ms. Dent, like padsax1, is not a person to whom Blake is particularly close, nor one whose opinion he trusts. Really, the way I reacted to padsax1’s comment is almost exactly how I picture Blake to have reacted to Ms. Dent’s. First, I was offended and took the insult very seriously and personally; then I pretended it never happened by removing my video; and now, I am still thinking about it and honestly, it has motivated me to become a better saxophonist. At the end of the story, I believe that Blake has heard what Ms. Dent has to say about him as a lover, a boss, and a friend, but he pretends to ignore it by simply standing up, picking up his glasses, and walking home. By metaphorically taking his video off the internet for a while, he will do some serious introspection until he believes he has changed enough to not ignore his wife after she has not made dinner on time, to not be so protective of his son, and to treat his employees with the respect they deserve. Perhaps in time, when I feel I have improved enough as a musician and matured enough in handling criticism, I will post another video of myself on YouTube, just as I believe Blake will soon find himself in similar situations and perhaps handle himself differently. I think that Blake, like me, has realized that he has made “way 2 many mistakes,” and it just took both of us to hear from somebody whose opinion we thought we would not value under any circumstances to change who we are.
(723)

Got a Basketball Jones, Oh baby, Oo-oo-ooo

In class on Friday, while discussing the story “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, I posed a question for the class. I asked my classmates how big of a role—if any—marijuana played in altering, as Alex so poetically stated in her blog assignment, “the narrator’s perception not just of the blind, but also of the world.” A few of my classmates shared what they thought, and Mr. Coon even joked that it could have really been more like a Cheech and Chong routine. Now while I’m sure this was a joke—yes, Mr. Coon, I am learning—it still got me thinking. I decided to fill my blog quota for the week with a hypothetical situation: what would I have seen if I had been there? How did the husband and the blind man actually interact with one another? Would I have really observed a revelatory “high” and a bizarre hybrid game of Taboo and Pictionary? Then, how would what happens in the story compare to what I actually see? So here goes (we are assuming that, though I can see the characters, they cannot see me; therefore they thankfully do not offer me any marijuana.)

I look around. The wife has just hit the pillow and fallen asleep. The husband and the blind man sit there. The husband stares at the blind man; the blind man stares at something beyond the narrator. They’ve already had their marijuana, and it’s affecting the blind man a lot more than the narrator. As I’m watching, the blind man doses in and out, and I can tell it’s not from actual fatigue, but from the affects of smoking marijuana for the first time in his life. On the television is a program about the Middle Ages—this part the narrator in “Cathedral” got right. The narrator still seems really on top of his game. He notices a cathedral on the TV. And here, in my opinion, after having witnessed the scene myself, is the true revelation. Suddenly, he looks up at the blind man, then back at the cathedral. He asks Robert if he has any idea what a cathedral looks like. I laugh, but I cover it with my hands so that it just sounds like a strange cough. The wife rolls over. Then I think about it, and I swear that just for a second I can tell what he’s thinking. He realizes at this moment that he has taken everything for granted: his wife, his sight, everything. He tries to describe the cathedral but fails. The blind man smiles gently. He’s not totally with it, but as I think about it now, the marijuana facilitates the revelation the narrator would have had regardless. The narrator feels no hesitation in having this conversation with the blind man, nor in letting the blind man touch his hand. The drug allows him to get lost in the moment, but it doesn’t allow him to be able to forget that same moment when he wakes up the next morning. I know this—I saw the look on his face as they drew a cathedral together. Gosh, it was a terrible drawing. But that’s not what mattered, because neither the narrator nor the blind man cared at all about what it looked like. The blind man couldn’t see it with his eyes, and the narrator didn’t even care to look. And then the narrator said, “It’s really something,” and I knew what he was saying. He finally felt like an open-minded citizen of the world, he finally had a friend, he finally saw beneath the surface. His story of what happened that night is not about the marijuana, it’s not about cathedrals, and it’s not about the game of Pictionary: these too are symbolically superficial things that merely facilitated his realization. The story is about understanding, about vision (not sight), and about true friendship. And it is these things that would have occurred regardless.

So, Mr. Coon, as is my tendency, I will respond to your pot joke as if you were serious. Though I am not too familiar with the work of Cheech & Chong, I know what they are famous for, and I have even done a little research into them for this blog entry. I can safely say that “Cathedral” is nothing like that. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, Mr. Coon, or anybody over the age of forty who is reading this, but it seems to me that without marijuana, Cheech and Chong would be nothing more than a pair of artists featured in the hit cartoon Space Jam (admittedly, a fantastic movie). But the narrator of “Cathedral,” if faced with the same situation minus the dope, would still become his new self: the one who sees everything for what it is, not for what it looks like or seems like it should be.

(816)

So These Three Girls Walk into an A&P Store...

Jack Schwimmer
AP-1
779

"A&P": A True Coming-of-Age Story

Perhaps on the surface, the John Updike story “A&P” is a dull, nearly nonsensical day-in-the-life tale of a young clerk who impulsively quits his job due to his interest in three relatively attractive girls who wear bathing suits into a supermarket. Yet to understand the story at such a superficial level is to do a disservice to Updike’s carefully-orchestrated plot and character development, and to fail to understand the broader themes of the importance of standing up for what one believes, defending one’s friends, and choosing to live a meaningful life. The setting of the story, a local Massachusetts A&P store, is perhaps the perfect embodiment of a consumer-conditioned society, and the coming-of-age story which occurs within such a setting serves as a beautiful contrast.

The story’s narrator, Sammy, has a boring job but a witty personality. His awareness of international affairs and historical events further enhances his observations. “If she’d been born at the right time, they would have burned her over in Salem,” (2) while a horrible thought, enables the reader to easily picture the customer who Sammy imagines to have spent the last fifty years trying to catch a cashier’s mistake. And he provides commentary on Russo-American relations while at the same time describing his coworker Stokesie when he says, “I forgot to say he thinks he’s going to be manager some sunny day, maybe in 1990 when it’s called the Great Alexandrov and Petrooshki Tea Company or something” (9). He has a very distinct voice and a very observant mind. He is at times bitterly sarcastic, and is a very relatable character for the typical teenage boy. The three girls in the bathing suits obviously draw his attention, but he also vividly describes Stokesie and Lengel. The reader knows as much as he or she needs to know about the characters, particularly Sammy: no more, no less. The setting (a small town in Massachusetts) is not unusual, but the fact that three girls are walking through an A&P store in their bathing suits is. It is this chance concurrence that ultimately results in Sammy’s “coming of age.”

The climax of the story is a bit puzzling, considering the “hero” is a small-town clerk who only minutes earlier was asking himself, “what do these bums do with all that pineapple juice?” (11), and that the heroic action is initially unexplainable, unprovoked, and ill-received. Sammy apparently begins to think about quitting literally seconds before he does. When Lengel asks Sammy if he has rung up this purchase, Sammy thinks and says “no,” but “it wasn’t about what I was thinking” (20). This sentence is ambiguous, and when taken in context the reader must wonder, “If it wasn’t about what he was thinking, what was it about? What was going on in Sammy’s mind just before he decided to quit?” Sammy does offer some explanation for quitting: when Lengel questions Sammy’s logic, Sammy says, “You didn’t have to embarrass them [the three girls]” (25). And at precisely this moment, Sammy seems to have complete control over his emotions: he tells Lengel that, though Lengel may not understand what Sammy is saying, Sammy certainly understands his own motives. Just one moment later, Sammy says that it is fatal to not go through with a gesture once you begin it. Sammy knows that he will be—in the words of Lengel—“feeling this for the rest of his life,” but for Sammy, “remembering how [Lengel] made that pretty girl blush makes me so scrunchy inside…”(30). So Sammy, not far below the surface, has a very clear motivation. Sammy notes in the last sentence of the story that his “stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter” (31). The last sentence foreshadows a new phase of Sammy’s life which begins only after he resigns. The reader sees that Sammy has changed since the beginning of the story, as he is now ready to go out into the real world. He has acknowledged that there is more for him outside the tiny suburban A&P store. And in the last sentence, Updike reveals the truth behind Sammy’s motivations: he does not quit for the three girls in the bathing suits, nor because he is tired of working for Lengel, but rather because he recognizes that there is more for him to do in life. He has a future, and he knows that in order to take advantage of it, he must escape the small grocery store which symbolizes consumerism. In this way, Sammy is a true hero, and Sammy’s life, though open-ended, is filled with potential.


Questions for discussion
1) Why does Sammy feel such a connection to the three girls?
2) When exactly does Sammy realize he is at a new phase in his life? Before he quits? Afterwards?
3) If it wasn’t about what he was thinking, what was it about? What was going on in Sammy’s mind just before he decided to quit?
4) How can you relate to Sammy?

A Snapshot of Jane Austen and Pride and Prejudice

Jack Schwimmer
AP-1
73315227
Word Count: 665

A Snapshot of Jane Austen and Pride and Prejudice

The romantic comedic novel Pride and Prejudice has become a landmark piece of literature particularly for the inevitable yet beautiful love story between Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy that lies at the center of the novel, and for Jane Austen’s witty narrative teeming with irony and social commentary of 18th-century England. The dialogue between Elizabeth and Darcy’s aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, serves as a microcosm to the greater novel because it perfectly illustrates both literary triumphs that make Pride and Prejudice the timeless story that it is. The passage serves to reinforce the fact that Elizabeth truly does love Darcy, and through Austen’s clever prose, this fact is best reinforced through Elizabeth’s refusal to say she loves him. As her refusal further frustrates de Bourgh, it only further entertains the reader. It is also an ironic statement on the socioeconomic system of the time: Elizabeth is inarguably cleverer than Lady Catherine de Bourgh, even though de Bourgh is far wealthier and deemed more “ladylike.” Austen, through the fact that Darcy and Elizabeth refuse to listen to the actually inconsiderate and selfish Lady Catherine, shows again that Darcy and Elizabeth, unlike nearly almost all other characters in the book, can see beyond class stereotypes and preconceptions, and that this is why their love is so memorable and successful. Darcy refuses to heed his aunt’s instruction, refusing to marry her daughter for wealth, and instead marrying Elizabeth for true love.

With respect to the action of the novel, this scene simply reaffirms the resolution of the climax, and reassures the reader that the instability will become stable once again. Elizabeth, through her ambiguity in response towards Lady Catherine’s demanding questions, proves that she is committed to Darcy, and he to her. This is also the principal broader theme that Austen conveys throughout the novel and particularly in this passage: the inevitable love between the two protagonists. Though Lady Catherine may interpret it as non-committal when Elizabeth says, “I will say nothing of the kind,” the reader knows that the response should be interpreted as quite the opposite: a confirmation of her love for Darcy. So, this scene is a resolution of the action. Though it has the potential to create another conflict between Lady Catherine and Darcy, or Lady Catherine and Elizabeth, the fact is that the love that connects Darcy and Elizabeth is far too strong to be broken by any one person’s selfish desires. Indeed, this message, above any other, is what this scene most conveys: that Elizabeth and Darcy will get married and will remain in love—the ending that defines a true romantic novel.

All in all this passage can serve as an illustration of what it means for Pride and Prejudice to be called a comedic romantic novel. Elizabeth’s witty wordplay and sarcastic responses (most notably, “would my giving you the wished-for promise, make their marriage at all more probable?”) are characteristic of a comedy and also of her character and what causes Darcy to fall in love with her in the first place. He admires the fact that she refuses to conform to social expectations. The fact that Pride and Prejudice is a romance is cleverly illustrated by Elizabeth’s commitment to Darcy when talking to Lady Catherine. Though Lady Catherine is a peripheral character in Pride and Prejudice, her condescending, selfish demeanor towards Elizabeth are representative of the class to which she belongs and which Austen satirizes. Austen’s method of characterization shines through, as the individual characters and the classes of which they are members clearly manifest themselves through short, witty dialogue and brief, curt narration. The former dominates the latter, as is characteristic of Austen’s style throughout Pride and Prejudice. The characters’ points of view and personalities are revealed primarily through their dialogue with each other. Thus, the dialogue between Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Elizabeth Bennet near the end of the novel serves as a microcosm for the novel itself: a romantic comedic scene with the inevitable romance between Elizabeth and Darcy always at the forefront.

Excellent Alone, Disappointing in Context

Jack Schwimmer
AP English
539

The Namesake--Jhumpa Lahiri
So Brave, Young, and Handsome--Leif Enger
Pride and Prejudice--Jane Austen

Having read Leif Enger's first novel, Peace Like a River, about six years ago, I had spent these last six years wondering when (or if) Enger would write a second novel. Thus, I had eagerly anticipated the follow-up, entitled So Brave, Young, and Handsome, which I read this summer with my family. Though Enger's second novel did not live up to my unusually high expectations, it was nevertheless an extremely enjoyable read, and a quintessential American journey full of love, adventure, and danger. The narrator is Monte Becket, first introduced as a novelist who wrote one great book five years earlier and can't seem to write another. Enger clearly sets up Becket as an autobiographical protagonist, (indeed, one of Becket’s rejected plots for a second novel is remarkably similar to that of Peace Like a River). Unlike Enger however, Becket finds adventure not through a second novel, but through a physical journey to help a mysterious outlaw, named Glendon Hale, find the wife he had abandoned 20 years earlier. Becket is a family man, father to Redstart with his loving wife Suzanna. In this way, Enger sets up his decision to go on a long journey as a huge departure from Becket’s normal life. This is especially interesting, because the characters Becket encounters on his journey have all spent years in the West, almost like a foreign country to Becket. As Becket continues on the journey, Glendon’s story develops: a relentless ex-Pinkerton named Charles Seringo has been pursuing him for years, and now in turn, begins to pursue Monte Becket himself for his very association with Glendon. As Becket and Glendon enter Mexico, the true nature of the adventure gradually becomes apparent, and more characters become essential both to the plot of So Brave, Young, and Handsome, and to Becket’s very survival. Though dark undertones persist throughout the novel, romanticism truly shines, particularly in the all-too-predictable ending. Seringo is a truly brutal character, and Hood Roberts, the young quixotic mechanic and want-to-be cowboy whom Becket befriends, murders a man while defending another friend. Thus So Brave, Young, and Handsome is chiefly the story of Seringo’s chase of Glendon, Monte, and Hood Roberts. Within the pursual, Enger beautifully intertwines character development, nostalgia for the Old West, and a relentlessly dark yet hopelessly romantic plot.
So Brave, Young, and Handsome, like Peace Like a River, is set in the Western frontier with a plot teeming with chase scenes. However, my personal favorite parts of Peace Like a River, the flawed yet relatable characters and the surprise ending, were the parts that Enger did not replicate in his follow-up novel. If I had not read Peace Like a River and knew nothing of Leif Enger’s career, I surely would have immensely enjoyed So Brave, Young, and Handsome. And while I still did enjoy it, I struggled to see it as standing separate from Peace Like a River. The fact that Enger evoked his first novel in the opening pages of So Brave, Young, and Handsome through his narrator’s struggles probably did not help. Yet Enger’s beautiful descriptive writing remained, and in that way So Brave, Young, and Handsome was not a disappointment.