In J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians, I find the Magistrate’s personality to be one of indecisiveness and therefore, curiosity. From his actions speaking louder than his words (i.e. his sleeping with the barbarian girl while saying that he feels no particular desire for her) to his giving her the choice of staying with him or going back to her people which leads him to his own confinement, the narrator seems curious and indecisive and sometimes, contradictory.
What is the significance of the magistrate being with the barbarian girl? When he states, “I lose myself in the rhythm of what I am doing. I lose awareness of the girl herself. There is a space of time which is blank to me: perhaps I am not even present,” he seems to feel this tranquil state of mind each time with the barbarian girl (28). Is it this loss of time that is attractive to the narrator? Is this why he spends time with the barbarian girl? Or does he truly feel a sense of sympathy where “it occurs to [him] that whatever [he] want[s] to say to her will be heard with sympathy, with kindness” (22)? Is he attempting to show everyone that the barbarians are not bad people, but rather, just trying to defend what is rightfully their property?
This is how the narrator sees himself through the girl’s eyes: “When she does not look at me I am a grey form moving about unpredictably on the periphery of her vision. When she looks at me I am a blur, a voice, a smell, a centre of energy that one day falls asleep washing her feet and the next day feeds her bean stew and the next day—she does not know” (29). With the words Coetzee uses such as grey (but visible?) when the girl can see him, but a blur (seemingly less visible or less straightforward) when she actually looks at him shows the ambiguity of the magistrate himself. The seemingly contradictory descriptions show the magistrate’s own personality. Either grey or a blur, he knows that he is unpredictable to the girl (and possibly everyone else, especially when the men are surprised that the barbarian girl is going on the journey with them, as they don’t know that the Magistrate is giving her the choice of going back to her people). Even in Part IV, when the Magistrate is in confinement, he still feels his own indecisive nature about pretty much everything: “My heart lurches (with horror? with gratitude?) at the thought” (96).
Overall, I can’t really figure out what the Magistrate wants. Obviously, he cares about the barbarians/sees them in a different light than anyone else in the empire. But what is the purpose of his type of personality in the story? (465)
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Articles for Heart of Darkness
“Social Progress and the Rivalry of the Races” by Benjamin Kidd; pg 229
- How do the background of progress and the rivalry between races contribute to Heart of Darkness?
- “This orderly and beautiful world . . . always has been the scene of incessant rivalry between all the forms of life inhabiting it—rivalry, too, not chiefly conducted between different species but between members of the same species” (229).
- Kidd points out that the Anglo-Saxon race may not use wars to “exterminate the less developed peoples” but instead, use laws “not less deadly and even more certain in their result” (230).
- The leading colonist of South Africa said, “The natives must go; or they must work as laboriously to develop the land as we are prepared to do” (231).
- Are the virtues of our civilization indeed virtues, or vices? “We often in a self-accusing spirit attribute the gradual disappearance of aboriginal peoples to the effects of our vices upon them; but the truth is that what may be called the virtues of our civilisation are scarcely less fatal than its vices” (231).
- Similar to the previous idea, Kidd points out that the Western civilization’s most proud features “are almost as disastrous in their effects as the evils of which complaint is so often made” (231).
- One common theme: “Progressive peoples have everywhere the same distinctive features. Energetic, vigorous, virile life amongst them is maintained at the highest pitch of which nature is capable . . . the individual is freest, the selection fullest, the rivalry fairest. But so also is the conflict sternest, the nervous friction greatest, and the stress severest” (232).
“Race, Ethnicity, Nationality, Empire” by Peter Edgerly Firchow; pg 233
- Does Heart of Darkness support racism and imperialism? If so, to what extent?
- People then [at the time Conrad wrote the novel] thought very differently about the subject of race than we do in current times (234).
- Racialism is defined as the “belief in the superiority of a particular race leading to prejudice and antagonism towards people of other races” (234).
- Conrad’s own life gives us a hint at his point of view: “Given the many years—half a lifetime, practically—that Conrad has spent wandering the world in ships or being stranded for weeks in remote places in the Pacific, often sharing close quarters with people from a wide variety of national and ethnic backgrounds, it is not surprising that he should seek to reflect this multinational, multiethnic experience in his work” (237).
- Frank Reeve separated racism into 3 categories: weak, medium, and strong racism.
- Weak racism: belief that races do exist and that they help to account for social phenomena.
- Medium racism: identical to weak racism, but added is the belief that certain races are superior and others inferior.
- Strong racism: prescribes a course of action based on alleged racial superiority, i.e. elimination of the inferior races.
- Firchow believes that Heart of Darkness displays a weak racism “with respect to its attitude toward Africans, for it recognizes their difference from Europeans as a separate race but does not suggest an essential superiority to them (it does, however, imply a temporary cultural superiority)” (238).
- However, Firchow believes the novel in conjunction with Belgians demonstrates a medium racism: “the British characters, Marlow and his audience aboard the Nellie, are consistently viewed as superior in intelligence, ability, and honesty to their purely Belgian equivalents. The essential superiority of the British is also suggested in characters who possess less-well-defined associations with Britain, such as the Russian who speaks English and reads British books or Kurtz, who had a partly English mother and was educated in Britain” (238).
- Colonialism vs. imperialism: “Conrad is anticipating the distinction made a few years later in J.A. Hobson’s Imperialism (1902) between colonialism, or emigration to relatively unpopulated areas and the establishment of a culture attempting to reproduce that of the home country (e.g. Australia, New Zealand, Canada), and imperialism, in which the settlers form a ruling caste among an overwhelmingly native population” (239).
- Firchow believes that “Conrad seems to be claiming that there are two kinds of imperialism: one is British and good; another is non-British and, to varying degrees, not good” (241).
- How do the background of progress and the rivalry between races contribute to Heart of Darkness?
- “This orderly and beautiful world . . . always has been the scene of incessant rivalry between all the forms of life inhabiting it—rivalry, too, not chiefly conducted between different species but between members of the same species” (229).
- Kidd points out that the Anglo-Saxon race may not use wars to “exterminate the less developed peoples” but instead, use laws “not less deadly and even more certain in their result” (230).
- The leading colonist of South Africa said, “The natives must go; or they must work as laboriously to develop the land as we are prepared to do” (231).
- Are the virtues of our civilization indeed virtues, or vices? “We often in a self-accusing spirit attribute the gradual disappearance of aboriginal peoples to the effects of our vices upon them; but the truth is that what may be called the virtues of our civilisation are scarcely less fatal than its vices” (231).
- Similar to the previous idea, Kidd points out that the Western civilization’s most proud features “are almost as disastrous in their effects as the evils of which complaint is so often made” (231).
- One common theme: “Progressive peoples have everywhere the same distinctive features. Energetic, vigorous, virile life amongst them is maintained at the highest pitch of which nature is capable . . . the individual is freest, the selection fullest, the rivalry fairest. But so also is the conflict sternest, the nervous friction greatest, and the stress severest” (232).
“Race, Ethnicity, Nationality, Empire” by Peter Edgerly Firchow; pg 233
- Does Heart of Darkness support racism and imperialism? If so, to what extent?
- People then [at the time Conrad wrote the novel] thought very differently about the subject of race than we do in current times (234).
- Racialism is defined as the “belief in the superiority of a particular race leading to prejudice and antagonism towards people of other races” (234).
- Conrad’s own life gives us a hint at his point of view: “Given the many years—half a lifetime, practically—that Conrad has spent wandering the world in ships or being stranded for weeks in remote places in the Pacific, often sharing close quarters with people from a wide variety of national and ethnic backgrounds, it is not surprising that he should seek to reflect this multinational, multiethnic experience in his work” (237).
- Frank Reeve separated racism into 3 categories: weak, medium, and strong racism.
- Weak racism: belief that races do exist and that they help to account for social phenomena.
- Medium racism: identical to weak racism, but added is the belief that certain races are superior and others inferior.
- Strong racism: prescribes a course of action based on alleged racial superiority, i.e. elimination of the inferior races.
- Firchow believes that Heart of Darkness displays a weak racism “with respect to its attitude toward Africans, for it recognizes their difference from Europeans as a separate race but does not suggest an essential superiority to them (it does, however, imply a temporary cultural superiority)” (238).
- However, Firchow believes the novel in conjunction with Belgians demonstrates a medium racism: “the British characters, Marlow and his audience aboard the Nellie, are consistently viewed as superior in intelligence, ability, and honesty to their purely Belgian equivalents. The essential superiority of the British is also suggested in characters who possess less-well-defined associations with Britain, such as the Russian who speaks English and reads British books or Kurtz, who had a partly English mother and was educated in Britain” (238).
- Colonialism vs. imperialism: “Conrad is anticipating the distinction made a few years later in J.A. Hobson’s Imperialism (1902) between colonialism, or emigration to relatively unpopulated areas and the establishment of a culture attempting to reproduce that of the home country (e.g. Australia, New Zealand, Canada), and imperialism, in which the settlers form a ruling caste among an overwhelmingly native population” (239).
- Firchow believes that “Conrad seems to be claiming that there are two kinds of imperialism: one is British and good; another is non-British and, to varying degrees, not good” (241).
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Light vs. Dark
In Part I of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Marlow tells the story of his experience of going to Africa. Throughout his own narrative, Marlow often incorporates the contrast between light and dark. Some examples are “A lot of people, mostly black and naked, moved about like ants . . . A blinding sunlight drowned all this . . .” (15), “ . . . the brass-wire set into the depths of darkness and in return came a precious trickle of ivory” (18), and “The edge of a colossal jungle so dark green as to be almost black, fringed with white surf, ran straight, like a ruled line, far far away along a blue sea whose glitter was blurred by a creeping mist” (13). What does the contrast Conrad sets up in Heart of Darkness do for the reader? Does he use this as a racial contrast? Or did Conrad have something else in mind?
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