Hello literature world I am writing again as my class has just been assigned to read and respond to Chinua Achebe’s article, An image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. After reading Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad I had some positive and negative opinions about the text but none as strong as the ones Achebe conveys. He hated the book, in short … and that is nicely explaining the way he felt about it. I did love that in the beginning of the article he mentioned how repetitive Heart of Darkness is and that was what I was thinking the entire time while reading the novella! It was like Conrad kept saying the same descriptions using varying literary devices and sophisticated vocabulary. He says “ Of course there is a judicious change of adjectives from time to time…” when I read this I was relived as I thought it was just me who thought the short story was repetitive.

However, something that I was taken back by how upset Achebe was by the racist commentary within Heart of Darkness because I did not find it to be as racist as he made it out be. Going back and re-reading a few passages I still believe Conrad was trying to portray the whites as being brutal and savage like things, not the Africans. On contrary I did not think about how Conrad in a way does belittle in Africa’s name in a sense. Achebe says “…reducing Africa to the role of props…” Africa was the backdrop, the setting for the novella but now that I think about it, Conrad defiantly depicts Africa in such a way. Achebe also refers to it as “dehumanization of Africa and Africans…the very humanity of Black people is called in question…” I disagree with this because Conrad is not attempting to do that in my opinion that is not the purpose of his work. Instead he is sharing his story of all the atrocities that he witnessed and I do believe he puts quite a bit of blame on the Europeans in the short story.

Although I had a difficult time reading Heart of Darkness I believe that it was an incredible story depicting the Congo River, Africa and what took place during this time. However as Achebe does mention each traveler has their own experiences and sometimes does fail to experience and or witness things. Conrad may be bias as several people believe Marlow Is in the story because they had their own experiences, they are not telling of someone else’s in a history book. In another five years or so I will re-read Heart of Darkness and Achebe’s article and who knows maybe I will have a change of heart. I found both these unique pieces of literature to teach me a great deal about historic events I had not learned about as well as author’s purpose! This year I have experienced different books and varying genres and I challenge you all to broaden your interests when reading! As always keep reading and analyzing!  

Wuthering Heights

Hello writing world! I am back at it again as my AP Literature class has just concluded reading the gothic novel Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë. I have read Jane Austin before and immensely enjoyed her novel, Pride and Prejudice. However, other than that I have had no exposure to gothic literature. I was a little nervous when my teacher first passed out the novel, but ended up being pleasantly surprised. I loved the book and could not seem to keep my nose out of it. I was fascinated by the origin of Gothic literature in the first place and thus was able to catch the aspects of the type of literature that were staring me in the face while I was reading.

            My teacher had us do some researching before we started reading and I think that really helped me because I was not going in blind. Learning about the supernatural events that are explained by natural events and those that are not were the most fascinating facts for me. Wuthering Heights had several starling turns in the story in which I would pause and ask myself which type of supernatural this was. During the book I began to notice that when Catherine would have her spells they could be explained by natural events such as her starving herself. While the ghost that Lockwood believes is present in the beginning of the novel, can be explained just by the idea of supernatural occurrences.

            For those of you who have not had the ultimate pleasure of encountering this novel I highly recommend that you take the time and open yourself to other types of literature such as gothic. Although some of the language and discussion in general was difficult to understand time from time it was certainly not impossible. However, there is one character that drove all of us in my class crazy, Joseph. Joseph was the hardest to understand as we all would swear it truly was not any kind of English. I feel like at first I tried to ignore what he was saying as I didn’t feel it was relevant to what was going on. However, I know some would argue that it was indeed important to understand. Throughout this novel, it takes time and is important to make sure you understand all the events that are going on and ultimately what the point of the story was.

            My AP literature teacher refers to it as the SO WHAT, why did Brontë spend her time writing this story line, what was she trying to say to her readers? After concluding the novel, I realized that she was trying to portray the tragedy of history repeating previous generation’s mistakes over and over again. Catherine and Heathcliff are famous lovers who are never together until death because of the different social graces they are raised in. Then the story portrays their children being forced to make the same mistakes until the end of the story where love conquers all (sorry for the spoiler alert everyone). However, I truly believe this was the message that was trying to be conveyed. Everyone until next time, make sure to keep writing and reading!