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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 5 page essay that discusses the use of light and dark imagery in 2 novels. The writer argues that it is a recurring image in literature that truth and knowledge are represented by light. In fact, it is difficult to refer to these factors without using light-based references, such as "enlightenment." Conversely, darkness is used as an image to represent those features of the human psyche that are considered savage and animalistic. Dark imagery plays a crucial role in Joseph Conrad's 1902 novel Heart of Darkness, which illustrates how this imagery can be used to convey psychological complexity. This point is further substantiated by referring to Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient. No additional sources cited.
Page Count:
5 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_khchdoep.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
these factors without using light-based references, such as "enlightenment." Conversely, darkness is used as an image to represent those features of the human psyche that are considered savage and animalistic.
Dark imagery plays a crucial role in Joseph Conrads 1902 novel Heart of Darkness, which illustrates how this imagery can be used to convey psychological complexity. Heart of Darkness
is set in the Victorian era. Marlow is a new employee of shipping company who is sent upriver to bring back Kurtz, a station manager for the same company. Kurtz
has been in the jungle for quite sometime, nine years. The journey upriver to find Kurtz is allegorical to the journey that both men take into the darkest recesses of
the human psyche. It is a journey that only Marlow survives, as Kurtz gave into the darkness in his soul long ago. What Conrad portrays so dramatically in this novel
is the pull between civilization and the basic instincts that are still a part of the human psyche-the pull between pleasure and the constraints of civilized behavior. Humanity sets
aside the individualistic pursuit of pleasure in order to cooperate and live together in groups-to form civilization. In the jungle, exposed to the most primitive of his desires, Kurtz breaks
with the world of tradition, the world of civilization. Huddled within the womb-like interior of the Congo, he retreats ever further into the deepest recesses of himself, gasping the pleasure
principle in an orgasmic frenzy. Through the narration of Marlow, Conrad makes clear his vision of darkness lurking at the borders of human behavior. At the beginning of the novel,
Marlow endeavor to make this point by postulating how darkness, at one time, was the defining characteristic of the British Isles, just as he sees it now as characterizing Africa.
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