Analysis Of Marlow And Kurtz In Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness

Theme is defined as the underlying meaning in a work of literature. Authors develop theme to connect literature to our daily lives. “The Scarlet Ibis” by James Hurst, “A and P” by John Updike, and “Cold Equations” by Tom Goodwin, all have different themes, but place an important emphasis on the heartache and pain caused by learning the truths in life. In these short stories, each character has a realization about life and it changes their future perspective on the world. The theme in “The Scarlet Ibis” is the duality of pride, and the idea that although some pride is good, when you let it control you, it can be devastating.

In his novel, The Road, author Cormac McCarthy illustrates the good and bad within the world. McCarthy supports this illustration through the use of imagery, symbolism, and connotative diction. McCarthy’s purpose is to explore the insight of a world that has been divided into distinct groups of good vs bad in order to elicit changes of behavior and morals in times of darkness. McCarthy uses a somber tone with his dystopian readers. McCarthy uses a strong amount of detailed imagery to easily represent and convey the mood and tones of the novel that he is intending to express to his readers.

This sudden metamorphosis not only affects the character, but the novel itself. It shows the reader what greed and resentment can cause a man to do. From ruining lives to creating new ones, it inarguably takes away what little innocence still remains in men. Betrayal, like many things, may only be seen for the negative impacts it has on life. However, in defiance of the agony, it can show the true nature of men and what they do when they let covetousness and their weak human nature rule them.

‘Antigone’ follows this pattern in the numerous tragic events that seemingly needlessly occur before Creon opens his eyes to his flawed judgement. “Oh! Mistakes from thoughtless thoughts, stubborn and deadly! O men who have seen kin slaying and dying, alas for the misfortune of my plans!” (Doc A, 1275). The tragic tone of Creon’s exclamation shows the regret that he feels for his destructive actions, and the use of the phrase ‘thoughtless thoughts’ indicates that he has realized that he has been exhibiting extreme foolishness.

Bradbury calls the reader to awaken and contemplate the themes of the novel. Through self-reflection one can identify their short comings. Bradbury’s is optimistic that self-reflection will prevent repeating mistakes of the past. The novel’s themes are an ideal way to prevent an unconnected and out of touch

This heightens the impacts of the more vivid descriptions that follow, when Dickens describes the children as “wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable.” The juxtaposition of these terms to the traditional view of children as vulnerable creates a sense of shock in the reader. Furthermore, the use of asyndetic listing alongside the negative adjectives creates a semantic field of horror. In this way, the description of Ignorance and Want as children is used by Dickens to increase the atmosphere of pessimism. Dickens goes on to describe Ignorance and Want in a pitiful manner

We are both nothing and everything – provisional, shifting, molten” (The Practice of Poetry 67). I, the Divine is a metanarrative commentary about the difficult procedure of recounting, retelling, and recordings one’s autobiographical narrative. Alameddine’s narrative framing in I, the Divine does not limit itself to specific genre, perspective, or character. He creates a fictional, nonlinear story line that picks up and leaves off at different points in the protagonist’s life, Sarah, and he complicates the reader’s expectation of straight forward and traditionally written style by moving through genres of memoir, novel, and epistolary. Alameddine in I, the Divine explores the connection between autobiographical voice and the narrative structure of a fictional

This, however, is not the case, as Conrad was just telling the truth of what occurred within Africa during the time of European colonization. Hugh Curtler refutes Achebe’s statements in his literary criticism “Political Correctness and the Attack on Great Literature”. This article takes a practical viewpoint about the book and stresses the point that Conrad was trying to explain the events that occurred during his time in Africa in a style of writing for the people at the time. Literary critics like Achebe label Conrad as complete racist, however, he is, in fact, the complete opposite as he utilizes this story as a way to paint a picture of the cruel actions that occurred at the time. European colonization devastated the way of life for many native Africans during the 1800s and early 1900s.

In this criticism the main question is, is the “beauty-truth identification a consistent, meaningful conclusion to the poem” (Shokoff)? Or are “those who believe that Keats is, in his greatest poetry, less yearning after an ideal than recognizing and affirming the value of the real world in which he and we all live” (Shokoff)? Certainly this is a question that is difficult to answer, but I agree with this critic that the meaning of the poem’s final two lines are questionable. Once again, the identification and symbolism of the urn is involved. Keats states that “’Beauty is truth, truth beauty/ —that is all/ Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know’”(Keats 50).

Both themes, also infer to a similar consequence of mental cruelty. In both stories, the main characters have to deal with some sort of an affect on them after the fact of the cause. In the cause of the “Tell-Tale Heart”, the narrator deal with the extreme guilt. In “The Gryphon”, Tommy experiences an awful change of personality. To conclude, that is the proof that “The Gryphon” by Charles Baxter and “Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe share similar