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A Single (But Not The Best) Story

The ideas that Chimamanda Adichie expresses in her speech really caused an impact in me. But it was her "single story" idea that made me think about prejudices that people have on many things. Stereotypes often rule our lives and make a great impact on our behavior towards other people. Adichie's anecdote about her American roommate that thought she was almost a cavewoman is one example; this reminded me of the many times I have been judged and bombarded with stupid, ignorant questions and misconceptions about me and Colombia, mainly in the United States. These type of treatments sadly exist in our world, but it is not only others who put it upon us.

For example, in preparation for our Skype conference with a school in Virginia, many students in our class mentioned, aside that it will be awkward and everything, that they will surely think of us Colombians as drug-dealing, violent persons that live in utter poverty. It was funny at first, but what many of us realized is that we have learned to live with that stereotype of Colombian people and do little to change that misconception most people in the world have. This is something that Adichie says: that we must strive to change those stereotypes in which we are included in by being a better person and proving those who judge wrong. 

The Real Reason for Kurtz' Madness

"Excessive solitude often breeds madness." - Avaris

Madness is a very broad and abstract term, but anyone can recognize a mad man sooner or later because of his actions and his way of being. It can be hard at first, but after a while, there is certainty that a person is not acting normally. In Kurtz's case, there are a lot of signs that he is a very abnormal man, which in turn is caused by his solitude. 

The first piece of evidence is the posts he set up outside his home. What Marlow thought were ornamental picket fences adorning his place were actually severed heads put on fence posts turned toward the station house. This is clearly a sign that he has turned into a savage; no one in Europe ("the civilized society") would even think of doing this, but Kurtz is looking at western behavior through the rear-view mirror on his way to crazy and is acting very delusional. 

He is also known, through the Russian sailor that lives with him, to wander through the forests for months at a time to hunt for ivory. Though it is "man's instinct" to look for materialist things, his thirst for this precious object has gone way too far. He would kill for only a little bit of it, as the Russian sailor told Marlow. Its true that all humans in western civilization are in a rat race to be the richest and the most successful, but Kurtz has gone over this standard and is literally crazy for such materialist things as ivory, even in a world where he lives where it doesn't matter so much: alone in the middle of the jungle and without much contact with Europe. He was sent to that station house to trade for ivory and his obsession for money, added to his mental regression due to his isolation from mankind, made him crazy for ivory and eliminate money because currency didn't help him survive in that environment. As the quote states, his excessive solitude between his trading post, where a ship passed through maybe once a month, and the forest, where he could not speak clearly with the tribe he befriended, made him delusional. 

 Other questions still remain unresolved. Does being with other people make us sane and being alone crazy, or viceversa? How can we know? Maybe Kurtz is a symbol for the decay of the human being, where he stands as a natural breed of a person and everyone else around him are the mad ones, perverted by society. Kurtz can just be returning to the pure essence of humans, where his solitude and protection from society forced him to return to his roots and behave the way he should. One way or the other, we may never know which is the true essence of man. 

Amazon vs. Congo

In part two of HOD, Marlow spends a lot of time taking the boat upstream to meet Kurtz. His travels reminded me of when we went to the Amazon in 9th grade. We traveled a lot by boat through many rivers and I can relate to what Marlow describes, even though some things are very different. 

I noticed his descriptions talked a lot about being closed up in the river in an obscure environment and many times covered up by fog. He feels trapped and with nowhere to go, and travelling upstream makes this feeling a little bit grander. From what I remember, our trips were very illuminated and the jungle was kind of welcoming us instead of falling over us. It set a nice background for the trip and kept its distance from us, unlike in Marlow's river. 

Also, the river wasn't as dark and penetrating as it was in HOD. It was very clear and the sunshine made it even more pleasurable. But there was one time, where we got lost for three hours and had to travel at night, when I felt kind of like Marlow. I couldn't see where we were going and the river, which was once our friend, became our worst nightmare. It seemed menacing and full of obstacles like dead branches and floating pieces of wood. Sure, we weren't exploring virgin and treacherous territory nor were in danger of a native attack like the Company was, but I was equally afraid we were never going to see daylight again. We were finally rescued and all of us felt like we had not touched land in three months, even though we had been on the boat for seven long yet entertaining hours. We had laughed a lot during the whole thing and managed to keep our heads up, and that made it seem less of a hassle to our entire trip. 

Finally, when we reached the hotel we were going to sleep in, we felt like Marlow reaching Kurtz's trading post, but obviously it was a little bit more kept up than Kurtz's cabin and had less native inhabitants menacing us. It was a fun experience, and like Marlow, we got to explore corners of this earth we had never dreamed of, and at the same time learn more about ourselves as individuals. 

Obscurity

In the first part of Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, the word darkness is mentioned a lot in Conrad's descriptions. It doesn't always have the same meaning, but it is a symbol for many things that he talks about in the novel. For example, on page 1, it says:

The air was dark above Gravesend..

This is obviously a hyperbole for the situation, it may have been very cloudy but not completely dark since it was daytime. But the hidden meaning of this detail is revealed further on. The voyager, through is descriptions, unveils that he is very anxious and frightened about the trip and its destination, so the weather and the setting are actually just a metaphor for his emotions. In this case, the word dark just defines his feelings before setting sail.

The word dark also appears in another part of the first part of this book, when Marlow is describing the setting he sees upon arriving to Africa:

The edge of a colossal jungle, so dark-green as to almost be black.. (20)

Marlow gets this description from the simple appearance of the jungle he sees, but we know that it is not only what he sees at plain sight that is obscure in that jungle. I believe Conrad is referring to the crushing darkness of the unknown, that once man sets himself into that territory, he is on his own and can do little to survive. The obscurity of the land will eat him up and not leave any trace of him. Also, he refers to the darkness of the acts committed inside that jungle, where the law of survival serves at its fullest extent and no limits are set up to where savages' and animals' actions are judged or punished by no one.

Finally, there is another use of darkness that captivates readers from the beginning: the title. What is the "heart of darkness"? What does it represent? At first, we believe it is just a simple allusion to the center of where people with dark complexion live, but we notice that darkness and the heart of it is much more than that in the first few pages. Readers can only imagine what is going to happen next, and if their issue on darkness will be resolved.