Heart Of Darkness/Research Paper

For the Heart of Darkness I am planning on doing a compare and contrast piece.  I want to take evidence of the book being racist and evidence of it not being racist and answer the question "Is Heart of Darkness racist?" A very simple question but, yet, we do not know the answer to it.  There are many instances where Marlow speaks of the blacks as being animals and gives them animal like traits.  Along with Marlow being showed as being a racist the narrator at the begging of the book also talks about the blacks as being of a "different complexion".  Is this a reflection of Conrad's beliefs or he he merely painting a picture for us?  There are also many instances where Marlow goes into detail describing the blacks as if they were on the same level as him.  So this simple question begs to be answered yet, I don't think any of us will ever know the answer.

For my research paper I have two topics that I am thinking about doing.  I either want to interview my grandpa and have him talk about his experience with cancer or talk to my mom about her experience with kidney stones and hives.  Both these aspects have to with how illness affects the family and that is the main question I am looking to answer.  I want to talk about how illness disrupts the family dynamic and pushes challenges on not only the ill person but, the entire family.  Family dynamics are altered in order to care for the ill and this may burden the rest of the family along with the normal structure that once was in place.  Transitioning is another aspect of the family dynamic that is hard on each family member, especially the younger ones and both my grandpa and mother got sick when I was younger.  I know from personal experience I didn't really know what was happening because of my innocence and lack of knowledge on the subject.  So those are just two ideas I have for my research paper but, they both tie in with family dynamics.

Heart of Darkness: Marxist Lens

In Heart of Darkness Marxism seems to be a recurring theme.  When Marlow describes the mad he comes across in the town office we are presented with the idea that there are different types of classes.  Conrad uses different colors on the map to represent the different levels of society.  "I was going into the yellow.  Dead in the centre. And the river was there-fascinating-deadly-like a snake." (Conrad, Pg. 74)  The map is covered with different colors representing the different imperial powers that make up Africa.  The yellow one that he points out is described as being in the center and covers some of the most mysterious attributes that Africa has.  The river is described as a snake which is closely related to being evil and even describes it as "deadly".  The yellow portion covers a vast amount of land, however, and more land tends to mean more power.  As well as having land it also has the river which flows through it which is a very important resource.  The color yellow is also close to the color gold, meaning wealth or riches.  Yellow is a color of power and because of this being the portion of the map covering the most land and having resources it is considered to be powerful.  While this is a very subtle way of dividing out the power, the author is claiming that not everyone has the same amount of power in the story.  Some part of Africa have more power than others and he uses colors to symbolize the different power that each portion has.

In Rufus at the Door and Agatha McGee the two main authority characters are portrayed as women who show many masculine traits throughout the story.  They use these masculine traits to hold power over the other characters in the stories. This, however, is contradicting because they are women and women are not supposed to be holding the power over the men.  On the other hand, in Dodger's Return Ross struggles with showing his masculine traits and power even though he is a husband and these traits are expected of him.  Hassler uses symbolism throughout these three stories to show how these characters portray and struggle with power. 

In Rufus at the Door there are many instances where Marxism is present. A higher social class between the students touring the asylum and the people in it is one example. When the bus approaches the Asylum the teachers and students automatically think they are apart of a higher class than the patients that are locked up.  Asylums are looked at to be a place where crazy people who have no social or street skills go to lay rest.  The young kids in this story were even taught to believe this “...Miss Sylvestri stood at his shoulder and delivered an unnecessary lecture about how lucky we were to have been spared from craziness and retardation.” (Hassler, Pg. 22) Miss Sylvestri delivers this lecture in order to instill her belief on the students that the people in the mental hospital are part of a class of people that they should be happy to not be a part of.  This class of people is to be seen as having no skills to fend for themselves and don’t contribute to society in anyway.  They are people that have no value and are almost a waste of space.  Miss Sylvestri believes her highly educated class of people are ranked much farther above these mentally disabled people found in the asylum.  Her sense of freedom, education, and power give her the mentality to talk down upon them and share her beliefs with the students.  Miss Sylvestri is portrayed as an authority figure in this story, she promotes her social class and lets the children know they should be grateful to be apart of such a high social class.  Their education is the main foundation for this belief and even though many of the kids don’t appreciate it Miss Sylvestri certainly tried to make that clear after the visit to the asylum.

This was my best 300 word paper I believe because people didn't have that many comments about changing things.  The only things I tweaked were the intro and conclusion.  In the intro I polished my thesis being more clear about the social class difference that immediately happened when the bus approached the asylum.  In my conclusion all I changed was the last sentence summing up a little better the idea of Miss Sylvestri making sure the children knew they were apart of a higher social class.  Those were the only things I changed and I believe this paper was one of my better ones.

The id and superego often have a power struggle and this power struggle can easily be seen in the scene where Holly and Harry are on the Ferris wheel.  Harry is identified as the id, the pleasure seeking center.  He strives to be rich and has a greedy complex that causes him to go to extreme lengths to make money.  Harry ends up killing hundreds of people in order to get instant gratification of his desire for money.  Holly on the other hand is seen as the superego because of his sense of right and wrong and his drive to put a stop to the id, or Harry in this case.  Holly's moral values and Harry's greedy desires show a power struggle between both men in this scene.  The both test each other with body movements and gestures.  Harry justifies his crimes with the reward of making money while Holly suppresses his ideals with his moral value, that killing people in order to gain money is wrong.  Both men struggle to over power the other in this scene which can be very similar to id and superego struggle.  The id strives for immediate gratification of their wants while the superego tries to suppress these wants with morals. 

Snow White and Gender Lens

We watched Snow White the other day in class and one lens that is very noticeable throughout this movie is the gender lens.  Snow White is portrayed as a very weak character who is always needing guidance or help out of situations.  She is given this assistance because she is beautiful and fits the stereotype of the typical weak female character.  For example she has the 7 dwarfs who save her numerous times in the film getting her out of trouble.  Snow Whites innocence and almost stupidity overshadow the dwarfs efforts when she eats the very intriguing and mysterious apple given to her by the witch.  The cinematic element of color effects how we see the apple.  The apple is bright red and red is tied with temptation.  The apple is also shiny with a perfect outer shell making the apple very intriguing and impossible for Snow White to resist even though the dwarfs say not to eat it.  When Snow White was placed in her glass case after eating the apple she had to once again be saved.  In this instance the prince makes his way to Snow White to kiss her and wake her up.  When the prince approaches the glass case we notice it has light shining on it drawing a lot of attention to Snow Whites beauty.  This cinematic element really puts focus on her beauty and how she must be beautiful since she has all these men going out of their way to help her. She is a very beautiful who fits the typical stereotype of a woman who always needs saving and needs a man by her side to stay safe.  Her image also shows that you must be beautiful to receive that help because the Queen, a character not portrayed as beautiful, never receives this same attention from men.

TED Talk Elab

I'm going to talk about Anna's TED Talk mainly because it was a topic that made me interested to hear about something I new basically nothing about and that was 4H.  I had no idea that 4H included things like photography and crafts, I thought it had something to do with just the fair and cattle.  Anna was very calm and comfortable talking about this subject which made her TED Talk easy to follow at this point.  She seemed to never run out of things to say about 4H and never stuttered or paused.  It was also not a dull or boring subject to hear about and she kept the listeners attention.  The visual aid also helped with that.  I wish her TED Talk would have just been about 4H and how it helped her be creative because she didn't seem as comfortable talking about schools and how they were talking away creativity.  Maybe if she would've brought in some statistics it may have helped or going more into depth about solutions to getting more creative could have helped as well.  I really enjoyed hearing about the 4H and wished she would've said more about it but, overall Anna's TED Talk was very interesting to hear about and very well organized.  I enjoyed it!! Nice job Anna!!:)