EXTRA+Related+literature

= __//Irony and The Heart of Darkness//__ =


 * By: Tyler Crothers**


 * setting (time)** · Latter part of the nineteenth century, probably sometime between 1876 and 1892
 * setting (place)** · Opens on the Thames River outside London, where Marlow is telling the story that makes up //Heart of Darkness.// Events of the story take place in Brussels, at the Company’s offices, and in the Congo, then a Belgian territory.
 * protagonist** · Marlow
 * major conflict** · Both Marlow and Kurtz confront a conflict between their images of themselves as “civilized” Europeans and the temptation to abandon morality completely once they leave the context of European society.
 * Rising action** · The brutality Marlow witnesses in the Company’s employees, the rumors he hears that Kurtz is a remarkable and humane man, and the numerous examples of Europeans breaking down mentally or physically in the environment of Africa.
 * climax**· Marlow’s discovery, upon reaching the Inner Station, that Kurtz has completely abandoned European morals and norms of behavior
 * falling action** · Marlow’s acceptance of responsibility for Kurtz’s legacy, Marlow’s encounters with Company officials and Kurtz’s family and friends, Marlow’s visit to Kurtz’s Intended
 * themes** · The hypocrisy of imperialism, madness as a result of imperialism, the absurdity of evil
 * motifs** · Darkness (very seldom opposed by light), interiors vs. surfaces (kernel/shell, coast/inland, station/forest, etc.), ironic understatement, hyperbolic language, inability to find words to describe situation adequately, images of ridiculous waste, upriver versus downriver/toward and away from Kurtz/away from and back toward civilization (quest or journey structure)
 * symbols** · Rivers, fog, women (Kurtz’s Intended, his African mistress), French warship shelling forested coast, grove of death, severed heads on fence posts, Kurtz’s “Report,” dead helmsman, maps, “whited sepulchre” of Brussels, knitting women in Company offices, man trying to fill bucket with hole in it
 * Foreshadowing** · Permeates every moment of the narrative—mostly operates on the level of imagery, which is consistently dark, gloomy, and threatening

The role of irony in the heart of darkness is most definately apparent at the end when marlow lies to kurzt's intended concerning what his last words were. Throughout the entire novella, Marlow displays a certain hatred for Imperialism and hypocrisy yet when he is put in a situation where the truth is demanded from him, he lies and says that kurtz's last words were her name when in reality his last words were, "the horror, the horror" The use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning: the irony of her reply, “How nice!” when I said I had to work all weekend.

Verbal irony occurs when a writer or speaker says one thing but really means the opposite. If you tell a friend who shows up an hour late for an appointment that “ you just love being kept waiting in the rain” you are using verbal irony.

The first narrator speaks in the first-person plural, on behalf of four other passengers who listen to Marlow’s tale. Marlow narrates his story in the first person, describing only what he witnessed and experienced, and providing his own commentary on the story.


 * genre** · Symbolism, colonial literature, adventure tale, frame story, almost a romance in its insistence on heroism and the supernatural and its preference for the symbolic over the realistic

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Please read and listen to this addition by Ms Pronko: [|Achebe on Heart of Darkness]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_Darkness

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/heart
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