Enduring Themes

In reading Song of Salomon, I began to encounter Biblical allusions every few lines. Before I could recollect what I knew about a biblical figure, another appeared. I began to wonder why Morrison made so much reference to this sacred book. For centuries, the ancestors of African Americans suffered the whip of slavery under humiliating conditions. With few possessions, and access to little or no entertainment, religion became a central element in the lives of slaves. They perceived the Bible as a source of hope and purpose for years. Eventually, when the abolitionist movement came, African Americans continued to gather around religious ideals. The Bible contains themes that are as valid in modern society as they where for the slaves during the darkest period of American history. In including biblical allusion in her novel, Morrison demonstrates how these themes are present regardless of time or geographic location.

However, names like Pilate, First Corinthians, Magdalene, Solomon and other biblical names pursue definite purposes. As a result, characters in the novel are defined by the history and traits of their equivalents in the Bible. In it, Hagar was a handmaiden who bears Abraham a son and is punished as a result. Her story reflects a patriarchal society and the idea of women as an object of pleasure. Likewise, Milkman’s Hagar symbolized his sexual initiation and his positioning as a man. She had brought change for “Sleeping with Hagar had made him generous” (69). Marrison points to sexual activity as the factor that triggered change in including “sleeping with her.” It isn’t what she is, but rather what she provides, that makes her important to Milkman. This happens short after Macon Dead hits Ruth. This is another display of masculine superiority, which reveals that the position of women in society isn’t that much different from what it was during Abraham’s time. In effect, Morrison confessed “The challenge of Song of Salmon was to manage what was for me a radical shift in imagination from a female focus to a male one” (Foreword).

Number 176002

“Grab a copy of Song of Solomon from the EVL and begin reading the first fifty pages tonight.”

Those where the final instructions I heard before the class concluded. I had a few minutes before my next class and decided to stop by and grab copy from the library. The title resembled that of a National Geographic documentary: The Song Of Salmon. Already my expectations where not the best, but as I took a first glance at the cover, depression overtook me. White letters over a plain blue background, and not just blue, it was bathroom blue.

I began reading with what was definitely not the best of first impressions. However, things began to change. Mr. Smith was standing on the roof and determined to fly. It was not a threat and he wasn’t crazy. Mr. Smith was not the typical suicide, in fact, “jumping from the roof of Mercy was the most interesting thing he had done” (8-9). Robert Smith had an ambition: freedom. He had lived a monotonous existence until that day when he chose to rebel against his confinement. The fact that the novel begins with this anecdote foreshadows a fight for freedom through the novel. Toni Morrison describes every character with their limitations. Be it Ruth enslaved to her marriage or Macon Dead tied to every penny, Morrison incorporates a limiting characteristic in every one of her characters. Only Mr. Smith did she set free from these limitations.

Likewise, Morrison’s naming of the characters is also peculiar. We encounter hidden meaning within names and names that mean nothing at all. Macon Dead received his names from “somebody who couldn’t have cared less” (18). Names are given to distinguish individuals from the masses, to give them a sense of identity. However, characters in the novel lack this sense of identity. Names such as Macon Dead, which are probably not real in the first place, begin to blur the importance of the individual. In the same manner, a nickname of the sort of Milkman casts a shadow over any real qualities the individual might have. His most important asset, and the characteristic by which he will be remembered, is an empty nickname.

As a result, I went back to my initial impression on the novel. What if, resembling its content, the cover purposely lacks an identity? It is a great risk, but maybe Toni Morrison tried to mimic the naming of her characters in the naming and presentation of her book. At first glance, the novel fails to outshine any other title in a library, but those who give it a chance find a novel far more intricate than those contained in the more extravagant covers.

Exposing The Truth

Adam Hochschild uncovers the truth behind Belgium’s dominion over the Congo in King Leopold’s Ghost. Concerned specifically with the effects of slavery over the African territory, Hochschild narrates the toil of individuals who strived to expose this cruelty. As he shares the factual evidence in history, he contradicts an erroneous take on events that has become widely accepted as the legitimate account. Belgium was nowhere near to being the victim. How could a group of people ever imagine that they would manage to hide events of such magnitude from the world with any success?

In Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad describes an expedition into mysterious lands in Africa. The novel deals with the Dark Continent as the unknown. Conrad tries to expose those interior lands, where Kurtz dwelled in harmony with the natives, to help shape our understanding of European colonization. Likewise, Hochschild deals with a dark period in history as the unknown. There was minimal information available, for most of the historical documents “burned for eight days, turning most of the Congo state records to ash and smoke” (294). These authors try to trace our understanding of European colonization back to its origin in an attempt to correct modern understanding of history. Slavery decided the fate of countries for centuries after it vanished as they fought to “[emerge] from the shadow of its past” (301). If this is true in places where its existence is widely admitted and confronted, how much harder will it be for territories where slavery is dealt with as fiction to overcome their burdens?

Consequently, schools preach about the importance of understanding the mistakes of our ancestors as to avoid their concurrence but filter the cruelty from our memory, thus failing to prevent their repetition. This might help explain how the world appears to be a worse place as day goes by, as if humanity had no limit to its cruelty and our only limitation was the time taken to device new means of cruelty. How can we progress in our understanding of human behavior when its flaws are treated as “taboo. Like the history of millions killed” ?(298). Both authors reach places previously barred to the public. If we take Conrad’s novel as an adventure into his own mind, we face the mysterious functioning of human brain as another limitation to our understanding of human cruelty. In effect, they try to prove how enlightening the general public naturally concludes in progress. The more we know, the more we are able to understand and assimilate. When we are able to filter things through our reason, we prevent the fueling of passions that often drive people to bestow disaster upon others.

Finally, I think it is important to highlight the power Europe had in shaping the face of the world. There has been no place on earth where Europeans didn’t determine the fate of its people. Their legacy survives to the present days where many of the habits of tyrants translate into corrupt individuals leading countries. Only by acknowledging our heritage will we ever overcome the obstacles engraved in our history. There is no use in denying what has happened. We must strive to shed light onto those dark spaces in human understanding if we are to evolve out of the shadows and “a hundred black fiends” that trouble us daily (295).

An Eternal Conrad

The final pages of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness reproduce Marlow’s anxiety in the reader. The novel gravitates around Kurtz, his life, and his legacy. He symbolized direction and guidance, giving the expedition purpose. But with his appearance comes the “turn of the tide” (1). He is no longer guidance but an enigma, a being that was so many things at once and nothing at all. On their voyage back to civilization, this mysterious character dies. His last words: “The horror! The horror!”(130). How are we to interpret this?

Let us regress to a living Kurtz. This mysterious individual chose to dwell in the remote corners of the African wilderness. Marlow’s expedition was one to the unknown, to the core of Conrad’s own mind in search for him. When he finds Kurtz, he encounters much resistance in taking him back to civilization. Living in the wild, he had found an escape from all the pressures of a materialistic society. It was his form of rebellion against the atrocities of the human heart. Consequently, Conrad employs this encounter to juxtapose the civilized and the uncivilized. As Marlow blows the whistles of his ship, “two thousand eyes followed the evolutions of the splashing, thumping, fierce, river demon beating the water with its terrible tail and breathing black smoke into the air” (125). By employing demonic imagery in describing the industrialized nations, Conrad exhibits the destructiveness and greed of the human heart.

However, Kurtz does not make it back to the world he fled from. Marlow witnessed how his life began to “ebb out of his heart into the sea of inexorable time” (127). Here, inexorable time refers to the unalterable mortality of humans, to the insignificance of an individual when put in the context of eternal time. And as Kurtz felt the last breath leave his lungs, a weak and yet desperate cry gave way to his last words: “The horror! The horror!”. There is no definite interpretation for his final words, for they are extremely ambiguous. However, I think they might mean one of two things. First, in muttering ambiguity Kurtz incites mystery and interminable enigma. In doing so he was taking a hit at immortality by leaving the end to his story open. On the other hand, Kurtz might have been condemning the horrors of the human heart. His rejection to the atrocities of civilization was so real that he would rather die than face “the horrors” he initially fled from.

Eventually, a connection between Kurtz and Conrad may be evident. Heart of Darkness comes to an end amidst much ambiguity. Conrad’s novel poses similar enigmas as Kurtz' final words. Maybe they are both rebelling against society, or maybe Conrad wanted a grab at immortality. We are left alongside Marlow to interpret what we have read and try to give it meaning. These pages are the means through which reader and Conrad will continue to interact long after mortality takes her claim.

Shed Some Light

Joseph Conrad wrote a novel of deceptive meaning. It appears to be straightforward in its objective, but it is not so simple. Everything inside those pages suggests meaning beyond the literal. On the surface, it appears to be the narration of an experience: Marlow’s experience. Mildly entertaining, the story talks about his adventures as a ship captain and the obstacles he encounters as he travels into the heart of the continent in search of Kurtz. Heart of Darkness has much more to it than what is imminent on the surface. There are a number of levels of interpretation. It is reading from different angles, and each angle provides a different context.

As Marlow nears his objective, he begins to understand how far into the unknown they have come. Kurtz inhabits a place “so impenetrable to human thought, so pitiless to human weakness” (103). They have traveled far into a mysterious land towards the core of Africa. In it Kurtz lives in solitude, “far in the depths of the forest” (103). The depth of a mysterious land alludes to the unknown and undiscovered. Humanity has conquered all sorts of mysteries. We have mastered numbers, science, art, deceit, politics and many other tools that enable us to live in a global community. However, we are still in the quest to master ourselves. It is that quest for spiritual realization and mental control than continues to intrigue humanity. We are yet to find the answers to that puzzle.

Kurtz lives in the midst of such mystery. Characters hint towards his greatness but all they can relate are those “splendid monologues” (109). As the word suggests, monologues include a single individual. A monologue in this context is the talking with one’s self: reflection. When we reflect we dwell in the darkest places of our mind as we search for answers to infinite questions. Marlow was also searching for answers in his adventures. He was also trying to find a purpose for himself. This process tries to understand the functioning of human emotion through logical reason. But these reflections “echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core” (108). Conrad’s use of the word hollow refers to a hole or a gap in knowledge. No matter how long we search for answers, our thought will only echo indefinitely without conclusion because we lack the tools to understand the ultimate creator of reality: the human brain.

Marlow’s road into the unknown in search for Kurtz goes beyond the literal level. It has clear relationship with humanity’s quest for knowledge and understanding. Conrad describes his own attempt to crack into his brain in search for the answers through Marlow’s experience. It represents himself wondering into the darkest corners of his mind where the final pieces of the puzzle dwell guest to the unknown.

Black And White

Joseph Conrad juxtaposes black and white imagery in Heart Of Darkeness. Clear distinctions exist between these two colors as they transmit opposing sensations. White is a clean color, generally associated with enlightenment and divinity. Black is the color of mystery, evil and death. Accordingly, black and white have definite connotations in Conrad’s novel.

Europeans are supposed to be superior in knowledge and understanding. They are the white, after all. They dictate the norms of society and set the peace for development. Conrad exposes their cruelty in his novel as he uncovers their abusive behavior. They harass the natives, exploiting them to the point of exhaustion. They think of themselves as “supernatural beings” in the face of the “savages” (92). Thus, the white individuals feel enlightened, as if it was a natural consequence of the color. On the other hand, the black people become savages. Their only sin lies in their skin, but it is big enough to anticipate hell. They become but “a grain of sand in the black Sahara” (93).

Racial discrimination is present through the pages, deeply engraved in everyone’s reality. Even in the face of adversity we find “the contrast of expression of white men and the black fellows” (72-73). White Europeans are described as men, but blacks only attain the title of “fellows”. And they are so savage that “they belong to the beginnings of time” (73). It is also as if humanity had split according to color, and the white had fallen into the darkest possibility. Blacks may fall into the unprivileged group, but they got to keep the white emotions.

Consequently, moral questioning arises. Is it better to be master of a white body but slave of a dark soul? Are Europeans superior at all, or is it an act staged for centuries? Conrad’s novel begs the reader to search his soul in a quest to attain spiritual reflection. Maybe there is no white and black but shades in between. Maybe there is white and black but they never fully align with actions. Everything brings consequences, and having an undeserved advantage for centuries eventually caught up with those “supernatural beings” Conrad envisions.

Sound Asleep

As Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness progresses, my interest dwindles. It is not that the novel lacks quality, the problem is the way it translates into words. Take movies, for example. An action film maintains our interest as it manages to inscribe purpose into every second of the plot. There are moments where blinking may represent the absence of a bullet breaking through a human skull, where even the sound of gunpowder burning in the cannon calls for attention. But not everything may be high-tech warfare, for there must be something for romantics. If I ask you to recall one of such films, I bet the visual memory is not nearly as detailed. This is because, at least to my simple mind, there is no amusement in the picking of a flower, the waiting for a train or the entrance to a restaurant. But I would be wrong in arguing that the crushed skull represents a wider portion of human emotion than the message embedded in a rose. This same situation is staged in my reading of Conrad’s novel. The meaning is clearly there, but where’s the action?

There’s no doubt that European colonization was packed with action. Imagine how many rounds where fired, how many battles fought, how many succumbed to illness. Conrad is satisfied with the isolated effects. We stumble across a body “with a bullet-hole in the forehead” but have no access to the action that led to it (34). I am not insensible in my thirst for action. I clearly understand the message the lies inscribed in a dead body after a description of the ill treat towards black slaves, but it fails to welcome the reader into a story. When we become part of what is being said, when we understand the causes and implications, the effects mean so much more.

Pages display empty conversations and alienated descriptions. Many words go by between any two intriguing events, and when these appear, they are always a consequence of cruelty and punishment. Even if we have no exact location, it is evident the story takes place upon wild and unknown lands. What better context for mystery and adventure. Hidden in descriptions we find “beyond the fence the forest stood up spectrally in the moonlight” (45). What a waste of opportunity. Why wouldn’t Conrad take advantage of the suspense related to a mysterious forest? But he is so immersed in describing interactions between characters whichever those may be that he fails to provide the action.

Heart of Darkness vividly describes a hierarchy and a mission crucial in the understanding of a historical context. Through Conrad’s writing we learn much about European colonization and their relation with native peoples. Many things can be inferred from the text, especially concerning the questionable side of human spirit. However, the novel fails to maintain my attention for long. The pages lack the action that keeps you awake at times where a nap can easily seduce the mind.

A Harsh Reality

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness portrays cruelty and mistreatment through unusual lenses. He vividly describes situations beyond the moral comprehension of human mind without flinching. Maintaining a serious tone through the pages, he resembles news presenters who seem equally affected by a massacre and a celebrity gossip. He describes his situation as if human sin was universally accepted and mundane, as if we had seen everything and whatever else happened was merely a repetition of a past catastrophe and not nearly as impressive.

Charles Marlow happens to come across some hostile situations with such frequency that they define his routine. When word comes that the previous captain to his ship was murdered, he sets out to find the body. As he finds it we face detailed descriptions ranging from the murderers to “the grass growing through his ribs tall enough to hide his bones” (13). As a reader I have time to picture the organs decomposed into the soil, maybe swallowed by some starving animal, the brothers that never had a chance to give him that last hug, maybe kids that never really knew what it was like to grow up with a father, a lonely woman with the duties of a household left by herself and so much misery that accompanies death. To Marlow death is a natural consequence of life and misery is part of everything humanity comes across. He cares not about another tragedy more than the waves that rush past the stern.

But death is a light matter when human creativity meets egocentric greed. Humans are capable of far worse than murder and Conrad knows it. Back at the camp, Marlow goes for a walk only to find slaves walking around in chains. He “could see every rib, the joints of their limbs where like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, and all where connected together with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking” (25). The image would fail to be more impressive if we where there. Conrad’s imagery and attention to detail makes situations drill into our conscience even as Marlow discards them hastily. The narrator becomes a vehicle through which Conrad condemns the conditions slaves where subject to, the conditions in which humanity was building a future.

What we find inside the novel is no surprise after the title. The pages portray a cruel reality resulting from dark hearts and wicked leaders. There is no hope in his writing, no allusion to grandeur and honor. I only expect to find more misery, greater injustice and moral dilemma as I continue my reading of Heart Of Darkness.