Man in Nothingness

In part two of Heart of Darkness, a constant theme is shown: Nature. As I read, I kept having flashbacks of reading The Stranger. Mersault was convinced the problems people had were meaningless. The world wouldn’t stop going because of our problems. Life goes on. This is similar to what I’ve seen in Heart of Darkness. Marlow criticizes Kurtz and everyone who glorifies him because he isn’t as important as everyone thinks he is. He criticizes him in a very subtle way: comparing him to nature. Just like Mersault, from The Stranger, Marlow knows there is nothing or no one as big and important as nature. One shouldn’t glorify or blow up something to those dimensions.

Ever since the first time Marlow heard about Kurtz, he was conscious that people idolized him. Even the natives whom he had conquered glorified him. He had vast amounts of Ivory, which made people admire him even more. However for Marlow, he was just a voice (pg.86).

Everyone thinks he is such an important person and he is so big except for Marlow. Mersault would have probably seen him like another person who would eventually die. The key point when I realized how Marlow, unlike the other characters, sees Kurtz as just any other man is when he dies. Unlike the others who wanted to keep the body, Marlow just throws him into the river. At this moment we know he doesn’t see him as a greater creature or as if the world would stop just because he had died.

“The current snatched him as though he had been a wisp of grass…” (pg. 94)

The fact that Marlow compared him to a wisp of grass shows he was meaningless compared to the earth. This also shows how similar Marlow and Mersault are. Neither gives anyone so much importance. After you are dead nothing matters and  all your life’s efforts are lost. After you are dead, the only thing that will keep you alive will be the memory of others, which is very biased. After you are dead the world will continue its course.

“Everything belonged to him- but that was a trifle. The thing was to know what he belonged to…” (pg.89)

Real intentions

I was surprised to find out I was not the only one kind of confused by the novel. As I read Yvette’s blog, I saw we had very similar questions regarding the narrator and Marlow.

Just like Yvette, I was surprised when I found out the narrator was not telling the story. I have not read many books where another person narrates an entire chapter. I think this gives even more importance to Marlow from the one he already has: being the only “named” character. I believe the narrator has some sort of admiration and respect for Marlow. That is why he names him, and allows him to take his role as narrator. Now that I think about it, it is almost like if the narrator wouldn’t be able to show how important Marlow was with his narration. Instead, he glorifies him by allowing him to be kind of the narrator. It also makes me think of when we read One Flew over The Cuckoos nest. I had the same doubt weather to believe what the chief was telling us or not. In this case, just like Yvette said, what can we be sure of if we don’t know who the actual narrator is?

I do think Conrad is being ironic when he talks about the Europeans job. We can see it by the way Marlow describes the people he sees and his morals intervening. For example, when he feels like an impostor for working for profit, or when he gives a biscuit to one of the dying men. I think that is the reason he is telling the story to his friends, to show them what’s right and what’s wrong. I have the exact same questions as you, and I would also like to know what is the importance of the other characters mentioned at the beginning of the novel, the doctor, the lawyer, etc? 

Stand Up

In Heart of Darkness, Marlow starts narrating his adventures of when he was employed by a Belgian company to go in an expedition through the Congo River. Right before he is about to leave he says something that was like a déjà vu to me. I had been watching a movie called Even the Rain. In this movie, just like in Heart of Darkness, the character comes across an inner conflict: Continue being part of an unjust situation, or do something against it.

To understand what I’m talking about first I’ll give a fast summary of Even the Rain. It is about a Spanish producer, Costa, who is producing a movie about the colonization of the Indians in Hispaniola. They go to Bolivia to film and to hire the indigenous people. However, as they start filming they find out the Indians from Bolivia, including their main actor, are doing a strike against the government who wants to privatize the water supply. In the end the producer has to decide between the movie or helping the Bolivians.

Just like Costa, Marlow is disturbed when he finds out the company has really no honest intentions in mind. They just want profit. Both of them have higher morals that tell them something is wrong. However, they are not sure how to respond to it. In the movie, the film they are making shares the story of Fray Bartolome de Las Casas who stood up for the Indians. In both the movie and the book I was hoping and expecting that either one would stand up for their morals.

They both did. Even though they did not defend the Indians nor the Africans, nor did they do something to stop the cruelty, Marlow gives one a biscuit.  He describe the men he sees as:

 “dying slowly […] they were not enemies, they were no criminals, they were nothing earthly now, - nothing but black shadows if disease and starvation…” (pg.27-28)  

He feels pity for them and has nothing else to offer other than the biscuit.

This shows us that Marlow does know something is wrong and that he feels the need to do something. However, he continues to work for the company. On the other hand, Costa decides to abandon his movie and help a family of Bolivians whose daughter was injured. I wonder if like Costa, Marlow will stop working with the company and even better if he will stand with the Africans and Indians being unjustly treated or if he will just let it go and gain profits. 

The Great Nations of Europe

What examples from the song are ironic?
he met some friendly Indians whom the Church told him were gay,
soooooooooooooo
he had them torn apart by dogs on religious grounds they say
the great nations of Europe were quite holy in their way.

Columbus sailed for India found Salvador instead.
He shook hands with some Indians and soon they all were dead.They got tb and typhoid and athletes foot, diphtheria and the flu

'scuse me great nations comin through

How can you tell?  
It's ironic because he says that Balboa met some friendly Indians, but then he kills them because the Church assumes they are gay. Also, it says the great nations of Europe were quite holy in their way, he is actually referring to the opposite. They killed innocent people with the excuse they were gay when first, that shouldn't be a reason to kill and second, they were not certain of that making them everything but holy. 
The second sentence is also ironic because when he says he shook hands with some indians, we may think that it was as a good start, like they were making friends and were going to be treated correctly. However, it is actually because they shook hands that they got all the diseases and they soon were all dead.

What examples are not ironic?  
They'd conquered what was behind them and now they wanted more,
so they looked to the mighty ocean and took to the Western sea -
the great nations of Europe in the 16th century.

Now they're gone, they're gone, they're really gone.
You never seen anyone so gone.
There's pictures in a museum, some lines written in a bookbut you won't find a live one, no matter where you look.

How can you tell?
This example is not ironic because it is true. The European nations had already conquered Africa so when they discovered America they saw it as an opportunity to get more colonies,  show their superiority to other colonizing nations, and to get raw materials. the author is saying exactly what he wants the reader to understand.
When he says they're gone he is refering to the indians who were exterminated and their culture was completley lost. He says that there are pictures in meuseums and limes written in a book which is true, the culture was entirely lost and the only place we can find somethings about them is in books and meuseums, there is no way to see them physically alive because they are gone. 

Charles Cheswick: R.I.P

Through out my life, I’ve come across lots of people who have a lot in mind; things such as complaints, anger towards a system, or that are disturbed by injustice. However, these people only complain about it, they do nothing to fix whatever bothers them. That is one thing that personally drives me crazy. Charles Cheswick, in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is exactly this person. He is one of the only characters aware that the ward has issues that must be changed, yet, he does nothing to stand up against it other than complain. As the novel progresses, (and unlike the people I know), Cheswick changes. He becomes a revolutionary character who unconsciously does one of the greatest acts to demonstrate discomfort and the need for change: he commits suicide.

Before McMurphy arrives and show the other patients his inconformity McMurphy is described by The Chief as a “talker”. 

“Cheswick never goes on; he’s one of these guys who’ll make a big fuss like he’s going to lead an attack, holler charge and stomp up and down a minute, take a couple of steps, and quit” (Pg. 59) 

It is clear that he has this reputation well marked and everyone knows it. However, when he perceives that McMurphy feels the same way as him, in terms of the ward, he is the first one to support him.

The start of his transition is when he is taken into the disturbed because he complains about the cigarettes. For me, he changes from an annoying patient who does nothing more rather than nag into an activist. During the rest of the novel he starts going on and saying or doing whatever he wants.

I believe this change is obviously because he has someone that supports him (McMurphy) and who thinks similarly as him. This makes him more comfortable with his opinions and actions. He needed that little push in order to change. Maybe that’s what it is with the people I know; they need something or someone to push them into acting. Just like Cheswick they may feel scared or feel like on their own they won’t make a change.

The final and greatest act that made Cheswick completely different from who he was at the beginning was the suicide. Although Kesey never implies that he did it as a revolutionary act instead he did it because of desperation and hopelessness, for me it meant more than that. By doing so, he showed the nurse and the rest of the ward that something was wrong in there and he wouldn’t accept anything done. He found another escape. He was also able to show McMurphy that conforming would ruin him and the patients of the ward. Something had to be done. I don’t think he consciously thought this before committing suicide, but maybe he did so unconsciously. After all, it was one of the biggest acts against conformity a patient could of done. 

Simple Machinery

As I read the book I noticed The Chief used machines many times to describe the Big Nurse and the people in the ward. However, it was not until I read further on that I saw that The Chief really believed people were machines and had nothing inside except for “rust, ashes wire or glass” (pg. 79). I believe Kesey is symbolizing human behavior and society with machines. There is no soul, no real feelings: just detached material things.

The machines symbolize society in the sense of the routine all people who are part of the conformist society have. They have a schedule and an order of things, so when things go differently in the ward the Chief blames it on an error on the machinery:

“Whatever it was went haywire in the mechanism, they’ve just about got it fixed again. The clean calculated arcade movement is coming back.” (Pg. 155)

For me this not only shows how society is a machine, but how we are machines that follow this routine and if something goes wrong with it ,we fail too. It’s like if we were part of a factory and society was the “parent” machine that kept us going, if it fails we fail with it.

I believe it is already clear that the hospital is a small-scale model of society in which the Big Nurse is the ultimate authority. The Big Nurse, in page 6, is described as a doll, something with no feelings, only a mechanical object. She would be the main machine from which the others operate. The patients, more specifically the chronics, are individual machines that can’t operate on their own because they “are machines with flaws inside that can’t be repaired”. However, these flaws are only flaws in societies’ eyes. They symbolize the structure that society makes people follow, and when someone doesn’t conform with it they are seen as crazy or as defective machines. Does this mean the patients are really crazy? Or are they just don’t conform with society’s standards, and have a different way of following them?

In other words, they are really machines that have a different way of operating because their wiring is different from what is commonly known. 

Fog

Fog: Something very simple yet very hard to explain.

Last year I had to analyze a movie using its visual effects. One of the elements I found as a continuous trend was fog. As I read One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s nest I found that the narrator, the chief, constantly talks about a fog machine. He mentions it every time he is scared or in a situation in which he feels threatened. The first time for example, is when the black boys and the Nurse are going to shave of his head.  As soon as they push the button on he feels the fog machine being turned on.

Many times, in movies, the director uses the fog as a barrier, to separate two things: what the fog covers, and what’s outside it. Many times this barrier represents the non-physical division between the two places, or, in the case of the chief, security. 

“They start the fog machine again and it’s snowing […] so thick I might even be able to hide in it if they didn’t have a hold on me”. (OFOCN Pg.7)

As the fog starts covering him, he feels safer; he “can’t see six inches before him” (pg.7). The fog clouds him and protects him form seeing what they are about to do to him which allows him o escape reality and just wake up after everything is over.

However, as I read on, the Chief said something that gave me a whole new perspective of what the fog might have meant:

“One of these days I’ll quit straining and let myself go completely, lose myself in the fog the way some of the other Chronics have…” (OFGOCN Pg. 37)

It’s a state of mind. Simple. The patients are obviously not sane, and they don’t have a clear state of mind. It represents the constant confusion they have, because of their insanity. It’s blurry, like the fog.