Connecting Waiting for the Barbarians and Heart of Darkness

The article “Three Ways of Going Wrong” by Douglas Kerr draws some intriguing connections between J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. His argument that both books, although from different perspectives, focus on the essential but reluctant relationship between a man who becomes too involved with the outsiders and the man who represents civilization makes perfect sense. Although there are not too many similarities between Colonel Joll and Marlow, as Marlow is a bit of a skeptic about the actions of the government whereas Colonel Joll is an intrinsic part of the government’s plans, they both definitely represent a contrast from the men who have gone outside of accepted norms, the Magistrate and Kurtz. Both the Magistrate and Kurtz have high-minded ideals to which no one else can fully relate. These ideals drive them outside of the accepted mindset of civilization and turn them into outcasts who are ineffective at have a meaningful effect on others.

Both the Magistrate and Kurtz try to explicate the potential humanity of the natives in order to keep the members of civilization from abusing them, but their audiences only believe that they are insane. Kurtz tries to explain the importance of educating the natives and explaining to them the benefits of becoming civilized, but everyone else is so focused on material gains and is content to take advantage of the native peoples rather than try to change them. The irony in this is that Kurtz is the most materially successful of any of the imperialists because of the connections he makes with the natives. The Magistrate tries to express the humanity of the barbarians with a similar lack of success because the other inhabitants of the colony are so wrapped up in the hysteria of fighting that the government has created that they are unsympathetic to his plea. The government itself cannot dare to consider the potential of humanity in the barbarians because they rely on the inhuman qualities that they attribute to the barbarians as a reason to turn the barbarians into an enemy, an enemy that they can use to unite the people in loyalty to the government. Thus, both the characters’ ideals are lost on the other members of society and leave them with no sympathizers.

In both books, the character that associates with the natives becomes a complete outsider, not totally relating to the natives but not at home with the members of civilization either. Kurtz becomes a part of the natives’ tribal practices and is even worshipped by them, but he cannot fully identify with them because he is still a European, and the Europeans do not know what to do with him because, in their opinion, he has gone completely insane. The Magistrate is in a similar predicament because, as hard as he tries, he cannot relate to the barbarian girl for whom he feels immense pity. He tries to feel a connection with her, but as hard as he tries, he is not satisfied. He recognizes her humanity, but he still cannot understand her. His attempts to relate to his fellow members of society are hardly more successful as they cannot understand his desire to associate with the barbarians. Consequently, both Kurtz and the Magistrate are doomed to be ineffectual outsiders, no matter how noble their intentions may be (566).

Impressions of Waiting for the Barbarians Thus Far

So far, Waiting for the Barbarians has been focused on the narrator’s impotence and indecisiveness. When he has a strong idea, he is almost always ineffective at making it known. For example, when he is opposed to Colonel Joll’s bringing back the fisherfolk as prisoners instead of the actual barbarians that they’re looking for, the narrator is able to do nothing but express his distaste for the action; he cannot effect any change despite his title as magistrate. His disdain for Colonel Joll’s violent interrogation practices also leads to absolutely nothing. He is only left picking up the pieces after Joll makes a mess of the prisoners only to leave and bring back more. These prisoners become unclean parasites in the town, and Colonel Joll does not have to deal with it: the magistrate does. The narrator tries to learn more about the violent interrogations, but he learns very little and can do nothing but let the prisoners go in their varying states of decrepitude and take care of the barbarian woman who was left behind.

His indecisiveness is evident particularly in how he treats the barbarian woman. He oscillates from feeling a strong duty to take care of her to only seeing her as ugly and damaged and wondering why he brought her to his home. He is constantly indecisive over whether or not he is sexually attracted to her, and when he is not, he spends much of his time wondering why. The most conspicuous example of his indecisiveness is his taking her all the way out to the edge of the Empire in nearly fatal weather in order to send her home only to tell her that he wants her to stay with him and come back to the Empire. The narrator’s actions are unpredictable and his relationships are unstable throughout the book up to this point because, as hard as he tries, he cannot understand his own feelings and desires (324).

Notes Concerning Joseph Conrad's Letters En Route to the Congo

1. The excerpt from Conrad's "Imagining Africa" in which Conrad talks about his desire to travel into the unknown is extremely similar to Marlow's account of the same on page 8.

2. Conrad's signature changes throughout these letters, including Konrad Korzeniowski, Conrad Korzeniowski, C. Korzeniowski, J.C. Korzeniowski, K.N. Korzeniowski, and simply Conrad.

3. Before Conrad prepared himself to go to Africa, he had spent three years away, one among the islands of the Malay Archipelago and two as master of an Austrian vessel in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

4. His aunt Marguerite Poradowska, who probably helped Conrad get his appointment in the Company through her connections with the Belgian royal family, was the inspiration for the character of Marlow's aunt in the book.

5. Possible proof of Marguerite's help is revealed when he writes to her, "[T]his proof of friendship you give me in concerning yourself with my African plans touches me more than I can express. Many thanks for you kind attention" (244-245).

6. He says that only 7% of the people sent to the Congo remain healthy enough to finish their three years of service and that 60% return to Europe before six months have passed.

The Culmination of Jason's Character

While the last section does not provide closure in a traditional sense because no character changes significantly from the beginning of the book to the end, it does provide a final glimpse of Jason at his most extreme; we see Jason’s self-righteous and self-pitying nature and his consequent impotence at its highest point, leaving the reader with the message that no matter how hard Jason tries, he cannot amount to anything because his self-imposed cloud of self-importance prevents him from seeing past his own unhappiness. The quote in this last section that sums Jason up best is the description of his journey to fight for what he has lost – it is described as the “fresh battle toward which he was carrying ancient wounds” (306). Jason, like his mother, has developed a mindset in which he is always the underdog and must always be fighting for retribution from his past grievances. He cares about nothing but exacting revenge upon Caddy and Quentin, whom he melds together in his mind as the symbol for his lost opportunity for the bank job that he so earnestly wanted. The fact that, in this section, Jason is almost willing to – and nearly does – die in the process of exacting his revenge shows how little he can accomplish and how insignificant his life is because he has trapped himself in the past (228).

The Sound and the Fury and its Origins in Folklore

The article about The Sound and the Fury that I read this week provided significance for some of the details of the story that I would have otherwise dismissed as unimportant. Charles D. Peavy’s article “Faulkner’s Use of Folklore in The Sound and the Fury,” as the title suggests, discusses the connection between Faulkner’s novel and some common Negro and Southern folklore. The connections vary from Faulkner’s use of certain objects that imply a greater significance than is readily noticeable, such as the jimson weed and its pairing with Benjy with its various meanings or the “squinch” owl and the howling dog as omens of death, to his direct allusions to certain folktales, as in Quentin’s allusion to the common Negro saying that “a drowned man’s shadow was watching for him in the water all the time” (Faulkner 90). The explanation of each of these provided greater insight into Faulkner’s genius.

The jimson weed has several meanings and connections that make it much more than just a random object that Benjy was given to play with. Through Peavy’s article, I learned that the jimson weed is poisonous and possesses a “heavy and oppressive perfume” (Peavy 437). Its odor is significant because it contrasts the smell of trees that he had once attributed to Caddy but that he can no longer smell, and the fact that it is poisonous leads the reader to wonder why Benjy was encouraged to play with it by his caretakers. There is also a certain irony in the fact that Benjy is holding the one plant that is most commonly associated with the male sex organ as it closely resembles one when the bud is closed when Benjy has been castrated. Peavy explains that Faulkner used the jimson weed as a phallic symbol not only in The Sound and the Fury but also in Sanctuary, in which a woman runs through a field of jimson weeds on the morning before she is raped (438). This portion of Peavy’s article answered by previously lingering question as to why the jimson weed is brought up so often in The Sound and the Fury.

Faulkner’s use of the “squinch” owl or screech owl and the howling of dogs as death omens originates from common Negro folktales. According to Peavy, Negroes frequently said that if “an owl screeches at a house where anyone is sick it will make him worse and probably cause him to die” (441). It was also customarily understood that a howling dog was a forewarning that someone was dying or about to die. Faulkner uses both of these symbols in the scene in which Mr. Compson is very sick and about to die. Roskus understands Benjy’s ability to sense impending death in relation to a howling dog’s similar ability; he believes that Benjy functions the same way a dog does in this situation. He says, “He know lot more than folks thinks. He knowed they time was coming, like that pointer done” (Faulkner 31). Faulkner portrays Benjy’s ability to sense death as superior to that of the dog because he shows that he sensed the impending death of his father even before the dog did.

Faulkner’s allusion to the folktale that a “drowned man’s shadow was watching for him in the water all the time” is particularly interesting (90). Peavy connects this Negro tale to a similar belief in ancient India and Greece that “to look at one’s reflection in water was bad luck” and “an omen of death” (439). This proved to be true in The Sound and the Fury because in the same day that Quentin looks down into the water and considers the Negro folktale, he drowns himself. Peavy’s article was particularly enlightening about the intricacies of the novel The Sound and the Fury, of which the ones I have mentioned are only a small fraction (643).

Citations:

Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury. New York: Vintage, 1984.

Peavy, Charles D. "Faulkner's Use of Folklore in The Sound and the Fury." The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 79, No. 313 July-September 1966: 437-447. JSTOR. .

A Week of Thoughts Written Post-Antibiotics (Thank Goodness!)

This week, I have read three more stories whose class discussions I have missed: “Greasy Lake,” “The Things They Carried,” and “I Stand Here Ironing.” In this blog, I’m going to write about two of them: “Greasy Lake” and “The Things They Carried.”

“Greasy Lake” is a coming-of-age story of three young men – the narrator, Jeff, and Digby – who after getting themselves into more than they bargained for, realize that being “dangerous characters” is not as cool as it seems (130). They go to Greasy Lake for two reasons: because “everyone went there” and because a myriad of indecent yet alluring things – loud music, illegal substances, bad behavior – go on there (131). With such a setting, it seems inevitable that the narrator, Jeff, and Digby are going to get themselves into a precarious situation. And so the reader is almost not surprised when these three characters obnoxiously bother the people in a car that is expected to be their friend’s only for them to discover that it is actually the car of a “very bad character in greasy jeans and engineer boots” (132). A fight ensues and the narrator hits the man over the head with a tire iron, knocking him to the ground, unconscious. The man’s girlfriend comes out of the car, and the boys, overwhelmed by adrenaline and fear, try to rape her and then, when another car comes, they disperse into the trees. The situation only gets more frightening when the narrator, hiding in the disgusting lake, comes upon a dead body. Once the man that he had hit regains consciousness, vandalizes his car, and leaves, the boys are able to go back to the car, find their keys, and prepare to go. It is clear that they have been seriously – and necessarily – affected by the happenings of the evening when an intoxicated girl comes to their car, offers them drugs, and invites them to party with her and her friend, and they – who previous to this situation would very likely have jumped on this offer – respond to this with silence and the narrator “thought [he] was going to cry” (137). The image at the end of the story is quite a powerful one; as the boys drive away, the see the girl still standing in the same place with her hand outstretched. It is powerful because it is clear how pathetic and ineffectual drugs and alcohol make a person. In this evening, the three main characters have seen and experienced quite enough to keep them from returning to Greasy Lake and from returning to the old path of trying to be “dangerous characters,” and they seem to have absorbed that message.

“The Things They Carried” is a story about the shared hardships of war and the coping mechanisms that soldiers use to keep from being enveloped by the misery of war. Throughout the story, the narrator, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, talks about both the physical and emotional burdens of the soldiers – “the things they carried.” My favorite line in this story is, “They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried.” This quote can be applied not only to the massive amounts of weaponry that they carry but also to the emotional things that they carry: “the weight of memory,” “their own lives,” and “all the emotional baggage of men who might die” (631-632, 634). Lieutenant Cross’s method of dealing with the war is fantasizing about Martha, the woman back home and at college who he loves a great deal, but who he does not believe loves him. At the end of the story, after one of his men dies and he blames himself because he was distracted by his fantasies of Martha, Lieutenant Cross comes to a rather abrupt and, in my opinion, extreme decision. Because he blames his fantasies for the death of Ted Lavender, he decides that these fantasies are not worth the trouble that they have caused and that, therefore, he will no longer be motivated by love. He says that he “would dispense with love; it was not now a factor” (636). This seems extreme because I do not believe that he ever truly loved Martha; I think that he chose Martha to represent the love that he is missing now that he is at war. She was a symbol for love to him, but there was never the real thing. He has now allowed himself to become hardened by the war, a lamentable but unfortunately common occurrence among soldiers (768).

This Week's Contemplations

Since I missed the class discussion for three stories this week, I’m going to write a little bit about each of them. These stories are “Battle Royal,” “Shiloh,” and “The Yellow Wallpaper.”

I must begin with “The Yellow Wallpaper” because it was my favorite. I really enjoyed the author’s description of the wallpaper as it was an extremely effective personification of the wallpaper as a mysterious, intoxicating, and creepy force rather than just a form of decoration. With a smell that is described as “creeping,” “hovering,” “skulking,” “hiding,” and “lying in wait,” the wallpaper continues throughout the story to haunt the narrator, who says that the paper looks to her “as if it knew what a vicious influence it had” (427, 432). As the story goes on, the narrator becomes convinced that there is a woman trapped in the wallpaper – just as the narrator is trapped in that room. This seems to just be a similarity among the two at first, but in the end of the story, it becomes clear that the woman in the wallpaper and the narrator are the same person; the narrator says after she has supposedly freed the woman from the wallpaper, “I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night.” At this point, it has become clear that the narrator invented the woman behind the wallpaper – possibly without her own awareness– as a representation of how confined she felt by her husband. She felt helpless and trapped, and she focused all of her attention so intently on the wallpaper that, in her mind, she became its prisoner.

“Shiloh” is a classic example of a story about two people who realize that they have grown apart. Leroy is a truckdriver whose recent bad accident has left him at home and made him realize that his life desperately requires some reevaluating; as he says, he “has the feeling that [he and his wife] are waking up out of a dream together – that they must create a new marriage, start afresh” (605). Although he aspires to make some big changes, his focusing entirely on building a log house limits his potential for change; even when both his wife, Norma Jean, and her mother, Mabel, tell him that his dream is impractical, he continues to cling to his idealized vision that this new house will provide the new start that he and his wife need. Norma Jean, on the other hand, does not stop changing throughout the story. She moves from obsession to obsession and throws herself entirely into each of her endeavors; from working out to relearning piano to learning to write, she continues to challenge herself to try new things and to excel at them. Thus, in the end, the two of them discover that they can no longer live happily together.

“Battle Royal” is a story about race relations in the 1940s written from the perspective of an intelligent and well-educated African American man reminiscing about his youth. Throughout his young life, the narrator was haunted by the words of his grandfather to “overcome [white people] with yeses, undermine ‘em with grins, agree ‘em to death and destruction, let ‘em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open” (527). Although he impressed his white acquaintances with his intelligence and his obedience, he was always wondering if that was really what his grandfather wanted. After the “battle royal” among the African American men at the conference of white people and their public humiliation with the trick of the electrocuting mat covered in coins, the narrator realizes that although the white men appreciate his intelligence and his potential to be a good influence and leader for his race, they do not actually respect him. He realizes that no matter how he behaves, they will never treat him as an equal. Thus, he comes to the conclusion that his grandfather meant for him to conform to the white men’s wishes only if he has something to gain from it because white men will never be grateful for anything he does nor will they bestow anything upon him unless it benefits them. (693)

Understanding Sammy

Our class discussion this week on the character of Sammy in John Updike’s “A & P” led me to explore the topic further because I wanted to see if, after reading it a second time, I, like other members of my class, would see greater meaning in Sammy’s final decision to quit his job at the A & P. After reading it the first time, I came to the conclusion that Sammy chose to quit his job on a whim primarily in order to impress the young girls clad in bathing suits. I came to this conclusion because, although from the beginning it is apparent that Sammy does not particularly enjoy his job, it seems that he is used to it and appreciates the routine – and also I think he does enjoy being able to observe people and make witty comments to himself for his own amusement. The idea of quitting seems to come up very suddenly and the timing of it seems to be entirely based on the fact that the girls, the causes for his supposed heroism, are leaving and nearly out of earshot.

What I didn’t consider, though, is that maybe the effect that the girls had on him was more than just a superficial appreciation. Their unconventionality causes him to reevaluate his boring, routine job with an uninspiring, unremarkable manager. He admires the girls’ (especially “Queenie’s”) boldness in walking into the supermarket wearing their bathing suits fully knowing that all eyes will be on them. The more he watches them, the more he comes to regard them with respect, and once the manager reprimands them, sympathy. Sammy identifies with the girls when the manager confronts them; he thought, “That’s policy for you. Policy is what the kingpins want. What the others want is juvenile delinquency.” Sammy is developing a sincere disgust for the narrow-mindedness of his manager, and this feeling, along with the desire to be accepted by the girls who brought about this revelation, causes him to act without warning.

This idealistic and self-righteous feeling that the girls evoke in him does not last long as evidenced by his comment in the middle of quitting that shows his developing feeling of self-doubt: “It’s true, I don’t [want to do this to my mom and dad]. But it seems to me that once you begin a gesture, it’s fatal not to go through with it” (19). He took a stand only to realize that it wasn’t the most logical path for him to take since reason told him that he needed this job. This slight feeling of regret hits him again after he exits the store as he sees that the girls whom he had hoped to impress are no longer there and he realizes “how hard the world was going to be to [him] hereafter” (19). Thus, I have discovered that although there was more than just a superficial, hormone-based reason for his sudden decision to quit his job, this decision was not founded on enduring practical reasoning, but rather a fleeting vision of there being more to life for him than just the monotony of the A & P (528).

Behind the Character of Cal in "Teenage Wasteland"

The story “Teenage Wasteland” by Anne Tyler is one of a stereotypical teenager, Donny, who is struggling in school, testing his boundaries, and searching for independence. When Donny’s struggles are forced to the forefront by his school principal, Donny is sent to a psychologist who recommends Cal, the cool, laid-back tutor who prides himself on focusing on the spontaneous desires of the individual rather than on the individual’s responsibilities and who changes Donny’s life, although not for the better. The reader soon learns, far before Donny’s mother realizes, that Cal is not a beneficial influence on Donny because, although at first Donny’s attitude improves at the new respect and freedom that Cal free-handedly bestows upon him, Donny quickly takes advantage of the new freedoms that Cal negotiates from his parents so that his situation worsens. Cal, who is characterized through his dialogue with the other characters, is an essential character because his self-assured and easy-going manner contrasts the gravity of the situation and highlights the vulnerability and the fluctuating emotions of Donny’s mother.
When the character of Cal is first introduced, he appears to be an amiable and capable man who is passionate about helping troubled young students. He charms Donny’s mother with his calm and seemingly logical rhetoric and Donny with his easygoing nature. Cal quickly reveals himself to the reader as having Donny’s wants, not his needs, as his first priority. However, his charm and use of phrases like “don’t you understand” and “don’t you realize” distracts Donny’s mother from seeing the likely dangerous consequences from Cal’s first request to her: to basically abandon her role as Donny’s primary caregiver and to allow Cal to handle all of Donny’s affairs (38). Donny’s mother gets her first significant clue that Cal is not helping Donny when Donny’s teacher calls and voices her concern with Donny’s worsening grades. At first she becomes upset with Cal, but once she speaks to him, she once again is charmed by his calm explanation of the importance of placing Donny’s feelings first, and he assures her that an improvement in his grades will follow. Thus, she leaves this conversation with contempt for the teacher rather than for Cal, the true perpetuator of her problems.

The reason for Cal’s aversion to structure and establishment becomes apparent in the middle of the story when the reader learns that Cal had had a relationship in which he felt restrained. When Donny shares this detail with his mother, he describes Cal’s previous wife as a “controlling lady” who “didn’t understand him a bit” (39). This description of his previous wife is very similar to Cal’s attitude towards Donny’s school and towards Donny’s mother’s very involved parenting style. Cal describes these things as inhibiting Donny’s self-esteem, which is probably the way he felt about his ex-wife. Cal has thus taken it upon himself to free as many youth as possible from any situation that he identifies as oppressive. He is not even particularly concerned about being successful in this endeavor, as shown at the end of the story when Donny’s mother removes Donny from Cal’s program, and instead of disagreeing or disapproving, Cal simply admits his failure and blames Donny for it.

In this story, Cal serves to highlight the vulnerability of Donny’s family by taking their difficult situation into his hands and causing them to blindly trust his judgment even when it becomes clear that his philosophy is not providing the results that they were expecting or hoping for. Cal’s compulsion to rescue other people from the feeling of tyranny that he experienced in his marriage leads him to become involved in the lives of people who are feeling most helpless, who are looking for any possible solution to their problems. At first, it seems that Cal is worthy of their trust, but it soon becomes obvious that he is fulfilling a desire based on his own emotional needs and that the individual students’ results are not quite as important to him. Cal’s main concern is that he is living under the philosophy that being free to makes one’s own decisions is the most important part of life (691).

Summer Reading

List of Summer Books:

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon

The Seven Days of Peter Crumb by Jonny Glynn

I’ve decided to write not about my favorite book that I read this summer but rather about the book that stands out the most simply because, well, it’s quite bizarre. The Seven Days of Peter Crumb by Jonny Glynn is about a man with two personalities, which, the reader discovers toward the end of the book, are a result of the tragic end to the life of his four-year-old daughter. The novel focuses on a week in the life of Peter Crumb and his other personality – which they’ve planned to be their last week – in which they conspire to let out all of Peter Crumb’s pent up emotions and desires by doing a myriad of gruesome things, including five murders. Although the graphic descriptions of Crumb’s actions – including murdering and carefully dismembering a young woman – could hardly be described as enjoyable to read, I could not put the book down because the character of Crumb was so intriguing that I could not wait to discover more about his past, the details of which are revealed in bits and pieces throughout the novel, and to find out if he was really going to carry through with his plan of ending the week with a suicide. It truly was a fascinating – although very disturbing – experience to be able to look at the world through the eyes of a violent mentally disturbed man and to be able to see what motivates such a person.

What is most interesting about the way the book is written is that the majority of the dialogue in the book is between Crumb and his other personality, who are at odds throughout most of the book. Crumb seems to view his personality as a separate person but at the same time, he knows that they are inextricably connected in the mind; he accepts that at times his other personality is in control of his mind: “I don’t know what I was thinking. But then I wasn’t thinking – that was the trouble – he was – racing through thoughts – remembering. You know how he loves to recall – give him an evening and he’ll be at it all night, digging things up that are all but forgotten, regurgitating details – all the little bits of in-between, thoughts about thoughts, and the guilty man… The guilty man that God forgot.” This quote brings me to another key part of the book, the concept of the “guilty man that God forgot” (147). Crumb talks about this man frequently, sometimes as a separate person, but other times he connects the phrase with his own identity; in fact, towards the end of the book, he introduces himself to another character with that exact phrase. He describes the “guilty man that God forgot” as a man who committed horrendous crimes, but was not brought to justice for it, and as a result, is not relieved but rather extremely irritated because he has gone unnoticed. This description does fit Crumb rather well as no one else ever makes him responsible for his actions, and it probably explains why he is so keen on committing suicide at the end of the week – he is giving himself the dramatic punishment that he thinks he deserves, and he hopes that he will be remembered for it. So I’m sure you’re asking, does he actually give in to his dramatic desire for self-punishment?... You’ll just have to read to find out.