For Tuesday, interpret one of the two passages below and use it as a lens through which to discuss the novella. Or, alternatively, you may take a shot at prompt #3. (Regardless of which prompt you choose, I should be able to tell from reading your response that you have indeed read Heart of Darkness.)
1. "The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look at it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretense but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea--something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to." (1894)
2. "It was unearthly, and the men were--No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it--the suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity--like yours--the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you--you so remote from the night of first ages--could comprehend. And why not?" (1916)
3. Why does Marlow lie to Kurtz's fiancee at the end of the story? What might his motivation be, and what might it reveal about him?
Thank you. See you on Tuesday.
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