Heart+of+Darkness+-+CLOSE+READING+EXTRACTS

=Here are some extracts from different moments in the book that you need to write two hundred word analyses of. =

“When next day we left at noon, the crowd, of whose presence behind the curtain of trees I had been acutely conscious all the time, flowed out of the woods again, filling the clearing, covered all the slope with a mass of naked, breathing, quivering, bronze bodies. I steamed up a bit, then swung down-stream, and two thousand eyes followed the evolutions of the the splashing, thumping, fierce river-demon beating the water with its terrible tail and breathing black smoke into the air.” //Heart of Darkness//, Norton Critical edition, p. 66

Conrad is saying that the river is alive, for example, ‘the river demon beating the water’ this shows the that have colonized it or used it for their own personal gain and the river demon is anger and resentment to the colonists as they have been damaged and used. Also, I think that Conrad is trying to say that the colonists have bewitched the African people for example, ‘two thousand eyes followed the evolutions of…’ This indicates that even though they are put in chains and been made to work as slaves. They see the colonists as gods and the colonists too look at them as savages and inhuman. Also, in this extract it shows just how much contempt between the imperialists and the Africans and shows how the imperialist brainwashed them into believing that they were trying to help. As well as how the imperialists see them as the frame, no emotion, no judgement, not mortal for example, ‘naked, breathing, quivering, bronze bodies’. This gives evidence to racism and showing how the imperialist thought that the Africans could be easy to manipulate and condemn to a life of slavery while they thought they were going on a vacation.