Heart of Darkness Essay Topics

 Essay Topics for Heart of Darkness                                       

 Choose one of the following topics and write an essay. Remember the basic requirements of the essay and do not forget that you are writing literary analysis, not plot summary.

  1. Discuss the function of the frame story in the structure of Heart of Darkness. Explain the role of the listeners as well as the narrators in your discussion of that frame.

 2. Using specific textual references, show that Heart of Darkness   is an indictment of the brutal rapacity with which European colonialism exploited Africa.

 3. Marlow claims that he hates, detests "and can't bear a lie." He goes on to say that "there is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies." Yet he lies to the Intended at the conclusion of the story. Examine the process which brings Marlow from one conviction to the other.

 4. Explain and analyze the dualism in Kurtz's character. What is significant about this duality

 5. Analyze the role and significance of the harlequin Russian.

 6. Inner restraint is an important topic in Heart of Darkness. Analyze the cannibals on the boat, the Pilgrims, Kurtz, and Marlow in relation to this topic. What is a theme associated with inner restraint?

 7. Discuss Conrad's view of women as revealed through the aunt, the Intended, and Kurtz's mistress.

 8. Discuss Conrad's use of color, particularly black and white. Does he follow the traditional use of black for evil and white for good? To what degree is there reversal? Are both symbols of evil? A second topic choice is to discuss Conrad's use of color other than black and white.

 9. Justify the paradox that the greatest illumination comes from the moment of greatest darkness in Kurtz's career.

 10. Discuss Conrad's skillful use of parallels--scenes, images, and characters--as a structural as well as thematic device. You will need to limit and focus. For example, the two Brussels scenes are crucial ones in the novel. You might consider how they are utilized in the plot to provide character and thematic insight.

 11. Kurtz's last cry, "The horror! The horror!" takes the reader to the meaning of the whole African venture for Marlow. Discuss one of the following:

        a.   the cry is the story's ultimate comment on the European civilizing of Africa

        b.   the cry is understood to mean Kurtz's actions have been horrible

        c.   the cry is understood to mean all existence is horrible

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:22.0pt;text-indent:-22.0pt">  12. Nigerian novelist, Chinua Achebe (author of Things Fall Apart) in a 1975 lecture at the University of Massachusetts, attacked Heart of Darkness as "racist" and had this to say about the novella:

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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:22.0pt;text-indent:-22.0pt">             "(Conrad) projects the image of Africa as 'the other world,' the antithesis of Europe and therefore of      civilization, a place where man's vaulted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant bestiality. . . . (Conrad is) a purveyor of comforting myths (and) a bloody racist. . . .   That this simple truth is glossed over in criticisms of his work is due to the fact that white racism against Africa is such a normal way   of thinking that its manifestations go completely undetected."

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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:22.0pt;text-indent:-22.0pt">        He renewed his attack in 1980 in The Times Literary Supplement saying that Conrad's humanity of Africans was "totally undermined by the mindlessness of its context and the pretty explicit animal imagery surrounding it."

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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:22.0pt;text-indent:-22.0pt">        In an essay either agree or disagree with Achebe's conclusions and support with specific references from the novel.

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