Literature essays

Describe the use of “darkness” both in the book’s title (The Heart of Darkness) and as a symbol throughout the text. What does darkness represent? Is its meaning constant or does it change?
The heart of darkness is a novel that tries about the crossing of a tailor named Charles Marlow through the Congo River looking for Marlow- an ivory trader. In his journey the novel gets a symbolic andambiguous character making reference to imperialism and racism that predominates in the time that colonization started losing yearning for humanize people from Africa and thousand of atrocities are revealed. This novel is a critic to the occidental imperialism and there is great metaphor which is related to the name of the text; darkness.

Joseph Conrad makes a metaphor in the book and, as its namesuggest, it is between darkness and light. The story is narrated by Marlow- the sailor and starts doing it when is getting darker- the sunset- and ends at night, so we could see that the story goes from light to darkness and here is the metaphor. On one hand, light can be seen as a symbol of life, future, prospect or simply good side of something while darkness can be the bad one, the unknown,mystery, ignorance, despair. While Marlow was getting near the Congo, it gets more and more gloomy which symbolizes that he is going into an unknown world for him that is uncivilized, the opposite to the place from he comes that is “civilized”, but when he arrives in the Congo, he realizes that European people was not as civilized as he thought; they were exploiting the natives. So, the author usesMarlow to change darkness over London and critics what is to be “civilized”.

The meaning of darkness is related to a difficulty to see, so in this case, where is the darkness? In European people that can not realize that what they are doing is wrong? That they are not being civilized? Through the text we can see how Marlow changes his point of view when while he gets into the darkness, he becomeaware that the darkness was not as darkness as he thought and the light that at the beginning represents imperialism becomes gloomy.

3. There are two apparent climaxes in “Bliss” by Katherine Mansfield; the first in Bertha and her guest Pearl Fulton’s shared viewing of the pear tree, in which the protagonist is overcome by her sexual feelings for the other woman. Then there is the swiftundermining of this when Bertha stumbles upon another intimate moment, only this time, between her husband and Pearl, revealing that they are engaged in an affair. Please compare and contrast both moments and elaborate on how they contribute to what we may read as the irony in the title of the story.
Bliss is a short story written by Katherine Mansfield that is set in London. Her protagonist- Bertha isa very naïve character who is overcome by a feeling of blissabsolute the day that she was going to receive some guests at her home. One of them is Pearl Fulton who makes Bertha feel a sexual attractiveness to her. Bertha always falls in love with women that have something strange. This woman was despised by Bertha’s husband- Harry- who then is going to be discovered having an affair with her whichmakes of the end of the story something ironic because we realize that Bertha was not completely happy.

At Bertha’s house, she invites Pearl to see her garden where there is a pear tree. When they are looking at that, the main character feels sexually attracted by Pearl. After that, Bertha feels something that never felt before for her husband. She feels completely in love and sexuallyattracted as with Pearl. This situation can be explained because of the pear tree. It represents to Harry and the moon to Pearl- because of the color of his dress that was the same as the moon color that night. This makes to Bertha feels a huge attraction for her husband. Then when Bertha realizes about the affair that Pearl and her husband have, she thinks that the tree can be different, but when she...