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(689 words)
Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness is not a story without its settings; the nightmarish journey of Charlie Marlowe (our narrator) into the unknown where we find ourselves traveling by boat to and in the Belgium Congo in 1890. The use of this setting shows and explains the exploitation of a colonial country and challenges the basic ethical question of good and evil of mankind. Marlowe’s setting is perfectly placed to give the reader a glimpse of the political environment of the Congo and the African exploration that was quite popular in Conrad’s day.
Although most of the action in The Heart of Darkness is set in the uncivilized jungles of the African Congo, the tale itself is narrated by Charlie, an experienced sailor aboard a pleasure boat with four other Englishmen as they lounge on the deck at the mouth of the Thames River outside London. Charlie sits Buddha-like to narrate his story. Here, the reader gets a glimpse of the Thames as a mighty river at sunset with the gauzy radiant lights of civilized London, which reflect on the river’s surface. This is represented where both the time of day and the spot are significant. It’s sunset. As the tale turns gloomier, images of darkness get more and more pervasive. The evening grows gradually darker, so that by the time Marlow finishes, late in the night, his listeners have literally been enveloped in darkness.
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(717 Words)
In the multitude of years that humans have walked this planet, the German leader Adolf Hitler has to be one of the most evil people to ever come into existence. Not solely attributed but largely as a consequence of Hitler through his regime of Nazism an estimated eleven million people were killed which included six million Jews. These are staggering figures but why so many Jews? Moreover, why was Hitler so against the Jewish continuation as a people in his country and ultimately as a race? In this essay, I would like to posit some ideas on the causes of Hitler disgust of the Jewish race while showing the effects that came about as he became the German leader.
To begin with, highlighting the factors that motivated Hitler’s resentment to Jews would be by looking at Hitler’s grandmother who was a maid to a Jewish family. She was most likely to have had sexual relations with her superior as was common in those days. Further credence to this story and the likelihood Hitler’s father was born of a Jewish father was seen through his father being brought up without a father. As a child, Hitler’s father regularly beat him and his mother. Hitler would become very close to his mother; her strong attraction may be due to losing a few children in early life. His love for his mother grew greater as he formed a greater resentment toward his father seeing him as poisoned. These daily beatings, one ending in a coma must have created in Hitler a sense of him being an evil kid and a feeling of being useless.
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(659 Words)
The 1920s and 30s in America was a time of racial discrimination for the black people while economically it was a time of the Great Depression. Times were not only hard but also scary with hatred and desperation flowing across the cities and plains of America. Like prisoners in shackles, the unfortunate ones at the bottom rung of life did not have a voice and ways of expressing how they felt inarticulate terms. This is why protest songs grew in prominence as they had a purpose, sentiment, and specific issues while invoking the reader to be shocked and angry. This is notwithstanding that these songs were meant to inspire the reader to acknowledge and change the situation. For this essay I have chosen two protest songs that epitomize the era of discrimination and depression; ‘Strange Fruit’ and ‘Brother, can you spare a dime?’ I will highlight their literary merits and social criticism.
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(624 Words)
What became infamously known as the Depression Era saw the crippling of a great country from 1930 to 1936. It had followed the epoch of the Wall Street Crash which rocked the American economy to the ground and hit every working man. Near on fifteen million people were out of work, and even those fortunate ones who before had had money were left with nothing, not a ‘dime’. And, this was not England where welfare is given, these men had nothing. So, how do you capture this moment in history? E. Y. Harburg’s ‘Brother Can You Spare a Dime’ is one of the most famous songs of that era that encapsulates all that was happening in those desperate times as the protagonist protests his woes.
To begin, the opening lines of each verse tell us what this hard-working man has done for his country; ‘they used to tell me I was building a dream’, ‘once I built a railroad, I made it run’, ‘once I built a tower way up to the sun’. This guy has made an investment in his country, he has worked blood, sweat, and tears to make it better. He was one of the many that helped build the infrastructure; railroads, towers, to make America prosper and grow. Now, this average Joe’s dream of building an all-powerful country where he continues to work for its prosperity has been smashed to the extent that he has been reduced to begging in the street with only his past to think about.
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