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GED Social Studies 1.1 Civics and Government
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Heart of Darkness 9135 Views
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Description:
Everyone has that happy-go-lucky friend. The one who skips through life with a smile and believes everybody has a beautiful soul. We're guessing that person has never read Heart of Darkness .
Transcript
- 00:05
Heart of Darkness, a la Shmoop. Heart of Darkness is so chock full of gore
- 00:11
and allegory, it’s hard to tell the two apart.
- 00:14
With all the body parts in the jungle…
- 00:15
…you’d think there’d be an actual heart somewhere. A heart… of darkness.
- 00:22
But there isn’t. So what exactly is the heart of darkness?
Full Transcript
- 00:27
Say you're an imperialist – someone whose country gobbles up smaller countries like
- 00:32
Pac-Man eats power pellets.
- 00:35
To you, the heart of darkness is the evil that lies in the depths of the jungle of Africa…
- 00:44
Somewhere in the vicinity of all the crocodiles and malaria-ridden mosquitos.
- 00:49
The darkness isn’t just the carnivorous beasties, bugs the size of your head, tropical
- 00:54
diseases, boiling heat, unclean water, lack of modern conveniences, lack of electricity
- 01:03
and plumbing…
- 01:06
We could go on and on, but we’re feeling a little sick ourselves.
- 01:11
What really freaks the imperialists out besides this untamed and hostile wilderness are the
- 01:16
so-called savages…
- 01:17
…who have never seen the warm, electric lights of civilization. Or pants, for that
- 01:28
matter. Now if you're one of the colonized instead,
- 01:32
you might have a considerably different view on the subject…
- 01:35
Namely that the heart of darkness represents the evils of imperialism…which creates darkness
- 01:41
in its brutal treatment of native populations.
- 01:46
These so-called civilized white folk chain together slaves, force them to do all the
- 01:52
hard labor, and don’t even feed them.
- 01:55
Just because they know how to operate a flush toilet doesn’t make them civilized.
- 02:05
So maybe the argument of who’s the evilest link…the colonizers or colonized… is like
- 02:10
trying to decide between Alien vs. Predator.
- 02:13
That’s a battle that none of us want to get stuck fighting.
- 02:17
Look, we're all capable of evil… whether we're native Africans, living isolated in
- 02:22
the jungle…
- 02:24
…civilized white folks drinking high tea while owning slaves, or carnivorous intergalactic
- 02:33
species. That's why the novel has such an obsession
- 02:39
with Kurtz.
- 02:40
Not because he’s an alien, but because he represents what happens when we give into
- 02:46
that darkness…
- 02:47
We start using body parts as interior decoration.
- 02:51
The colonel shows us that the darkness is inside of everyone.
- 02:57
We hate to break it to you, but there are no good guys.
- 03:01
So what does all this evil stuff have to do with a heart of darkness?
- 03:05
It might lie in the hearts of the uncivilized savages…
- 03:08
Or in the hearts of the so-called civilized imperialists…
- 03:11
Or maybe the darkness is in all of us.
- 03:13
Or Joseph Conrad just thought it was a killer title.
- 03:17
Really Scary Jungle Boat Ride sounds more like an amusement park attraction than a classic
- 03:21
novel. Shmoop amongst yourselves.
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