Wang AP Lit

         Heart of Darkness has a seemingly simple plot. After all, the novel chronicles a sailor who travels along the Congo River into the heart of Africa. As he does so, the sailor Marlow faces various tribulations, which include repairing his damaged ship and defending himself from fierce African natives. The novel is centered around finding–and meeting–Mr. Kurtz, who is supposedly a charismatic and skilled tradesman. While Marlow succeeds in completing this task, he is disappointed by the selfish, mad Mr. Kurtz he finds and he eventually returns to Europe in order to continue Mr. Kurtz’s legacy. Conrad’s novel does not contain elaborate family dramas and other backstories, as have other novels I have read. Yet the beauty and ingenuity of Conrad’s masterpiece lies not within his plot itself but within his descriptions. His prose is rich in imagery and characterization, and effectively conveys his purpose: to argue that colonization of Africa corrupts the hum...

To any nonwhite person: “Where are you from?” To an Asian: “Are you good at math?” To an African-American: “Do you want to play football when you grow up?” In the United States, minority groups are often asked these types of questions known as micro-aggressions. A micro-aggression is defined as a subtle but offensive comment or action directed at a minority or other nondominant group that is often unintentional or unconsciously reinforces a stereotype. Though not as traumatizing as blatant displays of racism, micro-aggressions can oftentimes be tiring and hurtful when one experiences many of them on a daily basis. As our society becomes increasingly diverse and connected, many people have become outspoken about their experiences with micro-aggressions to raise more awareness about preventing them. In her short story “Jumping Monkey Hill,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie focuses on the stereotypes and micro-aggressions that native Africans experience. Adichie chronicles the fictional exp...

        In his book How to Read Literature Like a Professor , author Thomas C. Foster once said, “Sometimes a meal is just a meal, and eating with others is simply eating with others. More often than not, though, it’s not.” In literature, the act of eating and food itself can be used in a multitude of different ways that go beyond simply providing nourishment to the characters on the page. According to Foster, eating meals can often symbolize acts of communion and can represent close relationships of trust between characters; conversely, family dinners that go awry convey mistrust and tension and even the breakdown of familial ties. Other times, authors use food to assign a sense of identity to their characters. This is frequently the case in stories that focus on the immigrant experience. We are always exposed to food, and food represents an consistent aspect of our constantly changing lives. We find comfort in eating familiar foods, and eating familiar foods transp...

By the turn of the twentieth century, the fever of imperialism had spread across Europe. European nations across the continent began to send trade expeditions to Africa with the hopes of discovering profitable raw materials as well as new consumer markets. Men, inspired by the ideas portrayed in Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden,” opted to leave their familiar homes to “civilize” and “Christianize”  peoples whom they perceived as their inferiors. Many Europeans believed that the colonization of Africa would bring great success and prosperity to their countries. Yet, at the same time, some questioned the glory in conquering other lands and peoples. Such was the case with author Joseph Conrad. In his great work Heart of Darkness (1899), Conrad examined how men’s minds changed as they obsessed over acquiring African ivory. Throughout the novel, Conrad’s diction underscores his argument that the colonization of Africa corrupts the humanity of men. Conrad immediately establishe...

In her short story “The Headstrong Historian,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie pays tribute to Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart while adding her own distinct voice. Like Achebe’s classic novel, “The Headstrong Historian” paints rich portraits of Nigerian tribal culture before the advent of white missionaries and the Nigerians who grapple with culture clashes and changes. The short story immediately establishes its ties to Things Fall Apart when it mentions that the character “Obierika”–a name which readers may recognize as the close friend of Achebe’s protagonist Okonkwo–is the late husband of Adichie’s protagonist Nwamgba (198). Moreover, when Nwamgba and Obierika struggle to conceive a child, Nwamgba “suggests he go and see the Okonkwo family about their daughter” as a potential wife and mother to his child (204). These developments create the expectation that the short story will have a similar, if not identical, narrative to Things Fall Apart : that the advent of the white missio...