Said's Critique of Conrad's Heart of Darkness - Essay Example

Said's Critique of Conrad's Heart of Darkness In this critique of a critique, I will examine Edward Said's opinion of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. It is through the author's essay, Two Visions in 'Heart of Darkness' that I can analyze his thoughts and opinions on the short novel and develop my own thoughts about this short work. The goal of this essay is to further identify Said's two visions that he seems to think are present in this short novel and to discuss the culture and imperalism that he claims exist in Conrad's piece. The initial paragraph in Said's critique is, to be frankly put, garbage. Let's just get that opinion of mine out of the way that a series of run on sentences with big words do not tell me anything about what he thinks about the essay at the topic of discussion. I realize this is a critique of where the author's position stands and whether or not I agree with it, but he has it so sprinkled with fancy and eloquent words that are intended to make him sound smart that it is difficult to determine what in the world he is trying to convey in regards to the essay. That being said, I will further attempt to summarize his critique. I think it is a good point that Said evaluated Marlow's characterization and dramatization of who Marlow is as a narrator in the original Conrad essay. It helps to make readers aware of who Marlow is and it symbolizes also who Conrad was as some of Marlow's characteristics and life experiences are representative of Conrad himself as a person who fell victim to contemporary society at the time which turned him then into also a victim of imperialism. It also makes quite obvious that it was difficult to escape the force of that imperialism. He had no choice. I think that Said is correct in his combination of identifying that Marlow is a direct representation of Conrad but in character form. The story would tell of the issues of the culture at the time and a response to it as a person living in that society at the time. The Marlow character may have owned up to the changes that he had to fall in line with in society, culture and imperialism, while Conrad, who was conflicted about doing so, did not have to take direct responsibility for his actions, but instead represented his life through that of a fictional character. I really like how the author addressed this because Conrad is so self-conscious about the situation. Said identified, as previously stated, two visions in the post-colonial realm of society in Conrad's essay when Africa was divided into European colonies. Said states that it seems as though Conrad could not envision any other way of life, regardless of where you are located. I also agree with Said that Conrad wrote as though the way of the Europeans was the only way that people all around the world also lived. Said implies that Conrad was not informed thinking that the world he saw before him may be the only way that there was to live, when in fact he fails to identify that the other ways of the world would be different than he assumes it would be. Said also seems to imply that Conrad really did not necessarily recognize all aspects of the world and take into account the future of the world beyond what the current status was in society. I think also at times that Said overstepped his boundaries of his own intelligence as he oftentimes went into examples that did not necessarily relate directly to Conrad's own narration. He then, however, draws himself back to the point of the issue at hand to identify the culture and aesthetics that were present in Conrad's essay. Said just always seems to jump off on tangents. I think that regardless of who anyone is, they all offer their own points of view on a topic, regardless of whether it is academic, journalistic or even just someone bantering about something that they do not really know anything about. Though I think that Said is a very intelligent person, I think he is simply bantering about something that he does not know that much about. I thought it was a terrible critique and at times either just rambled on, went in a completely different direction or was just plain pointless. I did agree with some of the things that he said in his critique as I think he was right on that Conrad did not want to take responsibility for how things were going on in his world and how he had to fall into stride with it. However, he instead used a character to metaphorically encompass the ways of the world. I think that Said finally came back into the whole theme of the critique when he finally started to step off his soap box and started to summarize a bit about Heart of Darkness. Anyone who had never read this essay would have no idea what in the world he was talking about just based off his critique. You would have to read both essays to even try to figure out what the main point of Said's essay was even about. Never once does he make a really good example of how things really were in the essay or really the points Conrad tried to make. Said instead seemed to use it as a political soapbox to assume Conrad's stance and maybe even perhaps to step on his own. Conclusively, I do not either agree or disagree with Said's theory and criticism behind Conrad's essay. I think it was designed to reach out to the British literature scholars. As an average student, I did not derive very much useful information at all from this essay and instead am just as puzzled about what the point of it was before I even read it. Not saying that it was not well written, it just was not written with a person without a background in British Literature and European and African historical knowledge even in mind. Works Cited Said, Edward. Two Visions in 'Heart of Darkness.' Culture and Imperialism, 1993. pp. 22-31. Read More