81 Years Apart: the Importance of Literary Eras in Conrad’s and Coetzee’s Writings

Written English literature dates back to the times of the epic tale Beowulf well over a thousand years ago. However, times change rapidly and so must the literature that depicts them. Fiction, while by definition being imaginary or made up, still depicts the attitudes of the time period it is written in, whether or not this time period is the same as that in which the story itself takes place. And it is amazing how much difference 81 years can make.

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (first published in three parts 1899) and J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians (published 81 years later in 1980) are at some basic level quite similar works of literature. They both involve a protagonist narrator their readers trust and like; they both involve an antagonist whom serves as a foil to the protagonist and whom their readers come to distrust and dislike; and they both involve the clash between a “civilized” society and a “barbaric” one. However, Conrad’s story is mostly concerned with the horrible effect the uncivilized Africa has on Kurtz, while as Coetzee’s is mostly concerned with the unfair practices the Empire exercises on the “barbarians.” Therefore, these two apparently similar writings have very different plots and storylines. Douglas Kerr explains this concept excellently in his essay “Three Ways of Going Wrong: Kipling, Conrad, Coetzee” when he says, “arguably the greatest change, in the shift from a colonial to a postcolonial discourse, is the most obvious: the shift in perspective from the lawman to the outlaw.” It is the difference of attitude, even of point of view, due to the eras in which the two works were written, that creates the main difference between Conrad’s and Coetzee’s stories.

The stories could even easily have been flipped. Had Coetzee been writing at the turn of the nineteenth century, he could have easily written a novel about a small town on the frontier between the civilized Empire and the uncivilized barbarians, that would have been mostly concerned with the struggles of the Magistrate and Colonel Joll in this foreign environment and how this horrible experience changed them. Similarly, had Conrad been writing in the early 1980s, he would have likely written a story about the unjust ways in which the actually calm and civilized Africans were treated by Kurtz as seen through the eyes of Marlow. (Of course these story inversions neglect such “negligible” facts as the nonexistence of European colonial rule of the vast majority of Africa in 1980).

However, Joseph Conrad died a full 16 years before J. M. Coetzee was born and they did not write the two inverted stories I have just created. They wrote Heart of Darkness and Waiting for the Barbarians, respectively, and they wrote what they wrote because of the eras in which they lived. Their writings reflect these eras, and whether or not the established beliefs of our current era resonate with their attitudes, they are excellent representations of the beliefs of the past. (512)

Waiting for the Barbarians: A Setting for the Discussion of Concepts, Issues, and Morals

In the opening pages of J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians we gather that this novel will be hypothetical, that it will be more concerned with the concepts and morals of the events-to-occur than with the actual events themselves or the people who make them happen. In these opening pages we are first introduced to two of the novel’s main characters. The narrator we learn to be a thinking and somewhat moral, yet still somewhat corrupted magistrate of his village. Sharply contrasting him is Colonel Joll, the torturing and brainless representative of the Empire in the narrator’s village. In the novel’s opening we also gain a sense of Coetzee’s style of writing. We become familiar to his simple wording and use of subsections within each section of the novel, through which he tells little parts of the story. Finally, we learn that the novel will discuss many concepts and issues: moral issues, political issues, concepts of authority and hierarchy, etc. But there is one issue that, at least in my mind, stands out from the rest.

This issue is that of torture. When I say it stands out from the rest, I do not mean that it is more important or deserves more attention, I just mean that it catches my eye much quicker than the other issues and concepts of Coetzee’s novel. I believe that the issue of torture grabs my attention so quickly because it is such a shocking and controversial issue. It is next to impossible to ignore imagery such as, “The grey beard is caked with blood. The lips are crushed and drawn back, the teeth are broken. One eye is rolled back, the other eye-socket is a bloody hole,” or, “There is a certain tone… A certain tone enters the voice of a man who is telling the truth. Training and experience teach us to recognize that tone.” With such imagery it is obvious that the morals of torture will be questioned in the novel. When I came across this first torture scene in my reading I remembered a radio talk show I had heard a while back in which I learned that the United States defined torture as “pain equivalent to death or organ failure,” so that certain agencies could justify their means of obtaining information “without torture.” Therefore, the morals of torture have two levels. Is torture moral? And if not, what is and what is not considered torture? (421)

Chinua Achebe – “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness”

-There exists a desire—even a need—in Western psychology to set up Africa as a foil to Europe. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness displays this desire or need.
-Conrad’s (and Western) fascination: “What thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity—like yours…. Ugly.”
-Conrad is a racist – Heart of Darkness is concerned with the evil effect Africa has on Marlow and Kurtz, rather than the evil effect the Europeans have on the Africans. Therefore, Achebe cannot see the story as a great work of art.
-This racism (of Africa being inferior to the West) is so common and accepted that it is often not noticed. It will be a difficult task to change this perception of Africa, but it must be done, and it must be done soon.

Dilsey: From “De Beginnin” to “De Endin”

When Dilsey speaks the ten simple words, “I seed de beginnin, en now I sees de endin” at the Easter Sunday church service she does much to bring about closure to The Sound and the Fury. The first three sections of the novel are narrated by Benjy, Quentin, and Jason respectively. Yet with regards to the story of the entire Compson family, Dilsey is the only reliable source of information (not to be confused with “reliable narrator” since she does not narrate any part of the story). She is there in the beginning in 1898 when the Compson children are toddlers, and she is there in the end in 1928 when they are grown and in their thirties, so she is with the family for the entire duration of the story. Most importantly, though, she is sane. Benjy’s disability, Quentin’s early death, and Jason’s corruption make their contributions to the story either unreliable or incomplete. Therefore, these pieces of the story are somewhat scattered and confusing to the reader. Faulkner needed an ending to his novel that would unite these pieces into a single coherent story of the failure of the Compson family. So it is the purpose of this fourth section to bring about this unity, and Dilsey is a key aspect of this purpose. (223)

Faulkner’s Theory of Relativity: A Different Concept of Time in The Sound and the Fury

Bass, Eben. “Meaningful Images in The Sound and the Fury.” Modern Language Notes. Vol. 76, No. 8 (Dec. 1961): 728-731. Johns Hopkins UP. JSTOR. 22 Oct. 2008 .

In the above-cited article, Eben Bass explores the significance of some of the more important images in The Sound and the Fury with respect to time. Bass begins the article by discussing the concept of time in the novel and how Faulkner’s fragmented time is used to create four different viewpoints in the four different parts of the novel. The first part of the story is told through the broken concept of time due to Benjy’s disability. Time in Quentin’s narrative is more orderly but halted when he commits suicide. In the third part of the novel, Jason changes time when he goes back in time to get “revenge on his sister Caddy through her daughter Quentin.” It is not until the fourth part of the novel that time moves forward in a more normal fashion. However it is all four of these parts that work together to piece each other’s broken segments of narration together into one coherent story. Bass then proceeds to explain how the images of Caddy’s wedding slippers, the pear tree, Benjy’s weed in a bottle, the mirror Benjy sees in the library, and the flames Benjy sees in the kitchen stove serve as memory-triggers for the characters to begin their narrations and ultimately help to piece the story together.

I found Bass’s concept of time in the story being relative to the character narrating it very interesting because this relativity (in fact the theory of relativity) is a present and inescapable truth in our everyday lives. If we can set the way we view time when our lives are following their most normal order as a standard, we have a basis off which to relate our perception of time when our lives do not follow such a normal order. For example, when we are under a great deal of stress and exertion, our minds speed up and we perceive time to be moving slower than it is actually moving (based on our pre-established norm). Consequently, when we are resting with nothing to do or think about, our minds slow down and we perceive time to be moving faster than it is in fact moving. Last year, Andrew Charlson summed up this theory of relativity very well in his senior speech (and this is a rough estimate of his exact words), “For most of you out there, my speech has been going on for a minute and a half. However, for me it has felt like half an hour on this stage. And it’s only been about thirty five seconds for Guy Gamble sleeping in the front row.” I have no idea how I remembered this quote.

Yet for the troubled characters of Faulkner’s novel, the warping of time in the mind does not end at the theory of relativity, it is also warped by their disabilities (whether diagnosed or not) to not only slow down or speed up, but also to change order and mix itself up. It can be triggered by something as simple as a familiar sight or sound, as in the case of Benjy’s scrambled narration, or abruptly ended by an event such as Quentin’s suicide. Ultimately, perhaps it is Faulkner’s use of a mixed time sequence that makes his novel so interesting. It is something the novel’s readers can relate to, yet it pushes the limit of our understanding of time and makes us think. (608)

Running in the Wrong Direction

Ralph Ellison’s story “Battle Royal” raises many questions regarding race. But perhaps the greatest question this story evokes is that of what African Americans should and should not do after they gained their freedom from slavery. Ellison examines this question by using the story’s narrator as an example of what African Americans should not do, and his grandfather’s dying words as an example of what they should do (of course supporting these “bookends” of the story with details and examples throughout it).

Towards the end of the story, the narrator has a dream in which he opens the briefcase he was awarded after the battle royal and finds a gold stamp that reads, “To Whom It May Concern,… Keep This Nigger-Boy Running.” His dream concludes with his grandfather’s “laughter ringing in [his] ears.” Therefore, the essential question of the story is: what does “Keep This Nigger-Boy Running” mean?

The narrator visualizes himself “as a potential Booker T. Washington,” a prominent black leader in the late 1800s and early 1900s who urged African Americans to conform to white culture and follow the orders of the white man rather than oppose them. He believed that black Americans could attain assimilation into white culture in this manner. Throughout Ellison’s story, it is obvious that the narrator shares the same views as Washington and is blind to their foolishness.

So when he reads the words “Keep This Nigger-Boy Running” in his dream, it is understood that this message means that as long African Americans such as the narrator will continue to oblige the southern white culture, the white society should encourage these individuals since they are only helping themselves.

The narrator’s willingness to oblige this southern white culture is apparent throughout the entire story. It is first apparent in the battle royal itself, for this battle is nothing more than entertainment for the white men in the form of the black men senselessly (and literally blindly) beating each other for extremely meager pay. It is also apparent in the narrator’s speech. To the white men, it is nothing more than another form of entertainment as they laugh at and mock the narrator’s use of large words (since they believe an educated black man to be a freak show such as one would see in a circus). This same acceptance of the southern white men’s culture is evident in the nude dancer who is gawked at and tossed around “as college boys are tossed at a hazing” by the same white men that find circus-like entertainment in the black men’s suffering.

Therefore, ultimately when the white men give the narrator the briefcase and scholarship, they are not helping him attend college in the proper manner, they are obliging their own wants in two ways. Firstly, they are creating another show by sending a black boy to college (which they find comical and ironic). And secondly, they are only helping themselves, for they are “helping” their own “Booker T. Washington” get an education, because he will not fight them as his grandfather had hoped, he will only carry out their will. (521)

The Many Levels of Sammy’s Decision

How do human beings make decisions? Well, there are two main ways in which one comes about a decision. The decision can either be made through an extensive, well-thought-out process, or it can simply be a rash, in-the-moment decision. This question of the decision-making process is very pertinent to the main question in John Updike’s story “A & P”; why does Sammy quit his job? By looking closely at this story, it becomes apparent that both forms of decision-making take place in Sammy’s action.

The obvious portion of Sammy’s decision-making process consists of his rash, in-the-moment decision to quit his job because of the girls. Since Sammy is closer in age to the girls than to his manager, he can relate better to them, and therefore feels sympathy for them as Lengel informs them that they cannot walk through the A & P as if they were dressed for the beach. (12-18) Also, Sammy hopes if he quits his job while the girls are still present he will cause enough commotion and show his support for their side of the argument so that they will “stop and watch [him], their unsuspected hero.” (21) While these two actions are far less significant in actuality than they are in Sammy’s mind, his own belief in their significance causes him to view quitting his job as the right choice at the time. It is this sympathy for the girls and desire to be heroic that causes Sammy to rashly say the actual words “I quit” to Lengel. (21)

The next portion of Sammy’s decision is perhaps not so rash, but rather more deep-seeded in his subconscious. This portion is that which relates to Sammy’s attitude toward his job in general. Concerning his manager, Lengel, Sammy does not quite hate him, yet he definitely does not prefer him as a boss. “Everybody’s luck begins to run out” when Lengel comes into the story, who Sammy describes as dreary, hiding in his office all day, and observant of all that happens in the store. (12) Also, Sammy may feel a certain amount of shamefulness for being part of the A & P workforce, consisting of standard working-class people. In contrast, Sammy would rather be part of the upper echelon of society of which the girls are a part, a society “from which the crowd that runs the A & P must look pretty crummy.” (17) With this certain amount of contempt for his boss and his society, it is inherent that some part of Sammy would want to escape from these parts of his life. And quitting his job would enable him to escape from his boss and at least the society that runs the A & P. Thus, the idea of quitting his job must have been planted, at least subconsciously, in Sammy’s head.

Finally, the part of Sammy’s decision-making process most removed from rashness and deep-seeded in extensive thought is his commitment to finishing what he starts. When Lengel tries to talk Sammy out of quitting by telling him, “Sammy, you don’t want to do this to your Mom and Dad,” of whom Lengel is a close friend, Sammy thinks, “It’s true, I don’t. But it seems to me that once you begin a gesture it’s fatal not to go though with it.” (30) This commitment to completing a gesture is the most thought-out part of Sammy’s decision because it is not by any means rash, it is not even an effect of previous events, it is a question of his morals, the fundamental truths one believes in off which he or she lives their entire life. Therefore, it is this commitment to completing a gesture that causes Sammy to follow through with quitting his job when he could have easily backed down and taken Lengel’s advice.

By closely looking at Updike’s story it is evident that Sammy’s quitting of his job is not just a rash, in-the-moment decision, but rather a decision build from both rashness and multiple layers of thought. So when Sammy “fold[s] the apron,… drop[s] the bow tie on top of it,…. [and] saunter[s] into the electric eye,” there is a lot more at work than a rash, un-thought-out decision. (30) (709)


What does Sammy mean when he acknowledges “how hard the world was going to be… hereafter”?

What can be said about the effect of Updike’s style of writing on the story as a whole?

What about Updike’s characterization of the girls stands out the most?

Reading Between the Lines: Why Donny Runs Away

Anne Tyler’s story “Teenage Wasteland” raises many questions. Why does Daisy let herself lose all control over her son? What is Cal’s actual set-up with the students he tutors? What does the ending image of the basketball mean? But for me, one questioned topped the rest: why does Donny run away?

To understand why Donny runs away, we have to understand the four major influences in his life presented in this story. The first, and least, of these influences are his parents. After a certain age in a young person’s life, his or her parents, once the greatest influence in this person’s life, are superseded by other, more prevalent influences. Since his father is rarely at home anyway, Donny would not miss him much if he were to run away. Also, while Donny’s mother’s intentions are good, in his eyes she must be a nuisance. Therefore, running away would also separate Donny from her.

The next major influence in the “influence food chain” would be Donny’s friends. In a teenager’s life, these are the people one wants to spend the most time with. If he were to run away, Donny could spend as much time with his friends as fits into their schedule with no consequences; no curfew, no rules, no limitations from either his parents or his school. Again, this freedom is another incentive for Donny to run away.

Of course, specific to Donny’s life, as opposed to the lives of teenagers in general, is the influence that is Cal. As the story’s readers, we are not certain exactly what Cal does do, but we do know that he gains Donny’s trust. Donny needs a role-model. He does not like his parents for this position, and his friends are his equals, so they cannot be looked up to as a higher wisdom. Donny finds this role-model in Cal. Cal fills Donny’s head with thoughts of negligence towards responsibility and authority, and absolute freedom: perfectly good ideas in an idealistic society, but not realistic in our own. Still, since Cal is Donny’s role-model, Donny accepts and believes in these ideas Cal gives him, and runs away both in search of them and to escape their opposites.

Finally, we must consider the greatest influence in Donny’s life: his own mind. As a child, one’s influences are primarily exterior and unquestioningly accepted. Yet as one grows older, he or she begins to question these exterior influences and develops opinions of them. Donny may have had many exterior influences in his life, but it was he himself who interprets these influences and acts on these interpretations. He wants to escape the influence of his parents. He wants to spend more time among his friends. And he wants to follow the guidance of Cal. In the end, it is all Donny’s choice.

I do not believe Donny runs away because of Cal. If Donny was going to run away from home, the idea had already been planted and he was going to run away some time or another. Cal simply speeds-up this process. (518)

The Sad Mind of Christopher Boone

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

For me, Mark Haddon’s novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, is most importantly a means for its readers to connect with and truly understand its protagonist, Christopher Boone, who suffers from a mental deficiency. In my life I have never personally known anyone suffering from similar mental deficiencies, and when I have seen these people from afar, I have never felt like I can relate to them, because I have never understood the inner workings of their minds. However, since this novel is mostly dedicated to depicting the inner workings of the mind of Christopher Boone, for the first time I felt as if I could understand him because I knew how he thought.
The more I came to understand Boone, though, the worse I felt for him. This is an individual who lives his entire life through nothing but solid, unarguable logic. Perhaps it is this logic that first enabled me to feel connected with this character, since a large part of my mind works in the same manner. And while this logical part of my mind has enabled me to perform well in school, problem solve, and maintain my sanity at times when I feel as if most of my friends have lost theirs, it has never brought me true happiness.
What has brought me true happiness is the instinctive and emotional parts of who I am: what my gut and my heart tell me. This past summer I spent a month at Mount Hood in northern Oregon as a camper and a worker at a summer ski camp. During this time I virtually shut down the logical part of who I am and ran off my instinct and emotions. The conditions there were by no means exceptional; I lived out of a trailer with nine other workers, worked obscure hours washing dishes for nothing more than room and board, and often had to hike uphill just to ski downhill. Still, it was the best time I have ever had and the first time I had been content with my life in the proceeding five months. I loved what I was doing and whom I was there with, and it did not take any logic to appreciate that. My instinct and emotions told me it was right.
By the time I had finished Haddon’s novel, I could not have cared less about the plot because I felt so terrible for Christopher. Even though he is only a made up character, he would never know this truest of happiness because his mind would never separate from the cold, solid logic on which it was built. He can name all the capitols in the world and run numbers like a computer, but he cannot lie, understand figures of speech, or bear to be touched by another human being. He is missing that element which enables the rest of us to experience the human condition. (511)