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Thread: Was Melville alluding to wars with Native Americans in Moby Dick?

  1. #121
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    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    Prendrelemick is right about the confusion between Marlow and Conrad. It was a bit usual back then, the critics werent used with the First Person Narrator that well and many read those novels as something related to the writer.
    It makes sense that there would be a degree of distance between Conrad and Marlow, especially in light of an outer narrative in which Marlow's first person narrative was nested. That is also a first person narrative, but since it is anonymous, I suggest it can be taken as even closer to Conrad's voice than Marlow's. I notice that the anonymous narrator twice compares Marlow's appearance to the Buddha's. He does this when Marlow begins talking and again just as he finishes and remains silent. This image--that of Marlow discoursing to his shipmates like the Buddha to his disciples--must be important because it is repeated in this quite small outer narrative, and in fact forms a symmetrical frame for Marlow's story about Kurtz. I suggest that Conrad is not only referring to the authority and wisdom that Marlow has gained in Africa, but also (and especially) to the illusory quality of the light on the waves and of pretenses of civilization and cultural superiority. (The Buddha, of course, taught that apparent existence was illusion). This, implies the outer narrator (in effect, Conrad) was the wisdom Marlow learned on the Congo.

    I really suspect Conrad is mostly about how "we" are no better than the people we call savages. To show that he has to show the stupidity and brutality of imperialism. But despite (post) modern post colonial hermeneutics, I doubt it was his first priority. I don't think his pessimism was as political as all that.
    Last edited by Pompey Bum; 10-18-2016 at 01:27 PM.

  2. #122
    Registered User prendrelemick's Avatar
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    Right. I'm going to have to re read now.

    You could be right about my teachers. In junior school that would be Mrs. Pacey, born in india, daughter of Empire, who's natives, she said, loved and respected us. I remember her once saying that if the Russians killed our Queen we would go to war with them, even though we wouldn't win! She wasn't the only one of that ilk either. She probably thought Kurtz lacked backbone through too much contact with Belgians. Then in senior school my English teacher was an ex hippy chick in a mini skirt.
    Last edited by prendrelemick; 10-18-2016 at 01:06 PM.
    ay up

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    Registered User tailor STATELY's Avatar
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    lol...
    Then in senior school my English teacher was an ex hippy chick in a mini skirt.
    . One of mine too.
    tailor

    who am I but a stitch in time
    what if I were to bare my soul
    would you see me origami

    7-8-2015

  4. #124
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    Quote Originally Posted by prendrelemick View Post
    Then in senior school my English teacher was an ex hippy chick in a mini skirt.
    Quote Originally Posted by tailor STATELY View Post
    lol... . One of mine too.
    I went to elementary school in the late 60s. My teachers wore what they used to call microskirts--their immodesty relieved only by the occasional stylish addition of go-go boots. We were all hippies is the Summer of Love.

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