The Sound and The Fury Reading syllabus
The syllabus dates indicate the day that you should do the assignment. Use the Faulkner website link. That link will be extremely useful.
3/27- 3/28: Read the first chapter, “April Seventh, 1928.” Read Faullkner’s introduction to the text from the website. The link is listed under Faulkner in the link list.
3/29 – 3/31: Read the second chapter, “June Second, 1910.” Go to the "intertext" link on the Faulkner website and read the Macbeth connection and the two criticisms from the page.
4/1 – 4/3: Read the third chapter, “April Sixth 1928.” Post a blog about the novel BEFORE you go on break.
Finish the novel over the break, or read it before you go (which is my suggestion)
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Darkness and light blog #5
By Tuesday night, you should post a blog that draws some comparisons between the movie and the novella. Put some thought into it. This is a graded assignment and doesn't fit into the overall blog grade. It might be good to start with a passage from the text that can get your muse engaged. Below, I 've written my own to give you a guide line for length, depth and one way to compare. There are many way to compare them to one another. Make sure you give your blog a title.
"Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror -- of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision -- he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath:
"'The horror! The horror!' Heart of Darkness
“Clear in his mind, but his soul is mad.” “Apocalypse Now”
Throughout both Heart of Darkness and “Apocalypse Now” darkness and light intermingle with one another like clarity and madness. The stories often cross and crisscross that fine line. Madness is perhaps a form of clarity and in clarity each narrator sees the madness. Does one become part of this madness to realize the darkness within oneself or does one who is mad seem sane in the madness of war?
Imperialism could certainly be a form of madness as democracy imposed on another is mad as well. Perhaps the most telling paradox of the film is the scene in which the helicopters wreak havoc on a village in the midst of Wagner booming through the speakers. I, too, would be frightened by this “civilized” madness. On several levels the scene contrasts the brutal, unbiased slaughter of civilians and civilians criminalized by war. War encompasses the innocent as well as the guilty. Wagner was championed by Hitler during WWII as the great Aryan composer. The choice to use Wagner as the soundtrack for war is not by accident. The two scenes with the chopper unit illustrate the glaring paradox between what is civilized and what is truly just brut force. There is not a clear line between the savage and the civilized. Ideals of democracy (and imperialism) degenerate into brutality for the sake of the ideal.
The Vietnam War lends itself easily to such rampant paradox. Although we may not heed the lessons of the past, we can certainly expose them for the sins that they are. Our democratic ideals are certainly suspect as is imperialism in the name of “civilizing.” For both these case studies, the ideals are imposed with ferocious brutality. Conrad’s story provides no relief either. Journey up the river is a motif that flows through both stories. Into the darkness on one’s mind under the guise of democracy or imperialism disturbingly brings a savagery to the civilized. Each story results in madness-- an unrelenting madness, one no less savage than the other. While the Vietnam War exposes us for our inconsistencies and paradox of democracy, Conrad exposes the prejudice and blindness of imperialism. As both “lead into the heart of an immense darkness.”
Conrad finishes his novel with a fairly enigmatic passage. “[I]f I had rendered Kurtz that justice which was his due? Hadn’t he said he wanted only justice? But I couldn’t. I could not tell her. It would have been too dark—too dark altogether.” I keep wondering what is the justice anyway? Are we capable of those lofty aspirations when we often use them to justify cruelty on other people. The human condition seems constantly in flux and in paradox around this justice.
"Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror -- of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision -- he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath:
"'The horror! The horror!' Heart of Darkness
“Clear in his mind, but his soul is mad.” “Apocalypse Now”
Throughout both Heart of Darkness and “Apocalypse Now” darkness and light intermingle with one another like clarity and madness. The stories often cross and crisscross that fine line. Madness is perhaps a form of clarity and in clarity each narrator sees the madness. Does one become part of this madness to realize the darkness within oneself or does one who is mad seem sane in the madness of war?
Imperialism could certainly be a form of madness as democracy imposed on another is mad as well. Perhaps the most telling paradox of the film is the scene in which the helicopters wreak havoc on a village in the midst of Wagner booming through the speakers. I, too, would be frightened by this “civilized” madness. On several levels the scene contrasts the brutal, unbiased slaughter of civilians and civilians criminalized by war. War encompasses the innocent as well as the guilty. Wagner was championed by Hitler during WWII as the great Aryan composer. The choice to use Wagner as the soundtrack for war is not by accident. The two scenes with the chopper unit illustrate the glaring paradox between what is civilized and what is truly just brut force. There is not a clear line between the savage and the civilized. Ideals of democracy (and imperialism) degenerate into brutality for the sake of the ideal.
The Vietnam War lends itself easily to such rampant paradox. Although we may not heed the lessons of the past, we can certainly expose them for the sins that they are. Our democratic ideals are certainly suspect as is imperialism in the name of “civilizing.” For both these case studies, the ideals are imposed with ferocious brutality. Conrad’s story provides no relief either. Journey up the river is a motif that flows through both stories. Into the darkness on one’s mind under the guise of democracy or imperialism disturbingly brings a savagery to the civilized. Each story results in madness-- an unrelenting madness, one no less savage than the other. While the Vietnam War exposes us for our inconsistencies and paradox of democracy, Conrad exposes the prejudice and blindness of imperialism. As both “lead into the heart of an immense darkness.”
Conrad finishes his novel with a fairly enigmatic passage. “[I]f I had rendered Kurtz that justice which was his due? Hadn’t he said he wanted only justice? But I couldn’t. I could not tell her. It would have been too dark—too dark altogether.” I keep wondering what is the justice anyway? Are we capable of those lofty aspirations when we often use them to justify cruelty on other people. The human condition seems constantly in flux and in paradox around this justice.
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