A Long Time Ago, On a River Far Far Away...

Even though the book starts out with the point of view of the unnamed narrator, the book is best known as Marlow's journey to Africa. Once the narrator introduces the setting and the four characters aboard the Nellie, he mainly just focuses on Marlow's dialogue, which seems to go on for many pages. This form of writing that is like a story inside a story is called a frame tale. More about a frame tale can be found here. Frame Story

Marlow's narrative starts out portraying himself as a young strapping lad with a desire for adventure. He already had a background full so called adventure because he had spent six years on the Pacific, but his main interest was exploring Africa, specifically, the Congo River. He gets signed onto the Company and goes on to Africa to do his exploring as a steamboat pilot. Marlow quickly learns that adventuring in Africa is not that easy as he encounters many troubles while trying to get to the Central Station. Because of a problem on his steamboat, Marlow is forced to spend time at Central Station. He seeks the help of a brick maker and a mechanic to fix his boat. They are under the impression that he is someone of importance in Europe and treat him with reverence.

 From the start of Marlow's narrative, the reader can tell that his interest in the exploration of the Congo River in Africa somehow objectifies the people there. There is a sort of a bitter tone to his tale, as he speaks with melancholic diction and draws out dreary images. He sets the African jungle as a terribly dangerous place, and proves his conjecture through a sub-tale of a pilot who got killed by tribesmen. There's a mystery surrounding Mr. Kurtz, someone whom Marlow has yet to meet which gives the reader some sort of premonition. Basically, Part I serves as a foreshadowing to the rest of the book.

When Marlow describes the journey on the Congo river, he uses such heavy diction and imagery. He compares the difficult trek "like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world". In a way, he was implicitly describing the savagery, not so much of the people, but of the surroundings. What struck me was when Marlow head some kind of inner voice in his mind commanding him to "try to be civil, Marlow." It seems as if the further Marlow travels up the river, the more "savage" he becomes. The reader already has the basic idea that the Congo River is a terrible place to be. It reminds me of the Journey to the Center of the Earth.

Fat Man Carried By Natives 

After reading the essay that Chinua Achebe had written about Heart of Darkness, I think I have some sort of bias towards this book. I receive negative connotation from every word and I look deeper into the imagery to see what Conrad is trying to portray. Perhaps it's not so much Conrad speaking to the reader, or even the unnamed narrator, but it is Marlow, and his point of view. There are times in Part I where I start to question the validity of Marlow's narrative. He seems like a proud man, one that has been through a lot and wants to boast about what he has survived through. Could it be that he is exaggerating some parts of the story? At any rate, Part I successfully portrayed the image of danger and savagery that Conrad wanted to put in the reader's mind which has a lot of foreshadowing that makes the reader look forward to the other parts of the book.

Is He Serious? And Other Ironies

I personally think that irony has got to be the best part of any book and/or movie. Irony really does trump everything. Many authors create plot twists from ironies and surprising details from ironic support. When I read, I fall in love with very ironic characters because I personally love sarcasm. They're not the same thing, but very closely related, I think. However, Foster mainly addresses structural and dramatic irony rather than verbal.

Foster states from the very beginning, that irony trumps everything. He goes on to state that every piece of literature has a some kind of irony in it, from the simple yet obvious dramatic irony in Cinderella to the more played out irony in Romeo and Juliet. Irony can pretty much be used with everything and everything can pretty much be ironic. To substantiate his point, Foster gives several examples about irony like how George Peele created an ironic title and G. K. Chesterton's story about a man who is killed by an arrow with the title of "The Arrow of Heaven". The fact that he used so many examples to describe the different types of ironies in literature proves that irony is indeed present in everything and is by far the most important thing in literature.

When reading this chapter many different pieces of literature ran through my mind, but I decided not to be cliched with my selected example and decided to use an autobiography. One of the books that impacted me the most is Glass Castle, an autobiography about a woman's troubled life. When she was younger she was practically raised in the back of a car with three siblings and parents that seemed to be neglecting them. The title Glass Castle is ironic enough, considering that a glass castle was a promise that the father of Jeanette, the author, gave his children. But the irony goes way past what her father had promised her. Even though Jeanette and her siblings were ecstatic at the idea of a glass castle, a glass castle is too fragile and non-sustainable which could be a metaphor for Jeanette and her family. Throughout the book, Jeanette's parents would mistreat their children, but it would take a while for the reader to realize it because of the love Jeanette and her siblings still had for her parents. The way the children would still love and return to their parents even after all the neglect and abuse creates such a strong irony that makes a powerful and conflicted story.

Perhaps irony is used to capture the reader's attention, to keep him or her interested. What is a good story with plot twists and irony? They would all be boring and no one would be able to sit through and read it all. However, even if the story is marinated with irony, the reader will have to be sharp enough to get it. Irony is subtle, it's kind of like finding little treasures and being proud of oneself for getting the reference. This is why ironies are such little beauties in literature. Irony

The examples he uses that is found in literature mainly circles around plot twists and surprising events. He states that nearly all writers employ irony sometimes, although perhaps the frequency of the appearance of irony may vary. It seems as if with modern writers, irony plays a full-time part in their writings, to a point where readers now expect irony in everything they read. That's probably why they're modern writers, considering most of the ironies circle around thwarting traditional expectations. However, irony doesn't necessarily work for everyone. There are readers who won't and don't and can't understand irony, which basically removes the point of it entirely, perhaps ruining the book for him or her. But if there is irony in a book, it sure does trump everything else.

It's All About Sex...

The mention of sex and thinking about sex makes almost everyone uncomfortable (I use almost because there are THOSE people out there). It can horrify the young and inexperienced minds of readers or it can send them into fits of giggles. I always find the creativity writers use to describe sex scenes very amusing and entertaining; it seems to me that they can relate almost anything, like such innocent things (beach waves) , into sensual details. I must admit, it is a bit hard to spot the sexual reference in movies when the writer's main goal is try to relay the message as subtly as possible, but it's even hard to see them in books; one must really read in between the lines. 

Foster writes a very eye-opening chapter about sex. He states that as the 20th century begins, readers are learning that sexuality may be encoded in their reading, while writers are learning that they can encode sexuality in their writing. But sexual symbolism didn't just start in the twentieth century; writers long ago learned that they can use sex symbolism in near anything: from crops to beach waves to wooden bowls. Back in those days, writing about sex was most definitely obscene and unacceptable. Censorship was a big deal and many books were confiscated, so writers learned how to write about sex as subtly as possible. Also, many authors were aware of their young audiences so they kept their sexual scenes encoded, where if read around the dinner table, the parents could share an inside joke. 

Foster only covered consented sex between two lovers and self pleasure, but he didn't mention forced sex, or in other words, rape. While reading this chapter, Lord of the Flies kept popping up in my head, mainly the scene where the boys are hunting a sow. It was a scene that was explained in my freshman English class, where it sent my classmates and I into shock. The scene starts out with the boys driven by their hunger for meat and chasing a sow. The author used violent phrases like "and the hunters followed, wedded to her in lust, excited by the long chase and the dropped blood.", "the sow fell and the hunters hurled themselves on her." to suggest gang rape. It was a pivotal scene in the book drawing the fact that the boys were no longer boys, having lost their innocence in this way. On the surface, it was just some boys chasing a pig around, and perhaps out determination and possibly luck, they manage to kill her. But it's so much more. It displays intense savagery and violence driven by lust that makes the reader so uncomfortable he or she realizes that killing the sow means so much more. 

The chapter mentions that Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams might as well be the father of all sexual innuendos in literature. In the book, he offered a completely new way of interpreting literature and demonstrated that readers think of sex more often than they think they do. Based on the article "Dirty Talks and Their Meaning" its author states that the discussion of sexuality in literature is not mainly about the act itself. He writes that writers over time have found ways to "talk dirty" without being explicit at all. Source: Sexuality and Literature- Dirty Talks and Their Meaning

It's funny how in this chapter how Foster writes that authors use other things to symbolize sex while in the following chapter, where he talks about actual literal sex scenes, they almost always stand for something else. He comes to a conclusion at the end of this chapter that if a writer will never present sex in terms of sexual organs and acts; they will much more likely look like "a bowl and some keys". Whereas, if there is an actual literal sex scene it could easily stand for a character's submission to another, rebellion, domination, or even enlightenment. Unless it's not, which then is just straight up pornography. 

Every Trip Is a Quest (Except When It's Not)

The opening chapter of this book so entertainingly explains the significance and presence of a quest in literature. Foster easily describes to the reader the basics of what makes a quest a quest: a "quester", a destination, a reason to go there, challenges along the way, and a real reason to go there. However, what significantly makes a quest a quest isn't the reason why someone has to embark on this journey, rather, it's the real reason. The difference between the reason and the real reason is that the real reason requires self-knowledge, and a quest is not a quest unless it involves obtaining self-knowledge.

Foster makes quite a distinction between the real reason and the stated reason: the real reason never involves the stated reason. In fact, when a quester fails at the stated task, it might still be considered a quest because the quester does gain educational knowledge from it. Foster states that the only subject that truly matters is the quester him or herself. He or she must grow in self-knowledge in some sort of way during the quest to make it valid.

Take the extremely popular (and extremely overrated, but still a good example) Disney movie Frozen. The Princess Anna of Arandelle is struck by her sister Ice Queen Elsa, causing her to turn into ice. Anna must find true love to thaw her heart, and immediately seeks Prince Hans for a true love's kiss. Anna then embarks on a quest back to Arandelle to find Prince Hans, only to find out that he betrayed her by using her to get to the throne and leaves her to die (a major plot twist that infuriated preteens everywhere). However, near the end of the quest, the real reason is uncovered. Anna learns that Elsa truly loves her sister even if she has ignored Anna for the past several years, and that true sisterly love breaks the spell and Anna is saved (an even bigger plot twist that sent nearly everyone into tears). Anna also learns that by true love, it doesn't necessarily only mean romantic love, and that familial love conquers all.

Perhaps one might compare a quest to the hero's journey. They are similar, each having the protagonist embark on a difficult journey facing trials and challenges to achieve their targeted goal. However, a quest is more inclusive whereas a hero's journey is more exclusive. Anyone can take on a quest, but according to Julie Harris in "The Hero's Journey: Cultural Values and the Struggle Against Evil", the only thing differentiating a hero from the common citizen taking up a journey is the hero's response to the call to be heroic. Therefore, how the hero reacts to the call to action. But a quest doesn't require a person to be heroic, rather it makes anyone who embarks on it and gains self-knowledge a hero. Source: The Hero's Journey: Cultural Values and The Struggle Against Evil

At the end of the chapter Foster illiterates that not every trip someone takes is a quest. For example, when one drives to work everyday, not every car ride is a quest, because there is no growth. I may make a trip to the coffee shop early morning, and I will barely remember what I ordered. With this is mind, Foster states that discovering a quest in a book may be hard, since a character makes multiple trips here and there, but once a quest is discovered, the rest is easy.