I Am Too Tired to Think of a Clever Title

I am always a sucker for extending literary criticism methods to everyday realities. It is for this reason that I am truly enjoying reading Waiting for the Barbarians back to back with Heart of Darkness; I love the perfect juxtaposition of style with the parallelism of theme. Heart of Darkness, as discussed in many of the articles brought up last week, is a book much dictated by the time it was written. For today’s readers, is limited by its own verbosity, its familiar narrative structure, and perhaps even its unknowing racism or sexism. These lenses (normal for the time it was written) detract from the book’s meaning for a modern interpreter. Waiting for the Barbarians, on the other hand, is a book perfectly fitted to our times. The kind of modernist edge apparent throughout the book makes it appealing to modern readers. These details are apparent in the author’s tone and style and even in the details of plot and setting.
Whereas Heart of Darkness is set in a very concrete time and place (it masquerades as a true story, with all the details in place to make it a believable true-life experience), Waiting for the Barbarians is very deliberately not placed in any concrete time or place. This serves, in a rather blatant way, to make the lessons available to be learned from the book even more apparently universal. Although it is easy to apply the book to the same colonialism as in Heart of Darkness, the author wishes us to perhaps keep a broader mindset. This same universality is set in place for the characters as well; not many have names. The characters are not really all good or all bad, but they are very human. Everything that happens seems kind of bumbling and awkward; there are no real heroes (so far, at least). The narrator does not even really know what he wants! His interest in the barbarian girl seems a little too sick to be either altruistic or truly romantic, but at the same time he is not really a bad guy.
So far, this story set in no place and no time has been rather interesting. I hope that the plain prose, modern style of writing, and interesting plot will continue to develop throughout the rest of the book.
(384)

A Homosexual Heart of Darkness?

“Masculinity, Modernity, and Homosexual Desire”
by Andrew Michael Roberts
p.455-462

A discourse concerning the contrast between male and female roles regarding power and knowledge runs through Conrad’s works.
- themes of “knowledge, truth, and ignorance” (455)
- men: “empowering knowledge”
- women: “symbolic, psychic, and social exploitation of women;” women as “symbols of a mysterious truth” but not the everyday, important one; “concept of femininity constructed as the Other of male knowledge” (455)
- this view is maintained by ignoring the clear counterexamples of certain women
- Conrad also uses some criticisms of this view by “inviting the reader to empathize with women characters” at certain points (455)

The pair of women and pair of men in Heart of Darkness are complementary figures.
- Kurtz, Marlow
- the African woman, the fiancée
- the men represent “the powerful, knowing, speaking male subject of knowledge” (456)
- the women represent “1. The ignorant; 2. The known, the object of knowledge; 3. The unknowable”
- the African woman does not talk
- the Intended is excluded from knowledge my Marlow

The author of this article does not think that the book is about colonialism; instead, he argues, the vague and never-specified truth at the center of the novel is an “empty signifier … representationally vacant.” (456) This means that the novel is actually about something never clearly stated – such as the “homophobic discourse which treats same-sex desire as something which cannot be spoken of.” (457)

Is there more meaning to the lie that Marlow makes to the Intended at the end of the story?
- Yes, according to “the linguistic, symbolic, and emotional excesses of the passage” (457)
- by telling her a lie, Marlow excludes the Intended from some important knowledge that seems almost a secret society
- “desire between men which excludes women from a secret knowledge” (458)
- further: the hierarchy of male-male and male-female relationships has functioned “through the setting up of powerful barriers between sexual and other forms of inter-male relationships” (458)
- women are “objects of exchange” that maintain the barrier mentioned above by channeling male desire (458)
- descriptions of Kurtz’s fiancée place her at the same level as Kurtz’s ivory, effectively making her an object and part of “an economy of repressed same-sex desire” (462)
- another argument: Marlow projects his love for Kurtz onto the Intended:
- “women are used to deny, distort, and censor men’s passionate love for one another” (457)

A homosexual interpretation of Heart of Darkness can be seen through the intense relationship between Kurtz and Marlow.
- Marlow thinks they share a “secret knowledge” (458)
- “metaphors of transgressing a boundary” (458)
- Marlow’s obsession with Kurtz and his “‘unspeakable rites’” (458); see quotes p. 459
- Kurtz’s actions are described in “distinctively sexual overtones.” (459)
- Kurtz is described with many adjectives and phrases that connote mystery, evil, hunger, lust, and finally horror.
- What is it that he has done that is so terrible? Most of his murdering and brutality can be written off as normal behavior for those colonizing Africa.
- Marlow is willing to discuss cannibalism, human sacrifice, and witch magic, but still leaves some mystery around Kurtz that implies things to horrible to discuss.
- “what Kurtz has done is precisely the non-specified or unspeakable” (460)
- In addition, Marlow’s description of “horror” towards dark Africa is masked horror for “Marlow’s own feelings for Kurtz” (460).

The entire story is centered on the bonds between men.
- Marlow tells the story to a group of trusted male friends.
- The story is about an “enduring intimacy” with another man and the “sharing of a disgraceful yet exciting knowledge” with that man that even his fiancée cannot know about (460).

The author of the article says that the text is not completely dominated by these homosexual themes; to ignore them, however, would be to oversimplify the book and take it merely at face value.
- idea of “doubling” (461)
- Marlow thinks he has almost become Kurtz
- seen especially in sections about how Kurtz has given everything up (see quotes p.461)


The author concludes that the homosexual undertones can be seen through the lens of the time’s horror of homosexuality and focus on staid, conservative values.

A False Finality

The final section of The Sound and the Fury wraps up the novel in several ways. Most important to me, however, is the fact that Faulkner really does not wrap up the novel at all. At the end of the last section, we do not know what has happened to Caddie; we do not know what will happen to Quentin. The mirrored uncertainty of mother and daughter serve to highlight the also unresolved fate of the characters left behind. Jason has not developed as a character; he is the same selfish, mean-spirited child he was as a boy. Benjy is incapable of change; he is stuck forever in a whirling miasma of time and loss. Mrs. Compson, too, languishes away waiting for something to happen to her. None of the characters are active; they passively saunter through life, adding nothing to and gaining nothing from the world around them. Dilsey only is a beacon of hope and positivity; her constancy is a good thing instead of a handicap. The final section sums up the experiences portrayed in the other sections of the novel to show that there are no true happy endings in the new world of the twentieth century, only small hints of change. In this way, Faulkner clearly makes his point about the degeneration of modern life and the inability of most people in modern-day life to find a wholesome center or make true meaning out of their actions. (242)