Well, I guess late is better than never. To steal the thunder from Shrek, Heart of Darkness is a good book that is constantly reanalyzed because it is like an onion (it's layered). Honestly the first time I read Heart of Darkness I was not a big fan. It may have been the fact that I was reading it from a Norton Anthology that had a 6 point font and wide pages which caused me to keep reading the same line over and over, or it may have been the fact that Conrad doesn't present his dialogue in nice broken lines. Whatever the reason was, I didn't start to really appreciate the greatness and complexity of this short piece until the second time through (it probably didn't hurt that I had read several other books in the mean time that got me more accustomed to literary allusions, and the ways in which good authors play off of other authors and ideas to form new possibilities). A problem that always arises in my mind as I read this book is the apparent lack of action from the character of Marlow. Instead of ever really doing anything that would have helped the "poor savages", he seems content enough to retell the story of his journey and the notable Mr. Kurtz and his gift of eloquence. Obviously it is Kurtz's character that contains most of the message behind the story, but non the less Marlow's attitude remains disturbing. During his oratory Marlow constantly gives accounts of the poor circumstances of the natives and he even seems to show some remorse for them, but he never does one thing about it.

Maybe this lack of action is just a product of his time and society. While it is a cop-out these factors do go a long way in describing a person. It was interesting to see the thoughts and opinions of Conrad's contemporaries, for they made Marlow's inaction look downright saintly in comparison. Many looked at Africa as a lost cause that would never be civilized and must therefore be exploited by the "civilized" portions of the world, while others tried to explain why the Europeans were superior to the "savages" around the globe. I was dumbfounded by a particular analysis of this, for I had just heard a similar argument on NPR about a month ago (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106697286). I distinctly remember rolling my eyes and thinking to my self what will they come up with next as I listened to the radio, but as the study was presented I was intrigued by their use of logic and reason (they had some interesting statistics to back up their claims); however, I was not one hundred percent convinced, so when I heard the summary for the article/excerpt "Are Humans one Race or Many" by Alfred Russel Wallace I was amazed by the similarities of the articles/studies. While the recent study had empirical data collected from the study, Wallace's article seems to stem from strict conjecture and opinion (based on scientific reason of course). I grinned as I reread the News article on NPR's website, for the comments posted after the article greatly resembled the thoughts and attitudes of our class in response to Wallace. So I guess the real question isn't the validity of the argument in either article, but whether or not the new study on warm weather and economy (as opposed to warm weather and race) will have any greater success.