Invisible in Plain Sight - An Essay Reflection

             In this essay written by Chinua Achebe in 1977 titled “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness” he presents a motion about the famous novel which no one else had really touched on at the time.  He maintains that the book, while being a well written classic, is inescapably racist towards Africans.  Chinua goes about explaining this in a very rational way.  He first introduces us to the kind of character he suspects led to Conrad’s writing, this trait being the ignorance to look down at African culture as being peculiar and superstitious while in reality, anyone, whether hailing from England or the Bronx, has their own strange culture and traditions.  Many good points are made about the way Europeans have set up the “dark continent” of Africa to be their polar opposite. 

Chinua is reasonable enough to credit Joseph Conrad as having good style and talent but he is taken aback by the way such a prejudice novel is welcomed by professors with open, arrogant arms.  Indeed while reading Heart of Darkness myself, there were many passages that are nearly despicable when referring to the native “savages” – especially when out of context.  That’s just the thing though: in the context of the story, I didn’t feel all too shocked by the nature in which they were described.  This goes to show Chinua’s great point that western readers are predisposed to accept these likely exaggerations just because they’re the familiar stories of cannibals and wild tribesmen that we’ve grown accustomed to.  At the very least, one should not blindly agree to these rulings.  As Mr. Achebe wrote, “I will not accept just any traveler’s tales solely on the grounds that I have not made the journey myself.”  Among the other enlightened points brought up by this author, another piece of observable evidence is the manner in which Conrad writes of their language.  The only points in the novel where the natives’ communications aren’t simply incoherent grunts, they have been given a few English words to say, stereotypical of what a ‘wild jungle man’ would say.  It may be argued that any racism can be blamed due to the speaker within a speaker style (Inception!) but this is battled with evidence from some of Conrad’s personal writings of meeting different peoples.  These seem to solidify the accusation of Conrad as being prejudice, however wonderfully he may organize it on paper.

In the essay, Chinua did a very good job of using intelligence and wit to cover several tracks with which debaters might pursue.  One flaw I must point out though, due to my own vested interests, is that Chinua mentions that Marco Polo failed to mention the brilliance of the Great Wall of China in his travel writings which is after all, “the only structure built by man which is visible from the moon!”  This is a ridiculous but unrelated common misconception so obviously does not discredit Achebe in any way and I merely bring it up as a lecture to readers of this post, and also to perhaps demonstrate that even the most convincing of words should be taken with a grain of salt.  Getting back to the essence of the essay, Chinua Achebe has undoubtedly raised a reasonable suggestion about the nature of Conrad’s famous book and I think reminds us to try to see all things first through an unbiased lens, however embedded a belief may be.  

Essay Analysis: “Surviving Edna: A Reading of the Ending of The Awakening.”

In Robert Treu’s essay discussing Kate Chopin’s famous work, he played with the idea that perhaps Edna did not in fact die at the end of the novel.  Treu spends most of the paper criticizing readers’ general conclusion that Edna has committed suicide even though the book never directly says so.  It is of course reasonable that someone’s train of thought would lead to that end, but it’s much less reasonable to completely dismiss any other possibility.  Treu is not the first critic to have gone with this idea; he quotes the Russian theoretician Mikhail Bakhtin at several times and basically explains that Edna’s actions throughout the book do not really add up to her committing suicide.  The author of the essay also offers that if she did die, than it was less suicide and rather a sort of accident.  One of the main arguments Treu goes with is that The Awakening has built such a (as Bakhtin calls it), “heteroglossia”.  This has to do with the style in which we are not limited to a single perspective but instead Chopin manages to embody a few without necessarily yielding too much to a single idea.  This allows for the prospect of Edna’s survival to become much more believable considering the irregularity.

                Death is a predictable and simple way of closing such a story which Chopin would’ve had no reason to do and the author of this essay does not think she would take such an easy way out.  She certainly proves that she hasn’t done so by leaving out any confirmation in the story such as a funeral scene or something to that effect.  This leads me to imagine what it would be like if in The Great Gatsby, the book had simply ended after the scene where they heard gunshots and discovered a bloody scene at the pool from which they took (the murdered) Gatsby to the house.  In class, I recall there was some slight debate over whether he was really dead or what exactly had taken place (until those who had read ahead solved the issue).  This is the kind of discussion which brings about the idea that authors are no longer in control of their stories. 

When I first read through the article I thought it seemed kind of silly and perhaps the writer wasn’t very convincing.  However, for some reason upon my return to its text I’ve grown much attached to Treu’s message and all the suggestions mentioned in the article.  I don’t quite agree that Edna has survived the ending of the book but I also don’t think Treu necessarily believes that either.  The fact that he is mostly just trying to keep every idea open makes this something I can certainly get behind.  It can be dangerous to make inferences about a story or an author’s intentions. 

Chopin ends the book with a memory of Edna’s past and the vagueness this scene should allow for all possible theories to be considered.  At one point, Robert Treu mentions the painting “Las Meninas” by Velazquez which depicts an artist who is working on a canvas that the viewer can only see the back of.  The artist has paused from his work and is looking directly at the viewer.  This creates the question of whether the artist is painting the people who are in the reflection of a mirror in the background, or the viewer themselves, or perhaps nothing at all.  This open-endedness is very similar to what Kate Chopin created with her novel and is no doubt an important part of literature and its ability to be criticized.

  “The birth of the reader must be requited by the death of the Author.” (Barthes 1986, 55)

" Las Meninas"

Essay Summary: "Under the Granite Outcroppings of Ethan Frome"

                In the one hundred years since Edith Wharton wrote the book Ethan Frome, there have been hundreds of essays written on various aspects of the story.  In a particular essay written by Helen Killoran titled, “Under the Granite Outcroppings of Ethan Frome” she manages to take a pretty different look into the morality of the story compared to many previous critics.  Specifically, this essay contrasts with the views of Lionel Trilling’s “The Morality of Inertia” where, in the same distaste as many other critics, he describes how the book is so terribly immoral he could not teach it in his class.  Helen Killoran disputes that Trilling unfairly only looks at Ethan as not making moral decisions and thus dismisses the book.  The backbone of her argument is that Zeena is the true moral compass of the story and so the book cannot be struck with the title of being a “dead book”.  

With some difficulty at first, after reading her essay I soon found myself agreeing with many of Killoran’s conclusions.  Trilling is indeed false in many of his hurried claims that the book is without morals.  It’s not hard to see how he drew this idea since Wharton does a good job of misdirecting the reader away from Zeena for the most part.  There are many complaints against Zeena but none of them have to do with moral flaws.  While hypochondria may be an inconvenient disorder, it is not necessarily immoral.  Perhaps Killoran’s greatest argument for Zenobia having the strongest morals is her relation to the views of stoicism.  Except for her and Ethan’s one larger quarrel, she always acts in a rational manner.  Zeena is wise to everything going on but as she always has, simply endures until she has chosen, with reason, an exact moment to act.  This is seen when she suddenly demands Mattie be sent home and gets her a train ticket which is not really immoral. 

Killoran uses many examples to convince the reader of Zeena’s morals.  Even if a few ideas seem a bit of a stretch, some are very eye-opening with much sense they make.  Besides that, the sheer volume of suggestions she uses has me certain she is right.  Originally, I thought the length of her essay was a bit of an overkill, but now I see that every word brought up a crucial point in her argument.  Trilling had incorrectly focused his critique of morals on Ethan without seeing Zeena’s incredible potential.  A book with as many lively interpretations as Ethan Frome could never be considered the “dead book” Trilling calls it.