A Blogs@Baruch site
Recent Comments in this Document
-
Yes!
It is as the old saying goes “Absolute power corrupts absolutely” I believe we are only as moral as our consequences,remove the consequences of our actions and most revert to a less evolved level,you know animals.
-
This is going to require some thought on my part,good one!! Not liking you right now Professor!! lol
-
As a clinician if I have ten sick patients who are afflicted with an unnamed pathology,two of them hate each other,one is in love with another and so on, my job as a clinician is not to examine the interpersonal interactions of my patients,it is to isolate and identify the cause of the sickness,how the afflicted interact is incidental. What causes people to commit such horrors,why does this not fascinate people as much as it fascinates myself? But I can see your point, I think it takes away from a clear a concise diagnosis however.
-
This is a first draft mistake, it should say we are a pale comparison to what we think we really are, the distraction is our own self-importance, we are hopelessly distracted by ourselves what else do people think about but themselves.
-
This is an excellent passage to draw into your argument. This is essentially where the narrator himself makes the comparison between a way of looking at the world native to to the village, and “the standards of the European industrial world.” Say more.
-
Try to connect this bigger picture disagreement to the narrator’s argument with the villagers. That would make for a very interesting development of your thesis.
-
The argument that the narrator has with Mahjoub and with the rest of the village over Hosna is one of the key disagreements in the novel. He certainly “thinks differently” than they do about the whole business. Can you connect their positions to the larger context? Does the narrator represent the “modernizing” Western social norms that the villagers and their traditional society are struggling to reject?
-
Agree with Adam. The difference in the treatment of women between European and Sudanese society is a major theme in the book, and deserves some more attention in general, before you get to the specifics of Hosna and Wad Rayyes story. What does Mustafa’s story suggest about European society and how they think differently there?
-
Excellent point. I think that comparing the narrator’s grandfather’s house with a European city is an interesting idea – something that I had not thought at all about.
Perhaps you would not need a quote describing the organizational plan of European streets, if you took some time to describe them. What I think you mean is the grid-like style of urban planning – exemplified by no city as well as New York!
Then, I think you should make the terms of the comparison explicit. The rooms of the house are slapdash, unplanned, and the house has no grid or map – it develops organically, over time. The European city, on the other hand, is all straight lines and ninety-degree angles.
The most important part of this comparison will be to show how it illustrates humans “thinking differently.” Even though we all construct dwellings, the way in which we envision and build them varies drastically between peoples and cultures – or something along those lines.
-
As I said, your idea of “thinking” differently seems much more specific and engaging to me as a thesis than the general idea of “minor differences.”
Comments on the Pages
Andrea Sukhu (20 comments)
wow that’s an outrageous claim.
its like philosophy
I think Mustafa mistreated women would be softer thesis
theres no real substance proof that that’s the cause of his promiscuity
This was an interesting introduction. However, I still think you can reword some key points into few sentence so it can be clear what you will be talking about in your entire essay, from paragraph to paragraph.For example, you can say, Mustafa’s deprivation of maternal care; his unstable relationship with his mother and inadequate childhood and the journey of his education can contribute to his lust for the women in his life.
I never actually gave any importance to why would Mustafa mistreat women, however, after you pointed out his unstable relationship with his mother and his difficult childhood, i can now see why and it is interesting .
Well done. Love your topic
What a good topic! I like the thesis of the essay. I didn’t think about why would Mustafa mistreat women and I have a better idea now. I think you did well on the CEA format. I can follow it step by step and the essay let me feel comfortable to read. However, there are just small mistakes which I think the paragraph is too long and there are words you can simplify it in an easy way. Anyway, it is good! Keep working on the format of the essay.
Really good intro. On the one hand, after reading your introduction, I get a very clear idea what you are going to explain in the rest of your essay, which is good to keep me focusing on the essay, not get lost. One the other hand, I feel like your first paragraph contains lots of information which you explain more in your body paragraphs. Because you explain lots of causes that why Mustafa doesn’t know how to give love or receive love, I think you can talk about them briefly in your first body paragraph and expand more in your body paragraphs.
hi Jing Lin
comments cant be added to your essay
maybe you posted it wrong
it is in depth
[This quote describes in debt of how much he was immune ]
your essay argument about Mustafa not knowing about love was well supported
thanks Farhana
[It really shocked me and I really wanted to know answer, so when i started analyzing it and giving it some thought in my head, I then realized why]
That’s excellent. This is exactly the kind of experience that we hope you might have while in a literature class – having a real response to a book, and a question about it, and then considering and analyzing and coming up with a convincing answer. I hope that you continue to read and analyze books like this in future life.
[I believe that ]
I don’t think you need the first-person “I believe” here at all. Your argument is strong enough without it. In fact, wouldn’t a conjunctive be more appropriate here, like “but” or “however.” Mustafa may be a liar etc, but he doesn’t have any real morals because etc.
Remember that this first paragraph is an introduction. You can save some of your claims about Mustafa for the body paragraphs, where you will use evidence to prove them. Your introduction feels a bit long to me right now – not a bad problem to have, on a first draft.
My main suggestion for your essay now is to work on organization. I think that breaking it into themes, or smaller chunks, might be a good idea. The problem is that it feels a bit redundant right now. Though you know exactly what you want to say, it seems like your ideas haven’t been split up into sections.
The body paragraphs should each take up a different aspect related to your theme: another part of Mustafa’s emotional problem.
You might break them up like this:
1) Mustafa’s tough upbringing teaches him to depend on himself; 2) he was brilliant in school, but had no relationship with his mother; 3) later in life, because he never had a mother’s love, he did not know how to love or respect women.
Or you might attack it more thematically:
1) describe Mustafa’s “cold” intelligence; 2) describe his emotional disconnection; 3) describe his problems with his mother; 4) describe his problems with women;
Or even begin with a close reading and expand it:
1) how he is like “something rounded” as a boy; 2) how he is like that with his mother; 3) how he is like that with women etc.
These are just examples. I think you might find it useful to do another brief outline to help organize your arguments.
[his mother was more like a stranger to him. He never seen his mother emotional,]
What about those strange moments when he thinks she is about to smile? You might analyze those moments, as they seem relevant here.
This analysis of the “something rounded” metaphor seems like it should be a separate paragraph to me.
[his mother’s response was very unhelpful as if she didn’t have a voice when it came to her child]
This is a great point. She is very strange, his mother. Why do you think she seems not to have a voice, or perhaps not to care so much, or to be afraid to speak up about her own son?
This paragraph about Mustafa’s mysterious and cold mother is one of the most focused of your essay. Why don’t you begin with a transition sentence about Mustafa’s mother, so that the reader knows that his mother will be the subject of the entire paragraph? Then your ideas, which are all quite focused, will seem more connected.
[This was the first step of some sort of emotion that he was encountering within himself; his sexuality, because he was so accustomed to being numb by everything that when Mrs. Robinson gave him these mixed new feelings, that he’s never felt before, he was astonished and didn’t really understand what he was feeling.]
This is really excellent analysis. Do you think that this process of “finding himself” remained incomplete, somehow, for Mustafa?
[He is not considerate of anyone else’s feelings or hard aches because no one ever cared for his. He’s not accustomed to hearing other people’s sorrows because he doesn’t feel the need to help. Just as his mother never cared about anything and never gave him her insight, he does the same to women because that is what his mother taught him indirectly. ]
Excellent argumentation here.
[His mission is to get in their pants and to move on. He doesn’t get involved too deep with women because he doesn’t feel the need to have a relationship with them as he never knew what it’s like to have one.]
This seems a bit repetitive. I feel as though you have said all this, more or less, in other words, elsewhere.
Farhana Choudhury (17 comments)
you misspelt hungry
believes
[she ends up marrying him and then she murders him after he raped her.]
Im not sure its rape if they are married
[ however, overall with his description and the characters in the book it emphasizes the patriarchy, ownership of men and subjection of women either East or West of the world.]
I think it is absent in the west.
Thank you for pointing out a human error, but I think you did not understand the concept of the workshop. You are suppose to give me feedback on my essay, not edit it for misspelled words
Even though we chose passages from different books, we get the same topic and I get the same feeling when I was reading your essay. I couldn’t agree more on your thesis statement. Since we were in the same workshop group last time, I feel that your body paragraphs are organized better. I can follow your each point easily. I am just kind of confused about your second claim, for my understanding, which is similar to your first claim. There is one little thing I want to mention is that I understand your thesis statement, but it is too long. May be you can cut down some unnecessary words to keep your thesis simple. Keep working on it. you will get a good one. Great work!
you essay was very good
I found only a few grammatical error
you followed the CEA well
In fact, Jimmy, Farhana is right. The point of the workshop is not to correct spelling but to respond to ideas and to help your fellow students make more convincing arguments. Please make more substantial comments on future assignments.
This is a powerful introduction. I think, however, that you may have too much material here at the beginning of your essay. Your introduction probably should not be quite such a long paragraph.
I think there are two ways you can revise this paragraph. Some of these sentences can be revised or combined, similar to the sort of revision exercises we did in class. Also, I think you can save some of these arguments for later in the paper. (Perhaps you might even break this paragraph in two).
Your first sentence should do two things: 1) it should grab the reader’s attention, and 2) it should go straight to the point of your essay – that is, it should move right towards your thesis. I’m not sure this beginning does those things. Perhaps you could begin with something more specific than this basic information about the author.
This is a really interesting point. There are similarities between Wad Rayyes and Mustafa; clearly, they are both womanizers and sexual predators. But there are also important differences between them. I wonder if contrasting them a bit more would not be useful.
The gap between their educations is in fact far wider than you suggest here. Mustafa is practically a genius, and he has been educated at the best schools in Europe; Wad Rayyes has basically no formal education. Nevertheless, they behave similarly. Does that suggest that the solution to social problems like gender injustice does not lie solely in more education?
Does one man represent “the Eastern world” and one man “the Western world?” That is complicated, because Mustafa was never quite at home in Europe, and his crimes seem to have been, at least in part, a strange sort of revenge taken against the colonial powers. Women seem to end up as the victims in either case. Perhaps you can explain how you see the connection a bit more.
Rape is non-consensual sex, whether the people involved are married or not.
Again, I wonder if the point is that more may be necessary before real change occurs than simply education, that there needs to be a more drastic cultural shift. Modernization was very much associated with the colonial powers, Europe and the West. Perhaps Salih was skeptical about the effects of modernization on people’s lives.
This paragraph seems much too long to me. I think you might break it up into separate paragraphs, taking the various subjects here one by one:
1)ownership of women in the village,and how Hosna symbolizes the oppression of women around the world ;
2) Jean Morris’s story, and how you see her story connecting to Hosna’s
Your argument here will seem much more straightforward when you separate the different parts – and I think two paragraphs (at least) would be the best way to do that.
Jimmy, you might say more about why you think so, or make a comment that is more relevant to Farhana’s argument. The point of reading each others’ papers is not to share your individual opinions, but to help your fellow students develop theirs.
I feel that Mustafa and Jean Morris’s story has not been present in your essay as much as that of Hosna and Wad Rayyes. Considering this other example of patriarchy and gender inequality would perhaps help you make the point that these crimes exist both in the East and the West.
I have two main suggestions for you to consider as you work on revising this interesting paper.
First of all, I think that the structure of your essay could be improved. At a simple level, that will mean breaking up these long paragraphs into smaller paragraphs. But as you break them up, you will want to organize them. Perhaps you might first take up Hosna and Wad Rayyes, and then discuss Mustafa and Jean Morris? You might then compare the two men’s similarities, and then contrast their differences ie education etc.
Secondly, I think your analysis focuses on Wad Rayyes and Hosna, and does not discuss Mustafa and Jean Morris as much. That becomes a problem, when your thesis is that the point of their two stories is to show that patriarchy and sexism exist around the world. I think you need to say more about the Western version of the story.
Keep going.
Navruzjon Djafarov (16 comments)
[ People can do similar things and feel similarly, but they rarely think similarly]
This is a great statement. I wrote my own paper along the same lines. I feel as though you could emphasize this further to create a stronger thesis.
I like where this paragraph is going, comparing the “chaotic house” of the narrator’s grandfather and the neat and orderly style of European houses has great potential. It will fall flat if you cant find something describing European houses in that manner.
Perhaps you can leave this paragraph totally focused on the chaotic style of the village and compare the European neatness in another manner. The education building could be a good place to do that.
I feel you need to explore the meaning behind what you are saying further also.
You need to delve deeper into this. Maybe explore the reasoning as to why the Sudanese treat their women in this manner, tradition, rural setting, etc. and then also explore why European women are treated differently.
This is good. The most complete paragraph so far. If you wanted to go further in this, stating how the narrator had become westernized from his time in England and how that has changed his views on how women should be treated would be a great place to do so.
[ Even though they both think that his answer is most correct one, in really they both right to some extent.]
This is a good statement. You should explain the reasoning behind their thought process; Mansour is the colonized, Richard is the colonizer. Perhaps introduce who these characters are more clearly also.
This is a good start, just remember to tie it against the opposing view, that of Europeans in this case.
Navru,
As you stated this is a pretty rough draft and you have some more work to do. I am curious as to if you are planning on using Heart of Darkness at all or if you had this thesis being contained to the one book ticked off by the professor?
If you were to use Heart of Darkness I feel that you could find some of the opposing views that you seemed to be struggling to find in Season of Migration to the North.
I particularly like paragraph 8 as it is very clear and well argued. I also like where most of your other paragraphs are going, even if they do need to be finished off.
Keep working at it mate.
I’m not so sure about this. Though the quote you have selected suggests that this is true, a full reading of the novel makes this argument problematic. The narrator ends the book calling the people of his village, “mad.” That sounds like more than just a minor difference. Perhaps you might take into account the change that the narrator undergoes during the course of the novel, or make your claim a bit more circumspect – for example, rather than claiming that “According to Tayeb Salih” xyz is true, you might say that the narrator begins the story with this particular perspective on humanity.
I agree with Adam here. This is quite a powerful statement. I think you might say more about it here, and then return to it throughout your essay as a central point of your thesis. There are numerous examples of characters thinking differently about the events in the story. This would lead you to a much more nuanced position than simply saying we have “minor differences.”
I’m not sure you want to include such a long quotation in your introductory paragraph. It might be better to save it or a body paragraph, where you can analyze it in more detail. Your thesis paragraph you be laser-focused on setting out your argument in crystal clear terms.
As I said, your idea of “thinking” differently seems much more specific and engaging to me as a thesis than the general idea of “minor differences.”
Excellent point. I think that comparing the narrator’s grandfather’s house with a European city is an interesting idea – something that I had not thought at all about.
Perhaps you would not need a quote describing the organizational plan of European streets, if you took some time to describe them. What I think you mean is the grid-like style of urban planning – exemplified by no city as well as New York!
Then, I think you should make the terms of the comparison explicit. The rooms of the house are slapdash, unplanned, and the house has no grid or map – it develops organically, over time. The European city, on the other hand, is all straight lines and ninety-degree angles.
The most important part of this comparison will be to show how it illustrates humans “thinking differently.” Even though we all construct dwellings, the way in which we envision and build them varies drastically between peoples and cultures – or something along those lines.
Agree with Adam. The difference in the treatment of women between European and Sudanese society is a major theme in the book, and deserves some more attention in general, before you get to the specifics of Hosna and Wad Rayyes story. What does Mustafa’s story suggest about European society and how they think differently there?
The argument that the narrator has with Mahjoub and with the rest of the village over Hosna is one of the key disagreements in the novel. He certainly “thinks differently” than they do about the whole business. Can you connect their positions to the larger context? Does the narrator represent the “modernizing” Western social norms that the villagers and their traditional society are struggling to reject?
Try to connect this bigger picture disagreement to the narrator’s argument with the villagers. That would make for a very interesting development of your thesis.
This is an excellent passage to draw into your argument. This is essentially where the narrator himself makes the comparison between a way of looking at the world native to to the village, and “the standards of the European industrial world.” Say more.
Dennis Thompson "The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Head" (16 comments)
Excellent choice of a quote to support your idea, perhaps you could elaborate on how they are connected
Interesting point of looking at both novels as documentary
Mr. Thompson the way you use both stories you elaborate you argument is superb !!! All I can say is “Can’t wait for the end of your paper, if would definitely be interesting to read.”
“Ignorance is an infectious disease….” What a quote !!! Your analysis here is right on point.
You analyzed the the theme of ignorance from every perspective, great job
The quote is clearly relevant, but your argument would be improved if you spelled out the connection explicitly. Take a few sentences to show how Conrad’s point about “the conquest of the earth” demonstrates your argument that “implicit bias” is a necessary part of the “justification and rationalization” that come along with colonial exploitation.
Does Conrad’s novel bear this out? It seems to me that his point gets somewhat muddled in his fascination with Kurtz and the pass he gives to any colonizer who happens to be British.
I can’t help feeling like your opening sentence here might be clarified and edited somewhat.
The first part is crystal clear, though I’m not sure if beginning with such a general third-person statement about humanity is the best opening for an essay. Rather than opening with the widest lens, the most general question, it would perhaps be better to start with a more specific point.
I am a bit confused about where the sentence goes from there. Can you explain the “pale comparison” we are? How does distraction fit into the rest of your argument?
I think your introduction should get right into the heart of what your paper is about. You have some broad general statements and some questions with a wide scope here. Perhaps you should move more quickly into some of the more relevant material from your second paragraph: the question of colonization, and the justification and rationalization that goes along with it. This would help to tie your arguments more closely to the texts you discuss, which seem of secondary importance in this draft.
This seems to be the place to introduce your Conrad quote about “the conquest of the earth etc.” That way, your arguments will appear to be an analysis of the text.
I certainly think you might find some examples of this “justification and rationalization” in the Conrad. Marlow seems to do a lot of it, even while seeming uncertain about it. There is certainly evidence of a perspective that would consider the Africans in the story as somehow subhuman.
Please don’t start paragraphs with quotations. Your use of the CEA style has much improved, but that is still an important style point. Use transition sentences at the beginning and ending of paragraphs and introduce quotations.
I think you might say more about the perspective on bias that this insincere or weak liberalism suggests. It is still rife with racial bias, but combines it with a smug superiority, as though only others could be biased.
Isn’t that exactly like Marlow, who pretends to criticize “the conquest of the earth,” even while giving England a pass? Perhaps you could make a connection here?
In any case, I feel that this argument about Mustafa’s time in Europe in Season of Migration to the North is not so much a conclusion as another body paragraph. Your conclusion should return explicitly to your thesis and tie all of your arguments together. I think you need another paragraph here.
I’m still curious about what this title means. You can’t give it a title as interesting as that and then not explain.
Perhaps explaining your title would give you a more concrete thesis, and help to tie all of your arguments together. You could then return to the idea of “the lion’s head” in your transition sentences (many of which still need to be written) and it would make your essay feel more focused.
This is a first draft mistake, it should say we are a pale comparison to what we think we really are, the distraction is our own self-importance, we are hopelessly distracted by ourselves what else do people think about but themselves.
As a clinician if I have ten sick patients who are afflicted with an unnamed pathology,two of them hate each other,one is in love with another and so on, my job as a clinician is not to examine the interpersonal interactions of my patients,it is to isolate and identify the cause of the sickness,how the afflicted interact is incidental. What causes people to commit such horrors,why does this not fascinate people as much as it fascinates myself? But I can see your point, I think it takes away from a clear a concise diagnosis however.
This is going to require some thought on my part,good one!! Not liking you right now Professor!! lol
Warlesky Fernandez (16 comments)
I think that you should state your thesis in more clear way
Your analysis of the quotes is very thorough
I think that you should spend more time exploring his past and this quote. You ask was Saeed renouncing to his life, I believe that there is more to it
Did you answer all the questions you asked in you introductory paragraph?
Overall, I really enjoyed reading your paper. You definitely know how to keep reader’s attention, and I believe that except for some parts of the essay where you can elaborate, it is a great piece of work.
[ like the old saying goes “curiosity killed the cat” and that cat was the narrator who was dying to know who was Mustafa Sa’eed, what was he doing in this small village who the narrator thought of as being his.]
This is quite a perceptive point. The narrator’s curiosity about Mustafa does work against him. What exactly does it kill, I might ask?
[Touching words written by Mustafa Saeed because who in their sane mind would leave their family in charge of a total stranger.]
Though I really like the ironic tone you take in your first sentence here, I think you might connect the two points more clearly. 1) What is wrong with this guy? and 2) why would he leave the narrator, a stranger, in charge of his family’s future? That might mean separating these two points out into two sentences.
[These are the question that at the moment are unanswered]
Again, these are questions that you can start answering here in your introduction with a strongly worded thesis.
[Was he tired of life, or was that the way of him to simply pay for the death of his previous harlots]
You suggest two possible interpretations (answers) that you might take up for a thesis statement right here.
[Perhaps because in some way he grew some sort of liking towards the narrator, or maybe he saw himself as the young man the narrator was]
You should assert your argument here more confidently, without the “perhaps.” You can make this interpretation the subject of the paragraph; begin with Claims based on it, and then use Evidence and Analysis to prove them.
[“Pangs of wanderlust” means a painful emotion from the strong desire to travel. ]
Excellent work with this close analysis. Don’t you think, though, that the lust part of wanderlust perhaps connects it not just to travel but to Mustafa’s womanizing in Europe? If so, the narrator might be a good candidate to protect his sons from this affliction, as he (like his grandfather) is not interested in having more than one wife.
[“I know you to be suffering from undue curiosity where I am concerned―something for I can find no justification.” ]
Remember, by the end of the novel the narrator decides that Mustafa has intentionally chosen him, told him his story, given him the key to his secret room, and made him responsible for his family – for selfish reasons. Do you think he really “can find no justification” for the narrator’s interest? Or is he really trying to stoke the narrator’s interest, so that the narrator will “immortalize him”? (128) In that case, he may just being coy here.
[Perhaps here Mustafa is trying to explain to the narrator that in his past life he committed things of which he was not proud of and those were actions that were a burden to him.]
This reading would follow one of the possible theses you suggested in your intro: that his death, and perhaps his life in the village and secrecy about his past, was the “price he paid” for his crimes. I agree with Patrycja that this passage and Mustafa’s secrecy deserves more attention.
[The narrator himself, although was given the duty to share such important information with his family, did know who Mustafa was. He was extremely curious to know but had not had the opportunity to do so.]
Does Mustafa know who Mustafa is? He keeps calling himself “a lie.” Perhaps we should not believe the stories that he tells the narrator about himself later in the book.
[Unfortunately, along came the narrator whose curiosity created uncertainty in Mustafa’s life. ]
Here you are getting back to the question of why Mustafa did what he did and why he disappeared. Wanderlust seems to be part of the answer; but the narrator’s arrival is another part of it. Mustafa’s life in the village can’t go on the way it has been, once the narrator has discovered his secret past. The narrator has, perhaps, taken away the last place in the world where Mustafa thought he was safe, where he could hide and forget. Does the narrator’s curiosity kill Mustafa?
Once you have a more concrete thesis, it will be much easier to write a satisfying conclusion. This one doesn’t seem to conclude very much at all.
Jimmy Amah "The Sudanese Hero who Journeyed and Conquered His Colonial Masters" (14 comments)
I seem to not understand what your overall thesis is however you do make good points. I am not too sure if you are trying to compare and contrast Heart of Darkness to Season of Migration to the North because it is not mentioned in any paragraphs besides the introduction.
After I finish reading your first paragraph, I don’t know what is your thesis statement. Is it the last sentence of this paragraph? But it seems like a fact, I don’t think it is a claim.
[This was a great conquest and endeavor which he succeeded at. This was his main passion and his greatest achievements.]
Even though this may support your claim, I don’t think fooling with women is an achievement. You can say he is good at talking jokes and women think he is attractive, but luring them to his bed and dumping them is probably not what a hero should do.
[He recounts his methods to Salih with the tone of a hero who had achieved some great achievements.]
What kind of great achievement? Sleeping with many females such that two had committed suicide?
Generally speaking, You mentioned that Mustafa is a hero, I think you may need more evidence to support your idea. From my point of view, playing with women is not a kind of achievement.
[Mustafa Saeed viewed his whole upbringing and travel to England as a huge heroic achievement. ]
You have an interesting perspective on the novel. Though Mustafa certainly does seem to be bragging, at least in part, I don’t think you could say that his experience was nothing but “a huge heroic achievement.” He gets convicted of murder, loses everything and goes to jail for seven years. The very people who he studied and taught with as a lecturer prosecute him in court. Like Kurtz, his journey leads him to discover an inner darkness that troubles his sense of himself and the world. He experiences “the horror” that Kurtz describes, and probably commits suicide. Though I think your perspective on Mustafa is valuable, it would be more convincing if you considered some of the nuances in his story.
[“I viewed the vast world in the geography lessons as though it were a chess board. ]
This might be an opportunity for some close reading. What does the metaphor suggest? In a chess game, you try to conquer your opponent by outsmarting him. You use your intelligence to think ahead and lay traps for him. Both sides are clearly distinguished, and they even have colors – black and white. What does it suggest to think about the world like this?
I don’t think that using the first-person “I” here helps your argument at all. Perhaps your essay would be strengthened by instead considering why such an “achievement” might be appealing to Mustafa, and to the people of a country that had been under colonial rule. I think you could write more about the “servant and master relationship” you mention here.
[As Saeed said “I got to know the pubs of Chelsea, the clubs of Hampstead, and the gatherings of Bloomsbury. I would read poetry talk of religion and philosophy, discuss paintings, and say things about the spirituality of the east. I would try everything possible to entice a woman to my bed then I would go after some news prey.” (p.26)]
You have already used this quote, I believe. Be careful not to repeat yourself.
[This was his main passion and his greatest achievements. He viewed it as vengeance and payback to the wrongs of the colonialists. He performed it so without care of the females, even leading to the suicide of two English females Jean Morris and Ann Hammond.]
I really think that you should consider the negative aspects of Mustafa’s behavior, if only to make your argument more balanced. I would be more convinced if you combined an in-depth description of his motives (overturning the master-servant relationship) with a nuanced portrayal of his actions, which certainly had some terrible consequences, both for him and for the women he seduced.
I think your CEA style falls apart a little in this paragraph, and also that your analysis could go further. You don’t attempt to describe why Mustafa is so intent on seducing these women. Neither do you analyze how he does it. His preparations recall the exoticism with which he entices the women, essentially othering himself so as to appeal to their romanticized racist ideas about Africa. That seems relevant.
Again, it seems hard to describe these deaths as the consequences of any kind of “heroic” act. Misguided and tragic, rather. Your essay would be more powerful if you considered that perspective.
You don’t analyze the quotation in this paragraph. Doesn’t the “insensitivity” that Mustafa accuses himself of suggest that his perspective on Europe and how he behaved there has changed? He has ignored the “sweet tune” that was England; he has missed its real beauty. You should analyze his self-accusation.
Your conclusion here just seems to repeat some of the points you have made earlier. The problem, I think, is that you need to develop a thesis with more at stake than the one you have here. This would lead you to a more satisfying resolution.
I see two big structural problems with your essay: 1) You present it as a comparison between the two books, but only write about Season of Migration. Ignoring Heart of Darkness is fine, but I think you should do a close analysis of a passage in Season then. You have a number of quotations here, which you might analyze more closely.
2) You need to develop a thesis with some more nuance than just “Mustafa was a hero.” Personally, I think your essay would be more interesting if you considered some of the tragic consequences of Mustafa’s actions. That might lead you to develop a more interesting thesis, along the lines of: “Why did Mustafa hurt so many people?” You suggest it was the legacy of colonialism and the desire to overturn the “master-servant” relationship. Make that the thesis of your essay, and you would have a much more interesting paper.
Joanna Katehis "Caught Between the Lust for a Woman and the Yearn for a Mother" (13 comments)
Joanna,
Is your thesis that there is a connection to Mustafa’s inability to love anyone other than in a sexual manner and not feeling affection from his mother? If so, you should put this in your introduction. I think that after the passage, you jump right into your claims.
If this is your thesis, I think there are two parts to it…. 1- that Mustafa cannot love anyone other than in a sexual manner and:
2- That this is because he didn’t receive affection from his mother.
You did a great job on proving the 2nd part, but you need more evidence on the 1st part…. You should explain how or why (show evidence) of Mustafa not being able to love anyone other than in a sexual manner.
Overall, good job! and unique thesis idea!
Hi Joanna,
I think you did a great job. I can follow the body paragraphs of your essay but I am not sure about your thesis statement. I think it will be better if you made your thesis more clear. I like the way you wrote. The organisation is good. Following the CEA format. This made me feel easy to follow your essay and wont get lost. Good job!
Joanna,
This is very interesting essay. You are really good in analysing evidence.
I feel like you could discuss other women he encounters with (Ann, Isabella..) in separate body paragraph and connect it to your thesis. For example, mention their death because of Mustafa.
I think you need to work little bit on your thesis and organization of the essay.
Well done!
Rose,
Thanks for the pointers !I tend to ramble too much making it very easy for me to lose my point and structure. I’ll work on making my first part clearer.
Joanna
Rose,
Thanks for the pointers !I tend to ramble too much making it very easy for me to lose my point and structure. I’ll work on making my first part clearer.
Joanna
Cheuk,
Thanks for your feedback! I’ll work on making my thesis clearer and I’m glad you like my structure 🙂
Joanna
This is a straight-forward way to begin your essay. I think, however, for it to function as a thesis paragraph, you will need to answer your own question. That will alert the reader to where your argument is heading.
[This may have something to do with]
Be assertive. You don’t need to use this conditional language. Argue that it DOES have to do with his relationship with his mother.
[There is no doubt Mustafa’s mother loved him, she simply did not know how to show her love for him in the way a young boy may have needed growing up. ]
I think you need to analyze your evidence here in more detail. First of all, how do you know she loved him? It seems to me that a lack of love is exactly their problem. Second of all, how might not “being ordered about” and not “talking much” affect him? Your conclusion to this paragraph seems to get a bit closer to the point
Do you really need such a long quotation, if you have already included the entire passage above?
[It seems as if he’s constantly looking for the stirred up affection that was awoken when Mrs. Robinson hugged and kissed him as a young boy; filling a void through his promiscuity.]
Careful not to use semicolons where there should be a comma. Semicolons separate complete independent clauses, and “filling a void etc” would not work as an independent sentence. I think in fact you might write more on this subject here. What exactly is the “void” he is trying to fill?
What about her “many masks?” Mustafa’s mother is a strange character. Why is she so distant and unknowable? Why is her face a mask, then many masks, then like the ocean? You say, “going from a relationship like that,” but a relationship like what?
Though I think you’re correct in pointing to Mustafa’s relationship with his mother as the source of his emotional problems, I think you might do more to try to explain what’s actually going on with him.
You end your essay ambiguously: “It can be argued etc” Rather than leave things here, you should make one of the arguments you suggest. You might develop on your thesis, and then revise your points throughout to reflect a more specific reading, which, perhaps, can describe Mustafa’s problem in more detail. It’s easy to say that it’s “common” for people with troubled relationships with their parents to grow up to be troubled individuals. Can you get more specific and explain Mustafa’s case?
Adam Marr "The Invisible Bridge Between Cultures" (13 comments)
Adam, your not in my group but i wanted to tell you that i really enjoyed reading your essay. i was originally going to approach the same topic but was overwhelmed with how to attack it. Personally, I think you did an AMAZING job.
Thank you Holly 🙂
[never be bridged, upon closer]
Be careful not to connect two complete independent clauses with a comma; the example quoted above, as well as the previous sentence, should both use either semicolons or periods rather than commas.
I would suggest semicolons, as the bipartite sentence structure would naturally fit the paradoxical idea of your thesis, that cultural differences are both very real and ultimately ineffable.
[Yet Mustafa himself, happy to tell stories of “desserts of golden sands and jungles where nonexistent animals called out to one another” (Salih 32-3), does little to enlighten their points of view. ]
In fact, doesn’t he emphasize cultural difference in the way he romanticizes the East as essentially mysterious and other?
What about that strange moment when the narrator contradicts the Englishman, and the Englishman asks him, though he knows better, if he is Mustafa’s son? This is “an instant outside the boundaries of time and place” and perhaps also outside the boundaries of cultural identity that separate these two men (47). When the narrator writes that things appear “unreal,” what does he mean? What does it have to do with the xenophobia and self-definition?
[Marlow travels from Europe to experience African culture ]
I know what you’re doing with this transition sentence, but be careful with this sort of unspecific filler language. Though you definitely do want to shift from the African experience in Europe to the European experience in Africa, it seems a bit ridiculous to say that Marlow wanted “to experience African culture.” The whole “civilizing” mission thing was predicated on a lack of African culture, and Marlow seems as little interested in the Africans themselves as anyone else is (except maybe for Kurtz).
This paragraph could use some work throughout, both on the sentence level and in terms of ideas. I’m not sure Marlow’s opinion of Kurtz is “reduced” at the end of the book, or at least, that the quote you choose, “he has kicked himself loose etc” reflects a drop in esteem. Doesn’t his opinion of Kurtz represent his opinion of the entire pseudo-philanthropical mission of the Europeans? Also, I can guess what “the dominated supplicant guest in the father land” means, but I think you could rephrase that.
While I see your point, doesn’t the fact that they are having this debate – and defending their “tradition” from outside influence – reflect the fact that cultural boundaries are already changing? They would not be having a conversation like this if they didn’t feel that this aspect of Sudanese traditional culture made them different from the rest of the world. This is clearly one of the “great divides” – and yet I think they sense that their position will become untenable. Your last sentence here makes a nice point though.
[treat the natives of Africa in a dominant way]
Again, this sort of language doesn’t help your argument. You might as well just say that they “enslave” them, turn them into “property,” or make them unpaid laborers.
In fact, the Europeans would probably have used the same words that the men of the village in Salih’s novel use: they would think of themselves as guardians.
I think that your comparison here – between treating women as possessions in Sudan and Africans as slaves in Congo – is a fascinating point. Can you make the connection more explicit? What is the only crime that the poor women of Salih’s village commit, other than being born at the wrong time and place? Is this a point where cultural boundaries fall, i.e. injustice can be found everywhere?
[Kurtz and Mustafa Sa’eed are examples of adapting to one’s new surroundings which is further proof that it is the environment that shapes the culture, not the people behind it.]
This seems to me to be an altogether new point in your essay and perhaps an avenue for expansion. How do the cultural-boundary crossers like Mustafa and Kurtz change your notion of cultural difference? You should probably tackle this subject earlier in the paper; these characters who have crossed over are perhaps an easier way to describe those “invisible bridges” in your title.
injustice can be found everywhere?
That is a great question and one that deserves to be explored.
I felt clumsy writing this, as if I wanted my opinion to be true so badly that I forced a quote in to fit my argument, rather than analyzing properly. I will go over this.
Agreed.
Thanks for your input, You touched on the areas that I was not confident in already myself so I will direct my energies into fixing that up.
Patrycja Zalewska (12 comments)
In my opinion a good way to expand your work would be by elaborating more on certain ideas that could be further developed. In this paragraph you can perhaps go more in depth with the different levels of Marlow’s struggle. You can continue by saying “and he faced it on so many different levels, for instance ……… ” and conclude your idea with sustainable proof.
On this paragraph you definitely hit a “Grand Slam.” You did a great job relating Kurtz to the theme of the novel. The way you did it was with very smooth entrance and it definitely mixed and combine what you said in you first paragraph.
Overall I think you do a really nice job coordinating your ideas which is totally great because it keeps the reader concentrated on your thesis. As far as your concern regarding the development of your paper, once you have completed your essay read your work carefully so that you find paragraphs where you can elaborate more on your ideas rather than leaving it to the interpretation of reader. For instance in paragraph 8 you can say more about Marlow’s struggle. This will indeed help you with the development of your paper.
[ He unknowingly crosses the thin line between sanity and madness, reflecting on one of many themes of the novel, madness. The absurdity of insanity plays many functions in the novel, but most importantly is connected to the ideas of absolute power and moral consciousness.]
I think your analysis of “sanity and madness” in the novel should take up the question of Kurtz’s mad “soul.” There is something mysterious about the idea that his “intelligence was perfectly clear” but that “his soul was mad.” I think that you might interpret it in a number of ways, and some of them might be quite disturbing.
Perhaps Conrad is suggesting that Kurtz loses his “moral consciousness,” as you put it. “Absolute power” and the temptation it offers Kurtz plays a role in that loss, certainly. That has often been the case in the most horrendous of those crimes you mention we humans have been committing since the dawn of time. Perhaps this is what you mean when you say that Kurtz “embodies” the evil of an entire civilization.
I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “the absurdity of insanity” here. This might require some more explanation. Perhaps you mean that Kurtz sensed the absurdity of his own own situation, and therefore, was not a lunatic? Say more.
As nicely written as this introduction paragraph is, I’m not entirely certain what your thesis statement is. Perhaps it is the claim that Kurtz embodies the evil of Western Civilization? If so, you should emphasize his symbolic significance to drive the point home.
Excellent passage to choose. I don’t think you need to quote it in its entirety here at the beginning of your paper, however.
I think you can make Kurtz’s report the subject of this entire paragraph. Kurtz’s report and your analysis of it might then be the first point of your argument – one which seems clearly linked, to me, to that “perfectly clear” intelligence in your passage.
The fact that Kurtz could write this wonderful article – Marlow repeatedly praises it – is another example of how brilliant and talented he is; but the words he scrawls at the bottom of the report reveal how “mad” his soul has gone – that is to say, the loss of his moral consciousness. The passage you have chosen to analyze also mentions both his eloquence and sincerity, which seem also to be contrasted in the brilliant report and the devastating conclusion.
I think you can define this lost “sense of reality” and rejection of “the principles of the civilized world” a bit more. This is one of the strongest paragraphs in your essay, but I still want to know how this madness is different from insanity. Is it a kind of moral insanity?
Also, you might tie this argument back to your passage more closely. When you say that he “lost control over himself,” does that refer to him “struggling blindly” with himself? How we are told that he “looked within himself?” What about all this makes him seem like such an “inconceivable mystery” to Marlow?
I wonder if you can make your reading of these symbolic elements more central to your argument. Does darkness represent the spiritual madness you have been describing? It is of course when he looks “within himself” into his inner darkness that Kurtz goes mad. There is a way in which this “inner darkness” blends into the “wilderness” that he finds outside himself, and the metaphor of the dark heart of the continent. Perhaps you can describe some of this symbolism beginning in your introduction.
You might make this issue the thesis of your essay. How does the book lead us to “question the meaning of morality,” to see the “double morality” you describe, or to face the lack of moral clarity Kurtz experiences? Does it lead us towards the moral darkness of the title?
[their lack of civism]
I’m not sure what you mean here. Civility? Or civilization? Perhaps it also shows the inner emptiness of the morality which the Europeans thought would be such a gift for all those unsuspecting peoples in distant corners of the world.
Here you are back to the idea in your introduction: that Kurtz the character symbolically “embodies” the experience of Europe as colonizer around the world. I can’t help feeling that, if this is the thesis of your essay, you will have to keep it more in focus throughout the course of your arguments.
Remember one good strategy for doing this is to return to your thesis in transition sentences – that is to say, when making claims at the beginning and ending of each paragraph. I think all of your arguments can be made to show that this thesis is true, but there is work still to do.
Yes!
It is as the old saying goes “Absolute power corrupts absolutely” I believe we are only as moral as our consequences,remove the consequences of our actions and most revert to a less evolved level,you know animals.
Jonathan Guerrero "Cultural Misogyny" (11 comments)
This is your thesis right? i think it needs to be stated at the end of the Intro paragraph.
[as Mustafa is recounting his days living in London, he talks about Ann Hammond a woman he meet abroad. He states “She proved an easy prey.”](27)
[ He later then describes both of their experience walking through the passageway to the bedroom stating “I knew the short road along which we walked together to the bedroom was, for her, a road of light rodent with the aroma of magnanimity and devotion, but which to me was the last step before attaining the peak of selfishness.” ](36)
Perhaps you might not want to include this long quotation in your introduction paragraph. Rather, state your thesis as clearly as possible, with only a minimal amount of evidence – simply because a quote like this deserves to be analyzed in some detail, and you can’t get into the details so much in the intro.
I’m a bit uncertain what you mean by “the body of the book.” Say more here. If you’re suggesting that this quotation represents the book’s position, explain that. It might become a particularly strong thesis statement.
I think the first sentence here is your thesis. However, I think you might complicate the idea a bit. I agree with Ray that, during the course of the novel, the narrator is waking up to the misogyny present in the traditional way of life of the village, and learning to reject it. It seems that part of the purpose of the book – which was written in Arabic for Sudanese readers in the 1960s – was to wake its readers up to that injustice as well. Perhaps you might consider that nuance in your thesis.
You might consider the larger metaphor at work here, that Mustafa is somehow re-enacting the crimes of the colonizers of Sudan or taking revenge upon them. This is certainly present in the hunting metaphor you describe. Remember that Europeans went to Africa explicitly to hunt, and their is something very ironic about an African going to Europe in search of “prey” which recalls a long history of exploitation.
Remember that these are stereotypes that Europeans had about “the East,” which Mustafa invokes intentionally. Europeans would naturally think of “burning sandalwood and incense” in relation to the Middle East. Mustafa uses his victim’s romanticized Orientalist fantasies to persuade them. That is part of how he “entraps” them, and an important nuance.
This is a point at which you might discuss the narrator and his problematic position. Why doesn’t he marry Hosna himself? It is the narrator that Wad Rayyes is accusing when he says, “This tribe of yours isn’t any good.” The narrator seems to dislike Wad Rayyes very much.
One reason he doesn’t marry Hosna himself is perhaps that he already has a wife. She is almost entirely unmentioned in the novel – why? Is the absence of any description of her – and of the narrator’s daughter – another example of misogyny? Or is there some mystery about his intentions towards Hosna?
I think you might say more about how women are specifically described as the property of men in the traditional lifestyle of the village. This is quite intentional on the narrator’s part and, again, I think is meant to suggest the injustice of this way of life to the reader. Here again it is useful to remember when and for whom this book was written.
I think that paragraphs 7,8, and 9 might be shortened or combined somehow. They are all on the same subject, the powerlessness of women in this traditional society. Perhaps you might get to the quotation here about “how life is run” in the village faster, as it seems a bit redundant by this time. I don’t think you need three paragraphs to make your point.
This is key. You have explained their hypocrisy quite well. However, you don’t mention that the narrator disagrees with them quote forcefully. He calls them all “mad,” and describes them acting like “accomplices in some dire crime.” This suggests a critical position that you might consider.
Is the book meant to criticize this sort of behavior and treatment of women? Is it meant to inspire outrage in the reader? This is another point where I think you should bring the narrator’s position into your argument.
The question remaining to be answered, I think, is why it shows this? What is the purpose of this portrayal of misogyny?
Rose Porfido (10 comments)
Rose, I couldn’t agree more that while there are differences all over the world – we are all the same. Therefore, I LOVE the thesis statement and I think you tied your claims and evidence into your thesis very nicely while explaining the “rootedness” of one’s culture and the comparison the author made between the character and the palm tree.
Key and point in your conclusion – I think we should all start traveling more and sharing the similarities/differences of each culture. 🙂
Hi Rose.
I think you really did a great job. I like the thesis statement of the essay. You show the contrast in your thesis and tell us that the differences and similarities. The claims you made in the body paragraph are well-developed and well-explained especially I like you said comparing himself with a tree. You showed the differences and explained the relationship of palm tree with the man.
Your conclusion is unique and interesting. I didnt think about this type of conclusion before. I think I will try to use similar conclusion like yours in my essay too. You showed the further development of the essay in the conclusion. I really like that.
Rose,
I really like your essay. The thesis statement is clear and body paragraphs are organized according to CEA format. I couldn’t find anything to complain about. )))
However, I feel you could make it even better by introducing and analyzing more the passage from page 93. As a reader I want to get more explanation about this passage.
Overall very strong essay!
I think you might come up with a more engaging opening sentence than this one. Remember that your first sentence should catch the reader’s attention. You don’t need to include the passage you are analyzing or even to refer to it. Rather, begin with an affirmative statement that brings us right to the heart of your essay.
Same point here. Your sentence here conveys your point perfectly, but transition sentences function very much like first sentences. Draw me into the metaphor. You might describe the tree, or the narrator who is thinking of it. You might begin to discuss rootedness. Style often consists simply of making your sentences as direct, lively and original as possible.
What about the people who are more like “storm swept feathers”? There are certainly people who lack a sense of rootedness – the narrator has been one of them, and perhaps will lose his sense of rootedness during the course of the novel.
Perhaps even these “storm swept feathers” had a home and were rooted somewhere once. If so, that is a nuance that you might consider here. I think you might make your point with a little more sense of complexity. Certainly, more “differs from person to person” than simply where they call home and hang their hat.
There is a complication of the tree metaphor – not in your passage, I know, but later in the novel. It comes at the end, when the narrator finds Mahjoub separating a palm tree shoot from “the trunk of its mother without breaking its roots,” and swearing at it as he works (108). It is a violent image of being uprooted, and it seems to describe how the narrator feels at this later stage in the novel. It is possible that he becomes uprooted himself during the story.
Yes, but this is vastly different from what the narrator says at the end of the novel.
“Hosna wasn’t mad … She was the sanest woman in the village – it’s you who’re mad,” he says (109).
The madness he accuses them off separates him from them. He lives in Khartoum now, and is furious with them. His idea that “the differences are narrowing,” best expressed in your passage, seems hopelessly idealistic and impossible then. If anything, the differences grow – at least between him and the people of the village.
Later events in the novel again make this passage seem overly optimistic. “Again we shall be as we were – ordinary people,” he writes. But when we actually get to the description of what happens in Sudan after the colonial powers have gone, “the new rulers of Africa” that the narrator describes are anything but ordinary people (98). They are hopelessly corrupt hypocrites, described almost like strange animals. Neither do the poor villagers of his home town seem like ordinary people to him, but rather, he says they avoid him like “accomplices in some dire crime” (101).
[The narrator is not looking at colonization as a bad thing.]
I think that his perspective on colonization is a bit more complex than this – or, at least, that it grows more complex during the course of the novel. One way of reading the novel is as his struggle to maintain the perspective – different but still the same – which you describe very well in your essay. However, I think that the narrator fails and by the end of the novel would hardly talk this way any longer.
My main suggestion for your essay is to try to include some of the more complex position that the narrator describes later in the novel, or at least to foreshadow the crisis that will come. The book begins with the positive message you describe, but I think it ends with a far different – and much more interesting – perspective.
Karen Oliveira (10 comments)
I think this sentence – “As a mystery to both …” – might be edited for clarity. I understand the point, and it is an important one, but there must be a way to say it more distinctly. Certainly, you don’t need to qualify your claim by mentioning your own “initial impression.”
This is quite a strong thesis paragraph. Your opening sentence is exactly the right style: strikingly direct, and right to the point of the essay.
You might write a bit more about how the suspense of the novel is developed from the mysterious figure, Mustafa, and the reader’s desire to learn his story. You suggest as much, but that is a really important point and deserves a bit more emphasis. This is also the reason why part of Mustafa’s story is withheld until the end of the novel – though the story of Hosna and Wad Rayyes takes center stage by then.
Remember not to begin paragraphs with quotations. If your first paragraph is an introduction, you will want to have a transition sentence, beginning your first body paragraph, before you quote the poem.
Interesting point. Do you think that this might be another example of Mustafa living “a lie?” Remember he accuses himself of being “a lie” again and again, particularly in the courtroom scene. It is quite a mysterious thing to say and perhaps you can bring some analysis of that into your argument.
I think you can say more about “this twist,” when Mustafa himself becomes the narrator. Perhaps you can relate it to the “first impression” that you began writing about in your introduction.
That thesis, that the narrator and the readers’ first impressions of Mustafa are deceiving, has been lost a little bit – but I think it is totally relevant here. Does Mustafa finally answer the questions raised by our first impression of him?
You might also consider the kind of pain that the poem is describing. The “women of Flanders” in the poem are waiting at a train station for men to return from the war, but many of the men whom they are waiting for have been killed.
There is also quite a bit of leaving and returning in Mustafa’s story. When he recites this poem, is he thinking of the women he has abandoned in Europe? Is he planning to disappear again and abandon Hosna? Does it make him think specifically of Isabella Seymour?
This analysis of the poem should come sooner, I feel. Your reading is quite interesting. If “his mind was a war” are the “women of Flanders” that he is thinking of the victims of that war – that is to say, his victims?
I’m not sure you need to say quite so much about war in general. Rather, stick with war as a metaphor for Mustafa’s emotional conflict. Remember, his relationships with these European women are a sort of revenge taken for an actual war, that of the British against the Sudanese resistance.
It seems to me that your argument has strayed from the thesis with which your essay began: the deceptive first impression we get of Mustafa. Perhaps that can be remedied by showing that the Mustafa we discover, when we learn more about him, is a much more dangerous figure than he first seemed – a murderer, even.
This is an interesting point. Can you say more about the evolution of the narrator’s position? How has learning Mustafa’s story, becoming the guardian of Mustafa’s children, and failing to prevent Hosna’s tragedy, affected him?
I can’t help but feeling like this conclusion could be revised. I think you might write a more nuanced conclusion if you consider how the narrator’s perspective on Mustafa changes throughout the course of the novel. From the first impression, to the entrance into Mustafa’s secret room and the final revelation about his relationship with Jean Morris, the narrator’s opinion and interest in him has changed quite a bit – while his opinion and interest in the village has also changed. Perhaps you can make some of these connections, and show how “first impressions,” important though they may be, are often revised.
Jing Lin (10 comments)
This was a great essay to read. I believe you should expand more on the conclusion. For the introduction, I think you should mention the key points that you have already referred to in each paragraph of your essay. Overall, it was a clear and compelling piece to read.
Awesome !
The first sentence of your essay should do two things: 1) it should catch the reader’s attention; and 2) it should get straight to the point of your thesis. I think you might revise this opening sentence a bit. Instead of this general information about the book and the author, perhaps it would be better to get right to the specifics of your argument.
I’m not quite certain what you mean by “frame narrative” here. I think it would be worth explaining in a bit more detail, especially if you think that the “frame” reveals something about your thesis on the status of women.
However, I think that your introductory paragraph is quite concise and clear. There remain a few small editing details to clean up. Try to make the sentences as precise and correct as possible.
Are you missing part of the quote here? I don’t understand.
Excellent close reading. This is the sort of attention to language that I was hoping you would do.
Or that women get their jobs for them? I think that more might even be said about the role that women seem to play in the business of colonialism in Heart of Darkness.
Does Conrad accuse women of being involved – behind the scenes – in this ugly business that he calls earlier “the conquest of the world?” His aunt gets him his job, but the two secretaries dressed in black at the Company office are frightening figures, and they represent the Company itself, to some extent.
Though you are right that the language here suggests women play a passive role, I think you might expand your argument here to include this wider perspective.
That’s an interesting point that I had not considered. You might compare with a description of the women’s clothing back in Europe. The only one I recall is the description of the two secretaries at the Company, who I believe are dressed in black. That would make a stark contrast with the description you quote above.
Can you write a little bit more about how you see the two words, “superb” and “savage,” in relation to this comparison between African and European women? They are both used to describe an African woman, and while I see why the word “savage” is laden with racial and cultural bias, I’m not so clear on “superb.” I wonder if Marlow would call any European women “superb” in this way? None of the women in this novel, I think.
I am not convinced by this paragraph. While it was certainly true that women did not join the workforce in Europe until after the second World War, there is not much evidence of this in the novel. In fact, we meet those two women at the Company who are working.
Kurtz’s fiance is certainly not so grief-stricken because she has lost her means of survival. Remember that her family is wealthy, and Kurtz was in the Congo, in part, to get rich enough to marry her.
You might think more about Kurtz’s fiance’s grief. It sounds much more sincere than you how you describe it. Also, why does she want so much to believe that the last thing he said was her name? What would it mean to her if his dying thoughts had been of her?
This is perhaps true, but it seems like you might say more about why Marlow withholds the truth from Kurtz’s fiance. He seems to think that she should be protected from the ugly truth about the “darkness” in the world, in a way that men, and his readers, don’t need to be. Is this sexism?
It certainly invites a lot of questions. Does he assume women will not be able to stand the uncomfortable story that he needs to tell? Does he assume his readers will be men? Is this another example of the “inequality of status” you have been exploring?
This conclusion is so general that it seems not very closely attached to your essay. Stick to your thesis here, gender inequality and the portrayal of women. There is no need to write about the novel in such a general sense.
Holly Ivey (10 comments)
Thanx! your comments were super helpful and similar to the professor’s . i’ve been developing the draft over the last few days with them in mind.
Your introduction paragraph is quite well written. However, I am afraid you may be mistaking summary for introduction. Recapitulating the plot of the novel, while necessary at times, can easily distract your reader from the particular argument you intend to make.
I think you might shorten this extended summary of the novel at least by half. Introduction paragraphs are often quite brief, and you may want to save some of this material for your later paragraphs. You can assume that your reader is familiar with the novel, and then only summarize the plot where it is absolutely necessary for the purposes of a point you are making.
You can get to the main subject of your paper – the river – in your first sentence, I think. Begin with the scene and the metaphor you intend to investigate. Maybe begin by describing the thing itself, if you feel. You will only need some brief reference to the rest of the novel’s plot, at least in your introduction.
I agree with Ray here and think that more might be said on this point about the river as oppressor.
It certainly organizes their lives; it waters their fields, and powers their pumps; it serves as their primary mode of transportation; it holds the deserts at bay. Side note: remember the “fertile crescent” from World History, where human civilization was born on the banks of the Nile, where seasonal flooding made agriculture possible for the first time. This is that same place, ten-thousand years later, basically.
It is certainly an oppressor in the sense that a number of people drown in it each time it floods, including, perhaps, Mustafa.
I’m not quite certain how this paragraph follows from your last point, unless in regards to the way “the new leaders of Africa” plundered their own countries natural resources in just the same style that the colonial powers had done before them.
It is perhaps not for nothing that narrator has just arrived from Khartoum on the steamer when he describes these new leaders. This time, however, Mahjoub is the only on there to meet him. The rest of the village is no longer desperate to ask him questions about Europe – and Mahjoub seems to want the latest political gossip from Khartoum more than anything.
It is also interesting to remember that the village’s main political organization is essentially tasked with allocating the village’s most important resource – river water – equally among the farmers. So the river is also at the center of their local, and perhaps national, political lives.
Mustafa, however, organized a fleet of lorries to bypass the river trade and import goods from Khartoum by land – so as to prevent local traders from inflating prices. Not sure if that helps.
I still don’t understand “the grander metaphor,” as you see it. This is important. You should try to make the terms, or component parts, of the metaphor as clear as possible. What represents what? How is the metaphor functioning? How does it help us to reimagine the novel?
Excellent description. How does it tie in to the river as metaphor? Does the river symbolize tradition? Or the passing of time and change? Or both?
Again, this seems like an unnecessary recapitulation of the plot.
I think you might connect the river seen to the narrator’s emotional dilemma a bit more slowly. It feels, here, like a lot of quotes come all at once, after almost none at all before it.
Perhaps you might use these quotes to describe the scene, and thereby describe the parts of the metaphor: he is caught between north and south, east and west, youth and adulthood, tradition and modernity, an idealized past and a bleak future, etc.
In any case, you’ve got some signification passages from the book here, and might analyze them a bit more closely. In particular, being caught in the middle seems to require some further explanation.
I am fascinated by your reading of this final realization of the narrator. I think you might get some quotes from the novel to help you make your argument more clear. In particular, his final cries for help and his desire to spend as long as he can with a few people seem like important resolutions.
What has happened to him? Has he grown up, in a sense? I would love to see you use evidence from the text to argue that he “embraces his own cultural hybridity,” as I think that is possibly an excellent reading. Get some evidence to back it up, though.
The pieces of your argument seem to be much more substantial in this draft – but you’ve still got a lot of work left to do to make them fit together and to fill in all the gaps. Here are some suggestions.
1) center your introduction around your thesis; drop all the plot summary and focus on describing the river, the river metaphor, and your thesis about how it works in the book
2) develop your thoughts on “the grander metaphor” of the river in general, and how it might be connected to the political context; this section still seems inchoate
3) expand your investigation of the narrator’s personal conflict (or forget the grander metaphor and focus on that), by explaining the component parts of the metaphor and explicating at greater length the quotations you draw from the passage where he goes swimming
4) And finally, get some evidence from the text about his final resolution, particularly to support your assertion that he is accepting his “cultural hybridity”
Samantha Chase (9 comments)
[the clear injection of personal emotional complications of his characters]
You may want to specify what you mean here. While I think it’s clear that Salih writes from a perspective colored by “the attitudes of the native culture of the narrator,” I’m not so sure what you mean by “emotional complications.”
[ Regardless, use of women individually and as metaphor is venal and misogynistic, and undermines (this may be intentional) an argument against colonization, which perpetuates and justifies the subjugation of women.]
There remains a lot of work to be done to support this final part of your argument. I think your reaction to the book is a fantastic jumping off point for an essay. But I want you to focus more specifically on how the metaphor for colonialism, as you suggest, undermines any true moral perspective. Rather than make this claim in your introduction, you might save it for a conclusion. If you make the case well enough, the moral shortcomings of the book will be evident by then.
You seem to be going about your argument all at once. This “cognitive dissonance” you describe is quite interesting – if I understand what you mean, and I’m not sure I do. But I’m more confused about how this dissonance is suggested by the author’s lack of repudiation of the violence and injustice that women characters experience. Can you make that connection more clear?
Your argument seems to be based on a premise that Salih’s novel doesn’t manifest sufficient outrage about the terrible treatment of women that it describes – which may be true. However, it seems to me that the gradual shift in the narrator’s perspective on the village is an attempt to inspire exactly that sentiment, outrage. When he calls them all “mad,” he seems outraged (109). When he writes that, “there is no justice or moderation in the world. I feel bitterness and hatred,” that doesn’t sound like a pure “lack of repudiation” to me.
Interestingly, he uses the same phrase, “There is no justice etc” when describing the “new rulers of Africa” (98-99). There may be a connection to be drawn here between his reaction to injustice in the village and his hopelessness in regards to Sudanese independence.
I think you could analyze this quote more closely. You seem to argue that the narrator’s (or author’s) perspective is that of Mustafa’s defense attorney: that his crimes reflect the history of colonialism.
However, Mustafa himself disagrees, and I think that deserves to be considered. What does he mean by claiming that he is “a lie?” I think it is more than just that the pretenses under which he was living in Europe were false. There is a deeper ontological uneasiness to the statement, something which the narrator himself also experiences. Perhaps it is a description of the effects of colonialism; but it seems it might also be an effect of the experience of independence.
Is it related to the “instant outside the boundaries of time and place” when “things appear to [the narrator] as unreal”? (47) Is it an effect of the sudden end of categories of time and place?
[ a metaphor for the effect of colonial endeavors on African societies.]
Your reading of the book deserves to be spelled out in more detail, I think. That means working out exactly how you see this guiding metaphor about colonialism functioning. Perhaps you can replace some of the summary currently in your introduction with a more detailed description of the metaphor, as you see it. You might even explicitly make the subject of your essay an explication of this metaphor about colonialism – and how it “becomes muddied” and, perhaps, suggests a bleak and apathetic perspective on injustice.
The ambiguity of the terms of the metaphor you describe seems problematic to me. In other words, you suggest that both Mustafa and his victims are somehow representative of the colonized. Perhaps it would be simpler to say that the sort of relationships being described are metaphorical representations of the relations between colonizer and colonized. Some clarification of the components of the metaphor seems necessary to me.
In any case, your reading of the larger structural metaphor is going to be your best bet for convincing readers that the narrative perpetuates and justifies the kind of sexism the narrator quite explicitly criticizes. I think you should focus on it.
[This of course has an obvious parallel to that of a colonial country; they enter with promises, they build and create dependence on the part of their colonized host, and abandon them.]
Interesting point. I hadn’t considered that – “obvious” though it may be. This sort of interpretation is what I meant about describing the components or terms of the metaphor. Can you do more of this throughout and really spell it out for us?
[The only different narrative is the story of Jean]
There does seem to be some development of the terms of the metaphor, in this case. I’m not certain how to read it, but I think it deserves lots of further scrutiny.
I’m not convinced by your interpretation here, mostly because it isn’t Salih or even the narrator telling the story of what happened, but Mustafa. Remember that this passage is the withheld portion of Mustafa’s confession to the narrator. The narrator, doesn’t share it until the end of the book – for plot reasons, perhaps – but it is definitely Mustafa speaking.
By this time, the narrator has decided that Mustafa had selfish, insincere motives for revealing his life story, entrusting him with his family, and giving him the key to a room filled with little scraps left intentionally to interest him. He wants the narrator to write his story and “immortalize him,” but the narrator says he does “not have time to proceed further with this farce” (128).
I don’t think his story about Jean Morris is necessarily reliable. It might be more interesting to wonder if Mustafa is attempting a final self-exculpatory lie here, part of “a composite picture which would reflect favourably upon him” (127). In any case, this bizarre and disturbing passage is a big question mark in the book.
Perhaps the narrator’s growing skepticism about Mustafa, his intentions, his story, and his locked room would help to explain it? Remember, he has just criticized Mustafa’s poem as “very poor” for relying too heavily “on antithesis and comparisons; it has no true feeling, no genuine emotion” (127). Exactly the same thing might be said about Mustafa’s entire narrative. In the end, the narrator gets bored with it – not quite outrage, I know, but there is certainly some critical distance between them.
[If this narrative is poetic justice for Jean or the other women who have been colonized by Mustafa, as a statement that nativism is no better than acceptance of colonization]
I’m not at all sure what you mean here. You should try to explain exactly what you see as poetic justice. Are we talking about the irony of the metaphor you have been describing? I don’t see how Hosna’s story might argue that “nativism is no better than acceptance of colonialism.” Are you suggesting that her defending herself against Wad Rayyes is symbolic of colonized countries defending themselves against colonial powers? If so, then the terms of the metaphor have changed, as Mustafa is no longer involved.
This might help you connect your argument to the narrator’s (or even the author’s) perspective, as this is no longer Mustafa telling his story.
[he is blameless, she has tempted him and manipulated him]
This sounds exactly like the sort of lie he might tell in order to win the narrator’s sympathy. Perhaps rather than assuming that the author wants to exculpate Mustafa and blame Jean (which nevertheless seems possible to me), you might compare the death of Jean Morris with that of Hosna, who doesn’t fit this “narrative of a woman ‘asking for it’ that you describe.
There seems to be a pretty stark contrast between Mustafa’s bizarre, romanticized story of violence and the truly horrifying description of Hosna’s death. I might argue that this contrast is intentional and meant to make the reader skeptical that Mustafa’s story is at all reliable – as if we needed more reasons to mistrust him.
Cheuk Hei Leung (9 comments)
Cheuk, Great thesis statement. It can be very easy for someone to lose human ethics when greed blurs their vision.
You also provide great supporting points as to how Kurtz allowed himself to become engulfed by temptation, desire and horror. He didn’t live life to his maximum potential and died in despair, while realizing what he had done at the same time.
Very nice closing as well – good point that the author is trying to show us to that we cannot live in this manner. I agree with the vision that we must be satisfied with what we have, while respecting our fellow human friends.
Your thesis is very clearly stated in your introduction. From this I know what your essay will be about.
I think you can work a bit on the CEA format; In this 2nd paragraph, you should give evidence of “the way Kurtz lived”. You say that Kurtz was a bad example of living, but how? You also say that Kurtz and Marlow are similar, but you should give evidence of this.
In the 3rd paragraph, you say “The author likes to express his idea from some specific actions or scenes in the book” but you should give the evidence of this and explain.
In the 5th paragraph- I am confused on the point you are trying to get across. Try to use the CEA format to make it clearer.
In the 6th paragraph- you say that “‘The brown current’ is the simile in this passage” but you should explain. I am not convinced on your point, and I am not sure what this means.
[It can show the central theme of the book which is the Kurtz’s death on page 68-69. The death of Kurtz is the main idea of the book to show that people should be contented by what they already have and don’t become greedy and lose control from the huge ambition of human beings]
Perhaps this thesis would be more straightforward if you phrased it positively: Kurtz offers us a warning and an example of the depths to which greed and ambition can drive a person, rather than as a moral or lesson about what “people should” or should not do.
[The cause-and-effect relationship is perfectly shown by the author by using this short sentence. ]
This is a very nice piece of close reading. Good work.
[Readers have to read the character’s emotion by different actions or scenes or conversations. ]
Good point. Do you think that Conrad wants us to understand “the horror” that Kurtz tries to express? How does he express that sentiment? You might think about some of the literary tricks Conrad uses to make us “feel” as much as we “understand.”
Also, at the very end of the book, Marlow decides not to tell Kurtz’s fiancé the truth about him. He says it would be “altogether too dark.” Are we, the readers, supposed to feel that we are now quite different from Kurtz’s fiancé, that is, that we understand the horror that she knows nothing about?
I’m not sure what this paragraph has to do with your thesis about Kurtz. You don’t need to discuss literary devices if it isn’t naturally part of your argument – and this feels like just as many of them as you could find. Stick with your thesis. Maybe you could ask: how is Kurtz himself a literary device? He is certainly hyperbolic, but isn’t he also something of a metaphor?
Your conclusion will be easier to write and will feel more like a conclusion when you organize the rest of your paper around a thesis and stick with it more closely. This paragraph seems a bit superfluous and redundant.
It seems that this paragraph contains most of your argument, and that the following paragraphs are somewhat related but not really on the subject of your thesis. Be careful not to say everything you have to say all at once. You should think about new strategies for organizing your essay.
Perhaps you can break this up somewhat according to the keywords you find in the passage; I’m sure you could write a paragraph about “desire and temptation” in Kurtz’s story; and another about “horror.” As it is, you never really explain what is so horrible. How exactly does the book suggest that “living like Marlow is better?”
My main suggestion is to consider reorganizing your ideas, so that the body paragraphs seem to develop upon the themes of the introduction and thesis.
As it is now, your arguments seem unrelated; first, you do a close reading of a passage; then, you make an interesting point about style; finally, you offer a list of literary devices.
While each of these elements is nicely done, they don’t cohere or add up to an analytical essay. How can you make all of your arguments develop the theme of your thesis? Stick with Kurtz and the warning he offers.
Shawn Jackman "All One World" (8 comments)
[Culture as defined by http://www.Merriam-wester.com, “a way of thinking, behaving, or working that exists in a place or organization (such as a business)”. ]
I’m not sure that this outside source material is necessary to your argument. Rather than trying to define culture itself, you might point out cultural distinctions or cultural definitions as they appear in the two books. Doesn’t Conrad define European Culture as he sees it? Doesn’t Salih describe Sudanese traditional culture in his vision of the village? Your essay will be more focused if you use these or similar examples.
Also, I think that you are approaching the subject of the essay from too broad a perspective. Instead of answering the question in your introduction of whether “culture is a learned behavior” or not for all humanity, why don’t you consider whether Kurtz and Mustafa manage to learn a culture other than their own? Get right to the specifics of these two characters. What problems do they face when they try to learn a new culture? How do they overcome or fail to overcome the confusion that arises from being caught between cultures?
Though this historical backdrop is important, I think you might cover it while describing the journeys of the characters – for example, describing how Kurtz wound up in Africa. Wouldn’t that include some of this historical cultural background? I think you should get right to the characters and their stories.
Same for this paragraph as above: instead of approaching the subject by describing the general topic of Africans in Europe, why not describe Mustafa story?
How is Kurtz connected with all this? How is he connected with “the germs of empires” and with the men in chains? Do the horrors of colonialism that you describe contrast with his descriptions of European culture? Remember, he is a painter, poet, musician, idealist, representative of the values of European enlightenment. These qualities would seem to contrast with the violence and degradation on display in the Belgian Congo, where he is the most prominent European.
My main suggestion for your essay is to avoid this loose general perspective, and not to try to describe culture or cultural conflict per se. Instead, I think you should describe the characters who experience cultural encounters in these two books, tell their stories, and think about how their experiences are similar and are different. Instead of “All One World” think “Kurtz vs Mustafa.” These big questions that you want to tackle can be got at by focusing on their stories. But if you try to start with the big picture, as you seem to do here, you are going to spend a lot of time and energy unnecessarily. You’ll be better off starting out by comparing the two characters.
[This paper will explore the cultural encounters of two characters from their distinct perspectives: One being, an African in Europe and the other a European in Africa. The comparison will illustrate how they socialized based on the influences of their respective cultures.]
This is your Thesis statement?
[This paper will explore the cultural encounters of two characters from their distinct perspectives: One being, an African in Europe and the other a European in Africa. The comparison will illustrate how they socialized based on the influences of their respective cultures.]
You should begin with this, and be more specific: not just “one” character, but Kurtz and Mustafa in particular. You can even summarize their stories briefly. That can lead to your main point about “people are fundamentally the same influenced by culture creating social nuances.”
Raymond Cazis - “Perspectives on Gender in Heart of Darkness & Season of Migration to the North” (7 comments)
Great Thesis statement!
Hey Ray, I don’t have a lot to add to this. it seems well organized, well rounded and a good use of the Claim/Evidence/Analysis. I think once you do the edit/polish you mentioned your probably in really good shape. Im Jelly;)
[Interestingly enough, it is in the foreign country that Britain was ruling where we see a woman with any social status]
That is an amazing point!
[Overall, women are simply not present]
There are some important exceptions, I think. Of course, the two secretaries at the Company headquarters are quite important symbolically – but they are not really characters. You might analyze what symbolic role they play (ie guardians of the gates of the underworld, or perhaps the fates weaving the threads of human life). But I don’t think you can ignore the two women who bookend Marlowe’s journey to the Congo: his aunt and Kurtz’s fiancé.
Marlow’s two meetings with them reveal the place of women in the whole business of Colonialism, and also Conrad’s gender bias. You might consider how Marlow and Conrad treat these two unnamed characters. They are both advocates of the Belgian colony in Africa, and they both seem unaware of the reality of what is done there. There may be some gendering of perspectives here, as though the idealistic perspective on the “civilizing mission” were a feminine one. He may be accusing his readers – English supporters of colonialism, presumably – that they are like these two women who have not glimpsed into the “heart of darkness” etc.
In any case, you should certainly address two passages in the book: 1) the passage where Marlow explicitly says that women must be protected from the darkness (I don’t have my copy in front of me so I can’t give you a page number); and 2) the ambiguous ending of the novel, where he decides not to tell Kurtz’s fiancé the truth, because it would be “too dark.”
How do these moments, and the aunt and fiancé characters, reflect your argument that: in “woman occupy a secondary role in English society”?
Not sure that this sort of plot summary is necessary to your argument. In the interests of brevity, you can assume that your readers are familiar with the story.
[This passage is so utterly detestable]
While I agree with your analysis of these passages from the book, I think it would be more interesting and more useful to consider the narrator’s perspective as well. After all, he is torn between his idealized love for the village and his horror at the sentiments, discussions and gender injustice which you, quite rightly, describe as “detestable.”
What exactly do you find detestable? Is it the author, for writing these scenes? If so, then you have to consider what purpose they serve, how they mobilize the reader’s sympathy and/or antipathy. Maybe what seems so “detestable” here is the culture of misogyny itself. If so, then I have to ask what this all has to do with colonialism and its legacy? Does the sort of “modernization” that followed upon colonialism and independence represent an end to such abhorrent cultural misogyny, and perhaps a positive note in a story we usually see as so bleak? How is that possible if your claim about English society based on Heart of Darkness is true?
While your two “perspectives” seem thoughtful and mostly correct to me, they don’t seem to cohere into an essay with a distinct thesis. Though the prompt did allow for a “compare-and-contrast” style subject, the form itself requires an overall thesis, if only just for organizational purposes.
That is to say, how do your readings of these two novels connect? What does your investigation of gender in these two books reveal? Does it have anything to do with the historical relationship we call colonialism?
Once you have a clear argument, you will have a much easier time tying your arguments together.
You might confine your investigation to specific characters or passages from each book, to make things easier. Rather than using these books as examples of their respective cultures, you might – and it seems as if you are perhaps suggesting this already – consider their authors’/narrators’ problematic perspectives on gender.
Alijon Rahmatov (6 comments)
Alijon,
I think you essay is really strong. Your thesis is really interesting and I think you clearly prove your point.
In the 3rd paragraph you talk about symbolism in the book. I think you can also say something about metaphors- North & South are a metaphor for Africa & Europe.
I’m a little bit confused by the 4th paragraph. I think you can break this up into more paragraphs. You quote “All my life I had not chosen, had not decided.” Can you explain this? Do you mean that he had no control?
Overall, I think you did a really good job! Very interesting!
Rose
[One the important aspects in our life is to develop a clear understanding about ourselves, ]
I think it might be more effective to begin your essay with something more specific. You might describe the final scene, the narrator swimming out into the river. You might describe the narrator’s emotional predicament throughout the novel. Rather than big statements about life and emotional adjustment, I think you should focus on the passage itself.
[However, he is the only one who thinks this way]
What about Mustafa? I think you might describe the alternatives that the narrator faces, neither of which appeal to him. You quite rightly describe how he struggles to “fit” in his own culture, and you mention that he feels distanced from it.
This might be an opportunity to describe the two alternatives, as they appear to him: 1) return to the village, where he finds the traditional gender norms abhorrent, and 2) become permanently removed, alienated, distanced from his people, and live like those “new rulers” of Africa who get rich and summer in Europe, if they can.
Which of these two choices did Mustafa make? Did he make them both? Remember that Mustafa has drowned (maybe) in this very river. He also, we assume, swam this way and struggled between these two possibilities.
[Salih emphasizes that the narrator is failing to face the reality of changing world. The author’s message here is to indicate that the narrator cannot forget what has happened to her and he fails to accept it, which means he is failing to face the reality of changing world in his culture.]
It seems to me, rather, that the narrator’s outrage at the marriage of Hosna and Wad Rayyes represents the coming of change to the village. When Wad Rayyes says that “your city ideas won’t wash here,” he suggests that the narrator’s modern “city” morality doesn’t have a place in their traditional past. It is the village failing to face the reality of the changing world, which the narrator’s outrage represents, and not vice-versa.
[One possible answer for his identity issues is him not living in a real world. For example, he goes to Europe for seven years to learn what? Poetry? And he thinks this could be helpful for his people? Mustafa was right when he said that, “it would have been better if you’d studied agriculture, engineering or medicine” (9). ]
I have to argue with this point and defend the poets. Can’t resist. First of all, poetry does help people. That’s why people keep reading and writing it. But it helps with problems that are not as definite as growing crops, building bridges and curing diseases. The narrator is struggling with a problem that is not nearly as clear-cut or definite as any of those, and yet it is no less real – it might even kill him. Certainly, many millions of people have felt the way that he does. Perhaps those lovely poetic images throughout the novel are just as effective as any medicine. Second, Mustafa is no authority on the subject, in the end. Though he would have made a fine politician, we know that he had mixed/selfish motives, and we are told that the “new rulers of Africa” all aspire to be like him, and they are just plain crooks. Mustafa suffered the same dilemma that the narrator does, and yet, he could not survive it and sank into the river. Perhaps it is only the narrator’s poetic sensibility, and the symbolism in the passage, that saves him in the end.
[“All my life I had not chosen, had not decided.]
How does his final decision change things? Is there a resolution at the end of this scene? Does it remain ambiguous? Will he be saved, and what does that mean for the symbolism?
I think answering these questions, and investigating the end of the passage should be your conclusion.
Comments on the Blog
Jing Lin Essay #2 (3 comments)
This paragraph indeed supports your claim and thesis. However, i think that you need to focus on analyzing the quote more in debt as it has some other keywords that you can use to strengthen your argument. For example, some words like “believe” and “heavens”, can be described to refer back to your thesis as well.
You can minimize this quotation since its so long and just use”…” and refer to the page number.
[Comparing the clothes from the native and the European women, there are huge differences. The clothing style of European women is so simple, not like men. However, the clothing style of the native women is so extravagant which is totally different with the European. The author wants to use the clothing style of two different countries’ women to show the life style. ]
Im not too sure of how this comment reflects your thesis because it shows women vs women rather than men vs women in my opinion.