Hello Veeky Forums...

Hello Veeky Forums, I'm a college freshman and I'm taking a literature class and the teacher had us read The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

We have to write a paper and answer the prompt "Discuss and examine [...] Marlow’s misguided patriarchal tendencies and how those tendencies create tension"

I personally didn't think the book had much to do with his "patriarchal tendencies"

Am I going to a shit college?

>patriarchal
There's like two female characters in the entire novel

If this is a real question and it is the only question you're allowed to write on. Then yes you're at a meme college consider transfering immediately

this is bait right? If not, get the fuck out of that course or university. Funny enough I had to read the same book for my obligatory Postcolonial Studies course. Needless to say me and a few other class mates weren't too thrilled having to endure a topic that didn't have room for opposing views.

They would just call that in of itself sexist

That's the plebbest question I've ever seen. If this is for a degree, you are going to a shit college. Sorry user, but ... jesus christ. It's not a question about 'the horror, the horror' - or colonialism and Chinua Achebe - or about the heart of darkness in the soul of mankind, it's just patriarchy causes tension, discuss. I feel sorry for you.

Then write that

Not OP, but thats not exactly his problem here

I'm happy none of my professors so far have done that, everything an essay comes up its pretty open to how you want to analyze it as opposed to making sure you analyze it a certain way

'Patriarchal' doesn't necessarily link to feminist criticism.
You can talk instead about how he attempts to enforce a control over his environment due to his assumed feeling of superiority, which could be stemmed from the masculine desire for control.

Think of it as a power related question, because that is fundamentally what Heart of Darkness explores.

just watch Apocalypse Now instead

seriously op maybe you should drop out of the course because you're shit

>'Patriarchal' doesn't necessarily link to feminist criticism.
He's in college. In 2016. In the west. Yes, it does link to it.

But you can explore different concepts within the framework of the topic.

OP, don't be one of those obstinate cunts who read a couple lines of Nietzche on wikiquote and feels like he's better than his professors. You're going to have some absolute losers for professors but you can open a discussion with them and actually learn something.

>OP, don't be one of those obstinate cunts who read a couple lines of Nietzche on wikiquote and feels like he's better than his professors

Its true though, he is better

Then he should write a paper proving it. Not complaining that his university doesn't teach his specific ideology.

He portrayed women as naive and helpless in the book. I don't know how a few insignificant character portrayals would warrant an entire essay, though. It almost seems like your professor is missing the whole fucking point of imperialism and focusing on Conrad's view of women

>misguided patriarchal tendencies

so they're telling you to scold a fictional century-old character for not holding views in line with ivory tower 21st century postmodern lite-philosophy?

> Am I going to a shit college?

Are you really gonna ask that?

Read this about a week ago for no particular reason for the first time. Found it a little bland. Forcibly invoking an eerie tone by constantly saying things like 'a looming darkness ensues' ; 'darkness was growing in the room' was amateurish af. Questions as those are perpetuated and passed down by people who parrot the same shit analysis someone did. It's beyond me why the book has such a referential reading status academically speaking.

The question seems to want you to look at the conclusion of the book, where Marlowe chooses not to tell Kurtz's widow his last words, and makes something up instead.

In discussing this I would probably bring in the important earlier idea in the book, where Marlowe talks about why communication breaks down

> '...no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams...'

>'It is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any epoch of one's existence - that which makes its truth, its meaning - its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream - alone.'

Men and women are doomed to bad communication, lies, and misunderstanding. Marlowe has good intentions, he is also trying to protect her.

Sorry for the double post, and but so, I could give you whole excerpts from the book that strongly oppose the notion that Marlow has patriarchal/top-down view of the people. It's fucking obvious that as the book progresses he develops a progressively strong empathy with his surroundings and it's people. For instance

>there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were—No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it—this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled, and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity—like yours—the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you—you so remote from the night of first ages—could comprehend. And why not?

It's more to do with a balanced concept of 'us and them' than with a 'patriarchal they-are-such-savages'

damn dude I had a Marxist feminist psycho professor teaching me this book and even she didn't mention a feminist reading. You might want to consider a different school.

That's a loaded question

you might want to try harry potter.