Analyzing Heart of Darkness: feminist, archetypal, and personal viewpoints

Part 1: A feminist reading

(https://www.fulltextarchive.com/pdfs/Heart-of-Darkness.pdf)

Write an entry in your reader's notebook analyzing Heart of Darkness from a feminist viewpoint. Be sure to make use of feminist critical vocabulary and to include three examples from the novel (quotations and/or paraphrases with citations) to illustrate your point. For length, consider my Freudian analysis to be a model, so 250 words is a good guide.

Write an entry in your reader's notebook analyzing Heart of Darkness from an archetypal viewpoint. Be sure to make use of archetypal critical vocabulary and to include three examples from the novel (quotations and/or paraphrases with citations) to illustrate your point. You should write 8 to 12 sentences. Think of the following question as a guide: From an archetypal point of view, how successful is the hero's journey undertaken by Marlow in Heart of Darkness? For length, consider my Freudian analysis to be a model, so 250 words is a good guide.

Write a personal response to Heart of Darkness. This one is wide open. If you are not sure where to start, you might begin by considering the idea that generations have been taught to revere this novella as a classic that artfully illuminates a kind of existential madness while also showing up the evils of colonialism. What do you think? Is it a classic? Go for around 250 words.

After reading the Explainer article about "The Myth of the Noble Savage" let's have a discussion.

1. Begin in an initial post by answering either A or B below:

A) Do we in the twenty-first century still subscribe to the idea of the noble savage? Can you think of examples in culture, in politics or in the news that show some support still lingering for this idea?

B) Can you think of examples in movies, TV shows or literature that you have been exposed to that show "noble savages" or "back-to-nature" lifestyles that might also come from this idea?

2. After making your initial post, make at least three other posts commenting on your classmates' posts. Engage both with people who answered your question,
and people who answered the other one.

Having read Heart of Darkness

(https://www.fulltextarchive.com/pdfs/Heart-of-Darkness.pdf) and "How Sigmund Freud Viewed Women,"(https://www.verywellmind.com/how-sigmund-freud-viewed-women-2795 859) let's talk about how Conrad views women.

Below is my Freudian reading of Heart of Darkness. It's very brief and far from complete. It's also a hostile reading, one in which I claim to be finding and picking out a subtext of which the author was unaware. All of these caveats mean that my analysis is certainly open to critique.

Here are your instructions:

1. Make an initial post in which you respond to my analysis. Do you agree? Disagree? Can you think of examples of counter-examples? What have I not thought about or left out of my analysis? In your post, you may want to bring in ideas that you learned from the article about Freud's views on women.