Wednesday, March 19, 2014

What's Next?

Congrats on finishing your essays and completing your journey with Jane Eyre.

I look forward to talking one last time after break once I have had a chance to read your essays.

I appreciate the intellectual curiosity in wrestling with schools of theory, JSTOR essays, and the primary text as created your own argument. Again, more on this later.

The big question: Now what?

Going into this year, I wanted to see if we could connect two different novels and writers:

Heart of Darkness (1902) by Joseph Conrad. Free Ebook.

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. Free Ebook.


Both have great film connections:

  The Hours and




Apocalypse Now.


The problem is time... and admittedly interest. At this point, I am wary of discussing two short novels that few, in fact, read. Email me your thoughts.

FYI - Thus far, everything we've read has been required. Now it's my call. I am excited about the possibilities that I have outlined, but that means little if you're not interested. Think about it. Now's your chance...

By the way, April is poetry month - and I am presently infatuated with Why Poetry Matters.

You might enjoy this documentary: Louder Than a Bomb.
YouTube Channel - On Netflix and Amazon Prime.





 So more on this soon.

P.S. A few good lines...



Quotes from Heart of Darkness (1902) by Joseph Conrad. Free Ebook.


“We live as we dream--alone....”
― Joseph ConradHeart of Darkness and the Congo Diary
“I don't like work--no man does--but I like what is in the work--the chance to find yourself. Your own reality--for yourself not for others--what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.”
― Joseph ConradHeart of Darkness and the Congo Diary
tags: work
“... it was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.”
― Joseph ConradHeart of Darkness and the Congo Diary
“Droll thing life is -- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself -- that comes too late -- a crop of inextinguishable regrets.”
― Joseph ConradHeart of Darkness and the Congo Diary
“He struggled with himself, too. I saw it -- I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself.”
― Joseph ConradHeart of Darkness and the Congo Diary
“It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain attempt, because 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...No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given 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...”
― Joseph ConradHeart of Darkness and the Congo Diary




Quotes from Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. Free Ebook.


“She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.”
― Virginia WoolfMrs. Dalloway
“He thought her beautiful, believed her impeccably wise; dreamed of her, wrote poems to her, which, ignoring the subject, she corrected in red ink.”
― Virginia WoolfMrs. Dalloway
“What does the brain matter compared with the heart?”
― Virginia WoolfMrs. Dalloway
tags: logiclove
“Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely? All this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely?”
― Virginia WoolfMrs. Dalloway
“Mrs Dalloway is always giving parties to cover the silence”
― Virginia WoolfMrs. Dalloway
“It might be possible that the world itself is without meaning.”
― Virginia WoolfMrs. Dalloway




As Kayla suggested in her Chapel talk, perhaps, life - the world - is meaningless, that is except for the meaning we choose to give it. 

Find your reason. 

In literature, we deconstruct and dissect meaning, seeking the truth in the text; 
then, we redefine and synthesize what is true to us. 
I find reading rewarding, inspiring, even enlightening. I hope you do too. 

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