The Curious Case of Alice

My photos represent the book Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, simply, but with boldness. Because I chose few photos, I know that they should represent the shift from lightness to darkness that the reader experiences while reading Heart of Darkness. Each photo is increasingly darker and more shadowed.

The first photo, I found in a search for a tugboat like the one Marlow travelled on. The picture I chose was a crisp, clean, highly idealized painting, meant to be seen as the perfect, the ideal.
"The Nellie, a crushing yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails"(Conrad 65)

The next picture is an overview of the Congo River. In Heart of Darkness, the Congo is described with, "Only the gloom to the west, brooding over the upper reaches, became more sombre every minute."(Conrad 66) My picture paints the river just as mysterious as Conrad's words.

The third picture was actually taken by a friend of mine. I used it to represent what the African coast would look like to an unsuspecting Marlow. "What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth."(Conrad 67) The picture itself is very foggy and creates suspense, mystery, and unease; all feelings that Marlow would be experiencing once he stepped onto the riverbank, approaching the unknown land.

The last picture is of Kurtz. "I am trying to account to myself for - for - Mr. Kurtz - for the shade of Mr. Kurtz."(Conrad 127) I took the word 'shade' literally and used a picture of a figure obscured by darkness; from the movie Apocalypse Now, with Marlin Brando as the mysterious Mr. Kurtz. At the top of my previous blog, I have a picture of question marks, symbolizing the mystery surrounding the novel Heart of Darkness.

In terms of my project, I used the pictures in a transitional pattern, to display the theme of lightness to darkness. Though the transition in the book is not literal, I personified and made my pictures in literal light-to-dark settings.