We'll use this powerpoint for both Tuesday and Wednesday's class agendas! 

Please use the powerpoint below for our class lessons/discussions for both Tuesday and Wednesday of this week.
​
Homework is explained in the powepoint and linked on the course calendar as well!

Rough drafts are technically due today!​

• Please share your draft with me
• Don't forget to use the resources on the literary analysis assignment handout (listed on page 2 above the rubric). 
• FINAL DRAFT DUE TUESDAY, 11/10

Today's Agenda and Announcements

1. Quick check-ins: How far along are you on your essay?
2. Reminder of conference schedule
3. Peer Critique Protocol Overview and Scheduling Process
4. There is a reading assignment due for NEXT Tuesday's class.  It is linked on our course calendar. Please save the link and make a reminder for yourself to read it before class next week. It should only take you 30  minutes but it is important context for our next unit on African Independence. 
5. Please check in at 9:50 tomorrow for class! We'll only go until 10 and then I start conferences. Consider scheduling critiques during class tomorrow!

Peer Critique Protocols: Overview
For a completed rough draft
For an outline

• Your group will decide when each student's critique will occur
• You'll decide if you want to use the OUTLINE critique protocol or the ROUGH DRAFT critique protocol
• On your scheduled critique date, you'll run through the protocol with your group
• Miss your critique or another student's? 10,000 years of bad luck and a whole heap of karma will befall you. Please respect each other. You are all BRILLIANT individuals and COMPASSIONATE as well. You'll be able to provide meaningful and helpful critique for each other. 

Peer Critique Scheduling Instructions

1. Your groups are listed below.
2. The first name on the list is the SCHEDULER. This person first needs to make a google meet invite RIGHT NOW and link it in the chat box.
3. Group members- head to that google meet right now and come up with a schedule between now and when the final draft is due (ideally with enough time to refine thoroughly for the final draft deadline) for when you'll critique each student's draft.
4. SCHEDULER-- You are responsible for making a calendar invite with a google meet for each student's peer critique. Please include ASHLEY on that calendar invite as well. 
5. EVERYONE: You're responsible for getting an outline OR rough draft done and shared with your group members by your critique time/date.

Peer Critique Groups

1. Maya, Naima, Riley, 
2. Rio, Flynn, Christine
3. Billie, Finn, Sailor

We'll use the following powerpoint for today and tomorrow's class!

Starter:
Write down your questions for pages 82-96 in the chat box and then silently read the discussion questions for today.

Agenda

1. Go over your questions as well as the discussion questions below
2. Discuss your insights/questions about the “Hollow Men” poem, and 1 passage from the HoD that you think connects to the poem. (check this video of T.S. Elliot reading the poem-- creepy!)
3. Review upcoming assignments

Part 3 pages 82-end Discussion Questions

1. Why does Marlow remain loyal to Kurtz (to the “nightmare of his choice”) and how does his view of Kurtz differ from his view of “The Company” and other civilians?
   1. On his view of “The Company” and civilians think back to early parts of the book as well as: pages 77, 88-89
   2. For his “explanations” for why he chose to stay loyal to Kurtz, see pages 87 (see pages 77, 87-88, 91,
2. How does Marlow describe the last moments before Kurtz’s death? 
   1. 86, 88: What is “the horror, the horror” to which Kurtz refers? Why does Marlow conclude in Heart of Darkness that Kurtz's final words are a "moral victory"? What drives Kurtz into “madness”??
3. What is the Heart of Darkness? Is part of the point of this modernist text that we cannot ultimately come to one objective truth? Is it meant to be intentionally ambiguous? Either way, it seems Conrad points to some explanations
   • See pp 82-83, bottom of 84, Marlow’s compounding the beating of the drum with his own heart on 81, 86
4. 92-96: Describe the scene when Marlow goes to see Kurtz’s Intended. What is their conversation like and what is Marlow’s own inner monologue like? 
   1. 94-96: Why does Marlow lie to the Intended? What are the consequences, according to Marlow, of such a lie? What does Conrad imply the consequences are?
   2. To what extent do Marlow's comments regarding women in Heart of Darkness help to explain why he decides to lie to Kurtz's Intended?  What else explains his lie?
5. ​To what extent is HoD an existentialist text?
   1. For Marlow’s struggle between recognizing the terror/absurdity and futilely constructing meaning and reason: page 80, 93
   2. For Marlow’s views of Death: 87
   3. For Marlow’s fears of alienation (from self? From others?) - 81
   4. Ashley will explain Camus’s philosophy regarding the absurd, the inevitability of death, and Sisyphus as “Absurd Hero”. See also the notes at the bottom of the discussion question guide.
6. What transformations have you observed in Marlow over the course of the novella? What contributes to his changes? To what extent does his physical journey reflect his psychological journey?
7. How are the beginning and the end of Heart of Darkness similar? Why does Conrad end with us heading back into the heart of an immense darkness especially given Marlow’s decision to lie to the Intended?

​Context on “The Hollow Men” by T.S. Eliot

• This poem might be useful for some of your analyses of Heart of Darkness-- especially those of you examining what the heart of darkness actually is. Another option would be to do an analysis of characters in the novel as comparison to the hollow men in this poem. Is T.S. Elliot critiquing the men in HoD through this poem? Which men? Which aspects of society? Is Conrad? So in case you might be down with that, here are some points to consider in interpreting this poem.
• Dark message: If you aren't going to be a good person, at least be a really bad person and get yourself all the way to hell. How does this relate to Heart of Darkness?​

The poem begins with two epigraphs: one is a quotation from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness remarking on the death of the doomed character Kurtz. The other is an expression used by English schoolchildren who want money to buy fireworks to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day:

• The English celebrate Guy Fawkes Day every November 5th with fireworks and the burning of little straw men or "effigies."
• Guy Fawkes was convicted of trying to blow up King James I in 1605 by stashing gunpowder underneath the Parliament building. King James continued a legacy of persecuting Catholics.  The incident is known as the "Gunpowder Plot." But Fawkes and the gunpowder were discovered before the plan went off, and Fawkes gave up the names of his co-conspirators under torture.
• To celebrate Guy Fawkes Day, English children ask for money to fund the explosions of their straw effigies of Fawkes, so they say, "A penny for the guy?" "Guy" being his first name. 
• But there's more. According to Ancient Greek mythology, a person who died would need to pay Charon, the ferryman, with a coin before he would take you across the River Styx into the realm of death. So the "Old Guy" also refers to the ancient figure of Charon. Apparently, someone is begging for a "penny" to give the ferryman to get across the Styx. Charon would locate his coin traditionally in the mouth of the dead. Without payment, the dead would not get into the underworld and would be left to drift on the shore for 100 years.
• The River Styx is a principal river in the Greek underworld (also called Hades). The river forms a border between the underworld and the world of the living. The word means hate in Greek and is named after the goddess, Styx. 

The poem is narrated by one of the "Hollow Men."  (Is Marlow a "hollow man"?)
This epigraph seems to hark back longingly for even such monstrous men who at last believed in what they were doing, however horrific the results, setting up a natural contrast to the hollowness of modern man, who fundamentally believes in nothing and is, therefore, empty at the core of his being, like a Guy Fawkes dummy. So, two different types of `hollow/stuffed men´ are presented: he who lacks a soul (Mister Kurtz) and he who lacks a real body (Guy Fawkes dummy), representing both physical and spiritual emptiness. 

In the first section of the poem, a bunch of Hollow Men are leaning together like scarecrows. Everything about them is as dry as the Sahara Desert, including their voices and their bodies. Everything they say and do is meaningless. They exist in a state like Hell, except they were too timid and cowardly to commit the violent acts that would have gained them access to Hell. They have not crossed over the River Styx to make it to either Heaven or Hell. The people who have crossed over remember these guys as "hollow men".

Today's Agenda

1. 2:15-2:25--> Starter: Write your passages/questions in the chat box for pages 53-82 and then read all the discussion questions listed below!
2. 2:25-3:05-->​Discussion for pages 53-82 (see below)
3. 3:05-3:15--> Assignments for the next few weeks! Let's go over them as well as context on "The Hollow Men"

Discussion Questions
Part 2, pages 53-67

1. What happens between pages 53-67 and then 68-82? Let’s summarize the plot!
2. What do you learn about what Kurtz has been doing? What happened to Kurtz?
3. Now, let’s dig deeper into some analysis....

 
Review pages 57-62 and think about what we learn about the Russian and Kurtz in Part 3, coupled with Marlow’s quote on page 69: “I looked around, and I know know why, but I assure you that never, never before did this land, this river, this jungle, the very arch of this blazing sky, appear to me so hopeless and so dark, so impenetrable to human thought, so pitiless to human weakness.” and how might this relate to the relationship between the wilderness v society and the heart of darkness?  What might the wilderness be a metaphor for??

• Dead Hippos: What does Marlow mean by “breathe dead hippo, so to speak, and not be contaminated”(60).
• What themes do you see developed in this section and what is your interpretation?  
  • Morality/Integrity v. Power/Corruption, Wilderness v. Civilization: (see also page 72, “But the wilderness had found him out early and had taken on him a terrible vengeances for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude-- and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core”)
  • Truth and the Heart of Darkness
  • Existentialism (see the BOTTOM of today's dp for a brief summary)
  • Importance of words v. action: What is the power of words compared to deeds? What do you personally think is more important or valuable? What does Marlow seem to think is, especially in the context of Imperialism? (pages 57-59, bottom of 61)
  • Kurtz as a symbol (for what?) 
  • Women in society
• What was the report that Kurtz was commissioned to write for the International Society of the Suppression of Savage Customs and what did he write? (61-2
• What does the Russian trader represent?  Think about how his clothing compares to the map of Africa you’ve seen from the Berlin Conference and his blind devotion to Kurtz? (p. 64, 68-9)

Part 3 through page 82

1. Describe Marlow’s conversation with the Russian at the beginning of Part 2. What is the Russian’s views of Kurtz, and what is Marlow’s?  Given what Marlow is learning about Kurtz’s “methods”, what is the significance of his quote at the bottom of page 70-71 and how might this relate back to the theme of Fog/Truth/Heart of Darkness?
2. What is Marlow’s view of Kurtz in Part 3?  How does he describe Kurtz? What is Kurtz’s power? (Jupiter, page 75, etc…)
3. What are Kurtz’s “methods”? Why are they considered “unsound”? What does Marlow want from Kurtz? What does he get from Kurtz?
   1. See the bottom of page 71-72 (heads on stakes)
4. How does Marlow’s view of Kurtz evolve in Part 3 and why does he end up saying, “Kurtz is a remarkable man.” (77) What does Marlow mean when he says that he is “loyal to the nightmare of [his] choice”? Pg 80 What nightmare does he choose? Why does he choose it? What is the other option?
5. How does Conrad characterize Kurtz’s African lover? How does Marlow characterize Kurtz’s Intended? How are these two women similar? How are they different? How, in Marlow’s mind, do Kurtz’s African lover and his Intended represent their respective continents/civilizations? Why does Marlow lie to the Intended?  See pages 59, 75-76

EXISTENTIALISM
Some of the basic beliefs of existential thinking include the following: (1) people are the result of conscious choices not fate or pre-determination and thus people have the freedom to determine their own existence, purpose, identity, etc...; (2) existence is meaningless and thus we alone are left to determine what is meaningful; (3) anxiety over meaninglessness and angst in the face of freedom is the general state of being; (4) humans quest to apply meaning to a meaningless world is absurd because life cannot ultimately be explained, there is no one “truth”; (5) humans are alienated from themselves and from each other because of our inability to understand the absurdity of life and deny the inevitability of death and meaninglessness; and (6) death ultimately renders our lives meaningless and thus is the final nothingness.  Most people live in denial of the inevitability of death.  Albert Camus believed that we needed to live like SISYPHUS-- face death/meaninglessness HEAD ON and then determine meaning on your own terms. ​

AGENDA
1. Starter: Chat-box passages!
2. Summary: Let's review the plot of the first part of Part 2 (pages 38-53)
3. Student-Led Discussion: I'm going to put you into two small groups with the task of exploring your assigned theme. You can pull from earlier parts of the book, but try to mostly focus on the section we're discussing today (pages 38-53).  Ultimately, your goal is to try to come up with some interpretation of what the meaning of the theme is and to select at least 3 quotes that support your interpretation/analysis
4. Class Schedule/Homework: Tomorrow + Next Week

Group Roles:
1. Note-taker: takes notes and shares those notes with Ashley and our WHOLE IFASA class
2. Reader:  Reads aloud the passages your group decides to look at
3. Spokesperson: Shares out your group's interpretation with the rest of class upon return from small groups

THEME:  Defined as a main idea or an underlying meaning of a literary work 

Themes to discuss today:
Morality/Integrity v. Power/Corruption, Wilderness v. Civilization, Europeans v. Africans: How does Marlow’s accounts of Europeans and Africans compare? What commentary do you think Conrad is making about the relationship between morality, power, the wilderness and civilization?

1. Think about how he describes white Europeans working in the Congo
2. Think about how he describes the Africans- both those working on his steam ship and the “Natives” they encounter along the river banks
3.  In what ways does he both represent Eurocentric views and also seek to challenge those views when it comes to Imperialism? 
   
4. Hints:  pages 45, 50-52, 43, 44, last two pages of Part 1 (Marlow’s description of the Eldorado Exploring Expedition)

Fog, Truth and the Heart of Darkness: What role does fog play in this book as it relates to truth, understanding, insight especially as it relates to the "heart of darkness". 

1. Think about the ways fog works to obscure things in the book? You might also think about "foggy" conversations, like that between the manager and his uncle in the opening of Part 2.
2. Find other places where the concept of obscurity shows up in the novella.
   
3. Consider how this theme relates to justifications for Imperialism/propaganda….
4.  What are other ways in which Conrad illustrates the tension of finding out the truth of imperialism or the truth of man's intentions?
   
5. Hints: Top of page 42, bottom of 45-46 (what might the book Marlow finds symbolize?) 48, 51, intro xxix-xxx