Musings--Heart of Darkness, Part 2

 photo: Famous scene from Apocalypse Now, on http://www.rotaryaction.com/pages/apocalypse.html

(this is a continuation of another post, which you can find here)

2.  Look at the above list of works.  Most of them are about the monster within.  To borrow from Rousseau and Freud, civilization is the mask that keeps the super-ego in control over the ego.  (Whether Rousseau or Freud thought this was good or bad is up to you, and probably irrelevant anyway.)  I'm not interested in the good or bad of it, as much as the idea that it simply is.  I have a guess that many in Rousseau's time would think that he thought this was bad (and they may be misinterpreting, though he was no fan of social mores, per se, but, then, neither was Neitzsche) and that many in Freud's time would think he thought this was good (which may also be an interpretation; I see him as non-judgmental, preferring to theorize that it simply was, not that it was good or bad; these are value judgments that neither was a proponent of.).

Anyway, the interesting thing here is that the writers in the 1890s were saying that, take away the mask (for Joseph Conrad, for example, that would be civilization), and we become unrestrained evil savages.  A Freudian interpretation of Heart of Darkness would read Marlowe as the super-ego sent to suppress Kurtz, the ego.  But Imperial England was just as much the brute, but with the mask of "civilized society" hiding its actual brutish nature--which gave birth to Kurtz.  In Apocalypse Now, based on Heart of Darkness, the masked civilized society (America, or America's armed forces in Vietnam) sends the super-ego (Willard) to assassinate the ego-driven Kurtz.  In Conrad's book, Marlowe is just supposed to bring Kurtz back to civilization, but an astute reader would wonder what such a civilized state would do to Kurtz once it had him.  Kill him and hide its base nature, is my guess, which becomes a blatant part of Apocalypse Now's plot.

So take that mask away, and we become Kurtz, or Hyde (Stevenson's potion rips the mask off of Jekyll's true base desires), or Dorian Grey (who's true base nature is captured, hidden and held by the painting), or Dracula (who's aristocratic, but not at night).  You get the idea.  The fascinating thing is that today's Hyde wouldn't be Hyde, but Jekyll.

Take the vampire films and shows out there today (please).  The vampires aren't really the bad guys anymore--it's the people.  Zombie films and shows, too: the people are more dangerous than the zombies.  So now the Freudian aspect would be that our super-ego is the vampire!  The more natural aspect of society--since everyone is truly messed-up, anyway--who the base humans can't get along with.  The super-ego that has been sent, in a way, to suppress the savage nature of humans.  And zombies--whatever created the zombies is now the mask that, when taken off, has shown humankind what it really is--and it ain't pretty.  Sure, zombies eat human flesh and essentially cannibalize--but what's your excuse for doing the same, as a human?  The point now, maybe, is that both the ego and the super-ego are equally savage and base.

P.S.--Take a look at the gangster shows and movies, too.  Tony Soprano and Jekyll and Hyde are essentially the same.

Current but Random Literary Tidbits

Credit: Portrait of Leonid Andreyev by Ilya Rapin, from his Wikipedia page


To underscore how all over the place I'm feeling right now, I thought I'd share a few tidbits from the great many books I find myself reading at the moment.  How I got to be at the point where I'm so clearly unfocused and reading so many books at once is another entry entirely.

Think and Grow Rich

Sound strategies so far, despite the extremely unfortunate example offered near the beginning of how great insistence and steadfastness can bring great swaying of men, which can bring great wealth.  It involves a little black girl standing tall in the face of her mother's boss/owner, who also owns a mill, and about how her mother needs fifty cents to get him something; he denies it, tells the girl to tell the mother to go without it, and the girl agrees with an unfortunate but hearty "Yessir!" and still stands there until she belts out that her mother needs the money--despite the owner's threat of lashing her.  When she finally belts it out, he stops what he's doing and gives her the money.  The gist of the example is how the girl dominated him (Hill's words) although he is clearly her superior.  She got her way because of her steadfastness, get it?  Other than that, the principles are sound, and basically involve steadfastness, dedication, Seeing It, Believing It, and so on.  Though I am not in the point in life where I can burn all my other bridges (as Hill recommends; his words), I do admit that I wrote a lot more and did more to succeed (besides lacking the talent I have now) with my writing than I have the time to do now.  Nothing drives you more than the inability to feed yourself and pay your rent.

The Return of the King

Fascinating--though dry; you can either get past it or you can't--series that takes much longer to end than the movies did.  The movies basically lacked two long sections of the books: Tom Bombadil, and Sauroman in the Shire.  Sorry to see it end and yet wanting to finish it at the same time.  Total immersion in another world, solely through description of legends and flora.

Short Story Collection of Zombies, edited by John Skipp

Don't ask.  Saw a Stephen King short story in there I hadn't read before, then couldn't stop reading all the others.  Included is "Lazarus," by Leonid Andreyev, one of the better Russian authors no one's ever heard of, who, as is apparently customary for Russian writers in the early 1900s, went a bit off his deep end after the Revolution, and died destitute and miserable (one often causes the other).  Anyway, the story is of the Biblical character, and the story, like the author, was a well-written and emotional bummer.  Evidently the author was a major figure in his time, and was famous for his ability to capture "what it means to be human" to the extent that he will make you weep openly.  (If you can get the collection, check out "The Emissary" by Ray Bradbury, too.)  "Lazarus" is free online because its copyright expired, so find it here or above and read it.  Comment below and let me know what you think.  It gave me a breakthrough of sorts with one of the many novels and stories and poems I'm writing all at the same time, as well.

But that's another entry.