,Joseph Conrad (1857-1924),适用于儿童类别及相关类别演示,Quotes,“A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people endeavor to do, he drowns.“ “You shall judge a man by his foes as well as by his friends.“,Joseph Conrad,Life,Works,Childhood Adolescence Adulthood,The list of his works,Focus on Heart of darkness,plots,Themes,Comment,Influence,His Life (childhood）:,Born in Berdichev(乌克兰城市) ,1857, in a highly patriotic Polish noble family. Conrads childhood was harsh. His parents were both members of families long identified with the movement for Polish independence from Russia. In 1862 Conrads father, himself a writer and translator, was exiled to Russia for his revolutionary activities, and his wife and child shared the exile.In 1865 Conrads mother died, and a year later he was entrusted to the care of his uncle Thaddeus Bobrowski.,The Family,His Life: (adolescence),In early adolescence the future novelist began to dream of going to sea, and in 1873, while on vacation in western Europe, Conrad saw the sea for the first time. In the autumn of 1874 Conrad went to Marseilles （马赛）, where he entered the French marine service.,For the next 20 years Conrad led a successful career as a ships officer. In 1878 Conrad went for the first time to England. He worked as a seaman on English ships, and in 1880 he began his career as an officer in the British merchant service.,His Life: (adulthood),In 1886 he was naturalized as a British citizen. He received his first command in 1888. In 1890 he made the ghastly journey to the Belgian Congo which inspired his great novel The Heart of Darkness.,His voyages took him to Australia, India, Singapore, Java, Borneo, to those distant and exotic places which would provide the background for much of his fiction.,Voyage,Literary career,In 1895 his first novel Almayers Folly ,he assumed the pen-name of Joseph Conrad.Conrad began producing a number of books in rapid succession, which about sailors and travel to explore moral ambiguity and the nature of human identity.,Almayers Folly (1895)An Outcast of the Islands (1896)Early The Negro on the Narcissus(1898)Novels Heart of Darkness (1899)Lord Jim (1900),It is Conrads first novel.,Literary career,Nostromo(1904)PoliticalThe Secret Agent(1907) Novels Under Western Eyes(1911),It is Conrads greatest novel.,It is a far cry from the exotic settings of Conrads first fiction,It is Conrads study of the Russian temperament,Literary career,The Secret Sharer (1912)Later Chance (1913) NovelsVictory (1915),It is Conrads last important novel.,Literary career,Literary career,Mirror of the Sea (1906)Auto- biography A Personal Record (1912) Notes on Life and Letter (1921).,适用于儿童类别及相关类别演示,Heart of Darkness,Plots:,The story is essentially a kind of quest, in which Marlow, the main narrator, journeys far from his European home to the centre of the African continent to find and reclaim the ivory trader Kurtz, accounts of whose increasingly rogue activities are causing concern back at the headquarters of the firm that nominally employs him.,适用于儿童类别及相关类别演示,He cried in a whisper at some image, at some visionhe cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath“the horror! Thehorror!“. -HEART OF DARKNESS,Moving in his travels ever further away from the moral parameters of his origins, Marlow discovers shocking evidence of Kurtzs absolute power over local tribes and those individuals that come into contact with him, until he is eventually confronted by the reality of the dying potentate himself, and his enigmatic but indelible final words, “The horror! The horror!“,Theme 1:,Darkness,It exposes the dark side of European colonization while exploring the three levels of darkness that the protagonist, Marlow, encounters: the darkness of the Congo wilderness, the darkness of the Europeans cruel treatment of the African natives, and the unfathomable darkness within every human being for committing heinous acts of evil.,Theme 2:,Fate and Free Will,Marlows journey towards the interior and towards Kurtz seems inevitable, as if Marlow is drawn nearer and nearer to the heart of darkness by his own morbid curiosity and by his childhood drive to explore. Indeed, the two women knitting in Brussels represent the Fates of ancient Greek mythology.,Theme 2:,Fate and Free Will,With their appearance, Marlow begins to feel as if his journey is ill-starred yet he forges on anyway. The interplay between fate and free will informs the action of the plot, bringing into question whether Marlow could have avoided his descent into madness, his corruption, and his subsequent revelations as to human nature.,Comments:,Marlow tells the story of his trip into the “heart of darkness”. It seems at first that the heart of darkness refers to the dark continent of Africa, that Marlows trip takes him to the place of the primitive origins of man. Indeed, as Marlow gets closer to finding Kurtz, the man for whom he is searching, things become more and more savage. He encounters a tribe of cannibals (食人族)and one of his crew is murdered.,