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Advanced Placement English Literature
Name: ___________________________
We will have two discussions related to Heart of Darkness . The first will take place online beginning on
Wednesday, October 15 th and the second will be in class on Friday, October 17 th . Complete the following assignment to prepare for these discussions. This sheet will need to be completed prior to coming to class on Friday, October 17 th .
For the discussion on Friday you will need to write three questions that can each be categorized as a level two or level three question. Write your questions in the space below after reading through the information on this page:
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Level One: Basic Knowledge and comprehension questions about information found within a text

What city did Candide visit in South America, which appeared to really be the best of all possible worlds?

How many times did Candide have to run the gauntlet as his chosen punishment for walking away from the Bulgar army?
Level Two: Analytical questions about information found within a text
 What purpose does Voltaire’s description of Eldorado serve in Candide ?

As the story progresses, why does Candide find comfort in his friendship with Martin rather than adhering to Pangloss’s teachings?
 How does Candide’s final statement relate to how his character has changed over the course of the novel?
Level Three: Application, synthesis, and evaluation questions that require information drawn from outside the text to be answered

Identify several alazons in Candide and compare their functions in the text in light of Northrop
Frye’s description of irony and satire.
 Is Voltaire’s description of Leibniz’s Optimism fair?

Compare the satiric treatment of military ideology in Candide and Dr. Strangelove .

Select a topic or idea that Voltaire satirizes in Candide , and compare his depiction with your own experiences encountering the idea or topic.

Read through the notes and comments below. These comments will serve as the basis for the online discussion on Wednesday, October 15 th . Review the text, refer to your notes, and read some of the essays in the back of the book to develop your thoughts and responses related to the text. Use this as a starting point for generating your own questions about the text.
We have already looked at an example of Tragedy with Hamlet and another example of Irony and Satire with Candide
. According to Frye’s classification of narratives,
Heart of Darkness should fall somewhere between these two. What does this narrative have in common with Hamlet ? What does it have in common with Candide
? How does Conrad’s style differ from Voltaire’s and how is this related to the effect he is able to create with his work? What roles do his characters fulfill? Conrad’s characterization of some characters is fairly complex; which characters are the most complex and how do their characterizations relate to the purpose of the work?
Conrad sets his story in the Congo near the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century.
While the story is based on his own experiences and observations, the story he writes is fictional. Read through some of the essays in the back of our text that appear under the heading “Backgrounds and
Sources.” How does Conrad’s depiction of the Congo relate to the descriptions offered in the primary sources? Which elements of European involvement in the Congo does Conrad choose to focus on? Are there specific elements in the book that clearly seem to represent real people or events? How do Conrad’s writings from the time reflect his similarities and differences to his character Marlowe?
Heart of Darkness is one of the most studied pieces of literature in the English language, and as such it has been the subject of much literary criticism over the years. Read through some of the essays in the back of our text that appear under the heading “Criticism.” As a piece of literature what are the most common points of praise and criticism for the work? Conrad establishes a heavy use of symbolism relating to lightness and darkness throughout the book? What do these symbols represent and how do they change of the course of the novel? In his essay, “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s
Heart of
Darkness
,” Chinua Achebe argues that Conrad’s depiction of Africa is itself racist regardless of Conrad’s purpose. What is his argument? In “The Frontier on Which
Heart of Darkness
Stands,” Wilson Harris attempts to respond to some of these claims. How does he respond? Of the two opinions which do you agree with?
After reading through the comments above and developing your own opinions on the topics, begin to develop your three questions for the class discussion on Friday, October 17 th . In writing your own questions you can look at the above questions for guidance, but your questions should be unique. They should be more specific than most of the questions above, but, in the case of level three questions, they should not be so esoteric that the only way someone could respond is by if they had read the exactly the same material that you had. You can ask questions that require other students to relate the book to their own experiences, but again be sure to make these broad enough that most students can respond to them.