Male Bias In Heart Of Darkness English Literature Essay

Male Bias In Heart Of Darkness English Literature Essay It seems that the essential uncertainties and inconsistencies in Conrads metanarrative, the indirectness and ambiguous nature of the narrative Marlow gives. Marlow in Conrads Heart of Darkness has the typical nineteenth century view of women; women are not as good as men, they are not as smart and are not worth as much. There are only 3 women in the text, Marlows aunt, Kurtzs fiancà © and Kurtzs Amazon lover. None of these characters are not important to tale Marlow is telling. Marlow even says its queer how out of touch with truth women are, they live in a world of their own, and there had never been anything like it, and never can be (Conrad, 27). Even though there are few women in the text and they have very small roles, Marlow makes women seem significant when he talks about them. Marlow outright talks about the relationship between men and women The mind of man is capable of anything because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the futureà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ Very well: I hear: I admit; but I have a voice too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced. (Conrad, 51) He goes on this rant the he believes only men are intelligent enough to understand what he is saying. He is saying that men cannot be silenced, but by saying this he is implying that there is a chance that male voice can be silenced. Its like he secretly believes women can somehow silence men. It seems that Conrads goal is to silence the women in the text. Marlow states They, the women I mean, are out of I, should be out of it. We must help them to stay in that beautiful world of their own, lest ours gets worse (Conrad, 63). The language he uses makes it seem like women keep the world of men from falling apart. Of course this is a male narrative telling the story of a man doing manly things. The Heart of Darkness exhibits a biased male view of women demonstrated by Marlows use of the sexual metaphor of penetration and other diction used in the text. Gilbert and Gubar argue that Heart of Darkness penetrates more ironically and thus more inquiringly into the dark core of otherness that had so disturbed the patriarchal, the imperialist, and the psychoanalytic imaginations à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ Conrad designs, designs for Marlow a pilgrimage whose guides and goal are à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ eerily female (Conrad, 44) (Gilbert and Gubar). The narrative seems to keep with the male-controlled design, with a hero conquer whom defeats hurdles and becomes one of the socially elite. The plot itself follows the typical male hero who saves the day and becomes a hero, just like the stories Bewolf, and the Odyssey. The storyline, however Marlow seems to sit on the fence as to whether he sides with the colonialists or the natives, and the story itself doesnt provide a closing and we never really know which side Marlow is on. Conrad shows some characters in his writing style that portray the Congo women, as well as his attitude toward the moral issues of social system in Heart of Darkness, as Là ©criture Feminine (Kristeva). He shows characteristic of feminism, which Kristeva associates with a genderless, pre-oedipal stage. Kristeva relates the semiotic as a female whose sexuality has not yet been constructed (Kristeva). While acknowledging that the fictive world of Heart of Darkness belongs to men, nineteenthcentury, imperialistic, European men, Sedlak, for example, says that Conrads women do display a separate consciousness (Crouch, 2). French feminists, such as Helene Cixous, state that the diction is essentially bi-sexual, one which proposes to analyze all the rigorous binary by bewildering the boundaries between the masculine and feminine and the binaries, such as; proper and improper, normal and divergence, rational and irrational, expert and subservience, by which civilizations live on. According to Eagleton, Most women are like this: they do someone elses-mans- writing, and in their innocence sustain it and give it voice, and end up producing writing thats in effect masculine. Great care must be taken in working on feminist writing not to get trapped by names: to be signed with a womans name doesnt necessarily make a piece of writing feminine. It could quite well be masculine writing, and conversely, the fact that a piece of writing is signed with a mans name does not in itself exclude femininity. Its rare but you can sometimes find femininity in writings signed by men; it does happen. (, 232). Bode claims that Heart of Darkness portrays a powerful female network, which frequently takes charge and assumes control of the novellas events (20). This may seem absurd because as the story opens, the narrator describes the Thames as a manly domain crowded with memories of men and ships it has borne to the rest of home or to the battles of the sea (Conrad, 18). It is a place to think about the dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germ of empires (Conrad, 19). However these ships sailed only for the glory of the Queens highness, and when she meets the ship, it thus pass out of the gigantic tale (Conrad, 19) of masculine venture and splendor and into a domanin which apparently allows women on board. The issue is not one of elaborating a new theory of which woman would be the subject or the object, but of jamming the theoretical machinery itself, of suspending its pretension to the production of a truth and of a meaning that are excessively univocal (Irigaray). Therefore is it possible for a male text such as Heart of Darkness also be as popular if it was on a feminine text and not a masculine one? Well, while listening to Marlows narrative about his journey to fill in the blank spaces on the earth (Conrad, 22) or in this case Africa his journey seems to seem quite feminine; because he has to rely on others to help him, his motives are questioned, and he makes moral decisions that dont seem masculine. This is first evident when he has to get help from his aunt to get a job. This is something that was typical of women in the late 1890s. He seems humiliated when he has to ask would you believe it? I tried the women. I, Charlie Marlow, set the women to work- to get a job. Heavens! (Conrad, 23). Then before leaving for the Congo he has tea with his aunt and says good by, she gives him her blessing, like mothers of the Great War who send their sons of to battle, expcecting to have him return a hero. However, Marlow returns more tame than hero, m ore feminie than conquering hero. Then Marlow questions himself about being able to become a conquering hero when he says I dont know why a queer feeling came to me that I was an imposter (Conrad, 27), which is considered a feminine quality. Then when he gets to the Congo he eavesdrops on a conversation involving the station master and his nephew where they are plotting to foli Kurtz. Then he doesnt let anyone know what he heard. This makes him seem incapable and weak, which is again making him seem feminine. Why would Marlow still make this journey with all these doubts? The answer rests in his masculine boyhood when he was a child, there were many blank spaces on the earth, and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map I would put my finger on it and say, When I grow up I will go there (Conrad, 22). When he got to the Congo it was no longer this virgin space, it now has rivers and lakes that have already been explored. All that was left for him was a river that is reminiscent of a giant snake with its head in the sea and body turning through the country. He concludes, the snake had charmed me. (Conrad, 23) According to Straus, It is Conrads text itself that stimulates the notion that the psychic penury of women is a necessary condition for the heroism of men, and whether or not Heart of Darkness is a critique of male heroism or is in complex complicity with it, gender dichotomy is an inescapable element of it (125). Marlow first views the map of the river as a snake in a Brussels office, where two knitting women operate as protectors of the gates of Hell. Marlow says, it was fascinating-deadly-like a snake-ugh! (Conrad, 23). When Marlow enters the chief officials office he is metaphorically entering the underworld of the snake river, the sinister female power Marlow wishes to explore in order to purge the feminine inside himself; however he ends up embracing this femininity instead of purging it. From the very start of the text Conrad exposes Marlows feminity, by first showing him as a submissive man, because he follows Buddha who believes in obtaining peace by being enlightened. This idea is directly contrasting the attributes of a conquering hero, which he is supposed to be in this story he is telling us. Then the text itself leaves us full of questions about who Kurtz is and how Marlow feels about Kurtz and his crime. Furthermore we dont really know what Kurtzs crime was. All of theses questions make us question Marlow. As Marlows expedition continues, we see more binary oppositions, as his compassion shifts between the white colonialists (whom are viewed as superior) and the blacks whom have been robbed of their culture and deprived of their homes. This is evident when he is outraged by the treatment of the natives as less than human as they are moving around as ants (Conrad, 29). He cannot stand the fact that the natives, who are creating the railway that will support the expansion of the colonialst, are being treated worse than most animals. You can see this viewpoint is evident in Conrads picture of the chain gang: A slight clinking behind me made me turn my head. Six black men advanced in a file, toiling up the path. They walked erect and slow, balancing small baskets full of earth on their heads, and the clink kept time with their footsteps. Black rags were wound around their loins, and the short ends waggled to and from like tails. I could see every rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar around his neck, and all were connected together with a chain, whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking (Conrad, 30). Then he goes on to depict them as black shapes crouchedin all the attitudes of pain, abandonment and despair and further describes standing horror-struckas one of these creatures rose to his hands and knees, and went off on all fours to the river to drink (Conrad, 32). Chinua Achebe in his article An Image Of Africa, states that Conrad in this passage is stereotyping the African as savage and primitive, deserving of our compassion but not our respect. However you can look at this passage as Marlow identifying with the natives and being disgusted by their treatment at the hands of the colonialists. Therefore he would be taking the natives side over that of the white colonalists; he feels sympathy for the unempowered female, because he may end uo powerless like the natves he has come to defeat and the marginalized women at home. Nevertheless, Brook Thomas (as quoted in Murfin) believes there is another way of looking at this depiction of the natives in a chain-gang; Even though Conrad had himself been there, he chose to tell his story indirectly through an idiosyncratic, first-person narrator, Marlow, whose narrative is in turn relayed by another narrator who presumably has not even been to Africa. This elaborate structure makes us aware of structure as structure; thus, the novel, doesnt pretend to offer us a perfectly clear, uncluttered, unbiased, perfectly natural view of the facts of the past (Murfin, 236). Thomas viewpoint validates the idea that the language and structure of this story allow for a lot different interpretations. Another important fact that most people overlook is that Conrad is Polish and is actually exiled in England. His second language is English and therefor he was also not always accepted as normalin the English society. Edward Said declares: Because Conrad also had an extraordinarily residual sense of his own exilic marginality, he quite carefully qualified Marlows narrative with the provisionality that came from standing at the very juncture of this world with another, unspecified but different (Culture and Imperialism, 24). Furthermore North describes how Conrads polish nationality was viewed as a racial differentiation by his friends in England. Conrads Polish accent was associated by them with the Orient, and further that his appearance and mannerisms were considered by H.G. Wells and Ford Mad Ford to be Oriental. Several critics thought he was Jewish. Another found him positively simian (North, 50). This view of him being different from his English friends also made him seem inferior, and may have lead to his understanding for the women and natives in the text. Marlows expedition is a journey toward the realm of multiple perspectives caused by the exiled life of Conrad. Said commented on the imperial background of Conrads Heart of Darkness; Like most of his other tales, Heart of Darkness is not just a recital of Marlows adventures; it is also a dramatization of Marlow telling his story to a group of listeners at a particular place in a particular time Neither Conrad nor Marlow offer us anything outside the world-conquering attitudes embodied by Kurtz and Marlow and Conradthe circularity of the whole thing is unassailable. Except as I said a moment ago that Conrad is self-conscious about setting and situating the narrative in a narrative moment, thus allowing us to realize after all, that far from swallowing up its own history, imperialism has in fact been placed and located by history, one that lies outside the tightly inclusive ring on the deck of the yawl Nelly. (Said, 49) Therefrore Conras is self-consciousness, and this causes multiplicity in the perceptions within the narrative. This idea is further repeated by Kristevas feminist viewpoints about the obliqueness, uncertain and ambigious perceptions essential in a narrative genre. In Marlow journeys to the semiotic he avoids his real feelings about Kurtz because he is worried that he may identify that his is like Kurts, therefore he can end up like Kurtz. Marlow states I think it had whispered to him [the wilderness] things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception, so he took counsel with the great solitude and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating (Conrad, 73). Conrad displays a comparable uncertainty in describing Marlows conflict with the feminine standards personified in Kurtzs mistress, who is viewed a dominant female goddess as well as a sumptuous temptress, both connected with the native savage race by the white English males. Marianna Torgovnick contends that the African woman is the crux of Heart of Darknessthe representative native the only one fully individualized and described in detail, except for the Helmsman, who also dies in the story. She is, the text insists, the symbol of Africa (154-55). Kurtzs mistress has a sexual power that Marlow fears, because he fears the female inspiration within himslef. This female inspiration shows herself in the uncertainties and oversights of the narrative. Conrad has a hard time getting through to his narrator, Marlow. He struggles to speak about the conquest over the savage temptress; however he is unable, or unwilling to do so. Marlow is articulate in his ability to deacribe, however at the end of the text the silent look from the savage native woman is more powerfulk than Marlows own words; And from right to left along the lighted shore moved a wild and gorgeous apparition of a woman. She walked with measured steps, draped in striped and fringed cloths, treading the earth proudly with a light jingle and flash of was done in the shape of a helmet; she had bright leggings to the knee, brass wire gauntlets to the elbow, a crimson spot on her tawny cheek, innumerable necklaces of glass beads on her neck; bizarre things, charms, gifts of witch-men, that hung about her, glittered and trembled at every stepShe was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress, and in the hush that had fallen suddenly upon the whole sorrowful land, the immense wilderness, the colossal body of the fecund and mysterious life seemed to look at her, pensive, as though it had been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul Her face had a tragic and fierce aspect of wild sorrow and a dumb painSuddenly she opened her bare arms and threw them up rigid above her head, as though in an uncontrollable desire to touch the skyA formidable silence hung over the scene. (Conrad, 76) This section of text shows Marlows split attitude toward female power; on one side Conrad and Marlow are concerned by the native womans sexual ambiguity, and on the other side they are captivated by her. Kurtzs savage lover is seen as almost mute in the text and this silence is symbolic of the undiscovered and unexplored spots in Africas jungle that Marlow and secretly Conrad had longed to travel. However these blank spaces, unexplored areas are fantasy; as he admits the muteness of the women to be fantasy, on the linguistic level. The idea of a silent female is in fact a fantasy because he shows the savage mistress to have a very powerful diction, just as powerful as that of the colonists. This is evident when she rushed out to the very brink of the stream. She put out her hands, shouted something, and all that wild mob took up the shout in a roaring chorus of articulated, rapid, breathless utterance (Conrad). According to Gilbert and Gubar, she is a silent symbol in the text that expresses her unknown history as well as her intimidating hystery. The mistress is the typical monster female in the text. She is not only a threat to the men because of her voice she is also standing in direct opposition to Kurtzs Intended. She is seen as the strong hostile monstrous monster woman while Kurtzs fiancà © is seen as the angle, pure Victorian fantasy. Torgovnick states that, Marlow clearly conceives of her as a substitute for, an inversion of Kurtzs high-minded, white intended. Like the Belgian woman, she is an impressive figure, but unlike the Intended she is not high-minded: she is presented as all body and inchoate emotion. The novella cuts from the figure of the African woman with outstretched arms to the Intended: one woman an affianced bride, one woman all body, surely an actual bride (Torgovnick, 146-147). The British code states that miscegenation is wrong and therefore Marlow is scared to fall in love with a savage native woman and end up like Kurtz. However the savage woman is so attractive and seductive, as exposed by the texts illustration of her, that Marlow has a hard time fighting it; this is seen as a representation of Conrads true feelings about femininity. The African woman, who purposely remains unnamed, represents Conrads natural idea of the savage female, because not lonely is she seductive, she is also deadly, just like Africa . Kurtz has been ruined by a devastating femininity; while this femininity is mesmerizing it also destroys men because it is forbidden. The Savage native woman is the femininie standard that Marlow needs to block in order to triumph. Torgovnicks and Gilbert and Gubars, are the only studies of Conrad that notice that the native woman may have something to do with his concerns with inptralism. This native woman makes Marlow tackle his boyhood desire for filling up the blank spaces on the African map he pointed to as a child. He travels all the way to the Congo and instead of finding blank spaces he finds other humans who have their own culture. So the question is: how can he fill up a blank space on a map is another people are already living there? This question or a variation of this question has been contemplated by Conrad regarding the connection concerning masculinity and feminity, when looking at the power of colonialism and their weakness, and Conrads racism and his compassion for the conquered Conjoins. Is this not woman as dark continent which Marlow fears in himself but cannot re-press (Kristeva). The savage womon in the text is seen in three differet ways, the first being as the other, as an African temptress, and as a mute savage with no individual characteristics. Faced with anything foreign, the Established Order knows only two types of behavior, which are both mutilating: either to acknowledge it as a Punch and Judy show, or to defuse it as a pure reflection of the West. In any case, the main thing is to deprive it of its history (Barthes, 96). The native African woman cannot be seen as just one of these things, she is walsy multi-dimensional and will never be understood in Marlows view of the world. Conrad places the African temptress in the middle of his issues with colonialism, by making her speechless. I ascribe a basic importance to the phenomenon of languageone of the elements in the man of colors comprehension of the dimension of the other. For it is implicit that to speak is to exist absolutely for the otherà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ (He argues) further that Existence is language, and language is always a matter of politics (Fanon, 17-18). Therefore, in order to exsits you must have language and the subordinate of the colonialists must learn their conquorers language in order to be viewed as human. Therefore when Conrad makes the African temptress mute he is making her unable to speak with her master and therefore less than human, except through her sexual power over Kurtz. Eric Cheyfitz points out that; The conception of the orator as emperor, conquering men with the weapon of eloquence, is a classical and Renaissance commonplace, and argues that this imperial common place finds its place in the story of the orator as the first settler, that is as the first civilizer and colonizer of humans (112-113). Marlow learns about the various accomplishments of Kurts and his eloquence through stories he hears, however by the end of the story his articulacy is gone and all he can utter is the horror, the horror. A colonized person confronts the language of their civilizing nation; that is with the culture of the mother country, the colonized is elevated above the jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother countrys cultural standards. He becomes whiter as he renounces his blackness, the jungle (Fanon, 18). As you can see with Kurtz the opposite is true, he accepts the blackness of the jungle, and he doesnt loose his western way of behaving. According to Marlow, All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz (Conrad, 65). Fannons belief that the colonized will assume the language and philosophy of their colonizer, the native seductress remains her darkness, whereas Kurtz loses his whiteness. Conrads representation of the savage temptress insinuates that you must look at her with all three perspectives, instead of just looking at her with one or two opposing perspectives. Therefore Conrad echoing the feminist ideals of vagueness, obscurity, and various perceptions characteristic of most female narratives, thus Marlows arrival back to England is reiterating Gilligans psychosomatic interpretations regarding female moral growth. There is very little written about Marlows motivation for being dishonest with Kutzs Intended. What I did find didnt even look at the idea of female awareness that has been evident in the anaylsis so far in this research. For example, Marlow never shrinks from judgement, but he judges without abstract ideals, without general principles, indeed without consistency. He derides moral absolutes and willingly suspends universals in favor of concrete discriminations (Levenson, 56). We know from his characterlization in the text that he hates lieing and believes that Kurtz is due honesty; however when he meets with the Intended he is not fully honest, and doesnt even speak about justice. Instead he acts like a saint who would rather, not hurt her feelings, than tell the truth. Marlow explains his motivation for lying to Kurtzs Intended, he doesnt try to bring up their progress, or show pity on her. He merely believes that the truth would have been too dark-too dark altogether (Conrad). In this text the darkness becomes a moral sensation (Levenson, 56-57), which promotes the idea of several different perceptions in Conrads moral replies to racism, feminism, imperialism, and colonialist exploitation. Nevertheless, the ridicule of moral fundamentals in Marlows choice to lie, as pointed out by Levenson, is a female focused approach that Gilligan creates the framework for and Levenson doesnt seem to contemplate. The moral development and judgemnet of women, according to Levenson, is linked to Marlows reaction to Imperalisim and also to Kurtz. This makes it seem like he was being compassionate and not sexist when he lied to Kurtzs Intended. Therefore due to Marlows experiences in Africa his moral awareness has taken on a feminine characteristic. In her text In A Different Voice Gilligan hypothesizes that womens ethical rationalizing is not founded on the ideas of right and wrong, however unlike men, it is based on the situation and the observations of anguish and compassion. The reluctance to judge may itself be indicative care and concern for others that infuse the psychology of womens development and are responsible for what is generally seen as problematic in its nature (Gilligan, 172). Women will usually choose the option that will not hurt anyone, or hurt the least number of people. Why should we believe that the moral sequence through which boys pass constitutes moral development tout court? (Gilligan, 174). Perchance, females are more concerned with kinship and accountability; furthermore not moral in the formal tone of the word, but more reasonable morality. Whereas Men have a more definite idea of right and wro ng, neutral justice (so they would have us believe). If Marlow was judged by Gilligans philosophy for his conclusion to lie to the Intended, then he would be believed to have lied to her to safeguard her from unnecessary pain that telling her the truth would have caused her. In this critical reading of Heart of Darkness Conrads text has been viewed as having a feminine writing style. It has also been revealed that Conrad was viewed as an outsider, exiled by his own Polish people and an immagrant to his home of England, and this created his compassion for the subjugated people of the colonlized Congo. This does not mean that Conrad isnt racist and isnt imperialistic. The reading advocated that the lot of women are unable to making moral choices based on a more definite idea of right and wrong. Marlow uses various sexual metaphors, such as penetration, and other diction used in the text; exhibit a male biased view of women and their roles in society.

Life of a Slave in the Caribbean Essay -- Slavery Caribbean History Cu

Life of a Slave in the Caribbean The experience of Caribbean slavery is vital in understanding the contemporary social structure of the region. It was the introduction of an estimated four million Africans to the Caribbean which made these islands melting pots of culture and society. Since Africans had such a tremendous impact on the region, it is important that we recognize the nature of slavery and how it transformed their lives. Although most agree that the institution was dehumanizing, the social relations of slavery help to explain the development of the Caribbean’s identity. In order to understand slavery it is imperative to recognize that it’s introduction to the Caribbean was driven by colonizers need for economic expansion and development. The growth of the sugar industry throughout the region during the seventeenth century was intimately connected with the enslavement of Africans. The slaves were the means for extracting agricultural resources which could then be sold at a profit in Europe. The leaders in colonization during this period were the French, Dutch, English, and Spanish and initially slaves were simply an input for their final product. Thus slaves were not seen as human but part of a larger machine that was being profited by colonizers. As slavery developed an complex social hierarchy emerged on plantations. At the bottom of the social order, but at the backbone of the plantation economy, were the field slaves. The field slaves were divided into "gangs" depending on the strength of their bodies. For example, "the first gang on any estate comprised the most able-bodied males and females, with subsequent gangs organized according to a descending order of physical strength and ability" (Knight 130). The ... ...show their resistance for slavery. Again, when involved in maroon communities they had tactics for defending their runaway slaves. Although this occurred throughout the exploitation colonies the maroon communities were vital for the success of the Haitian revolution. Ultimately there is no single way of defining the slave experience in the Caribbean. It was a complex institution which developed in a variety of ways on the different colonies. It was the diversity in plantation system which can be attributed to the variance in the development of what the racial and cultural mosaic of the Caribbean today. Works Cited Beckles, Dr. Hillary, Verene Shepherd. Caribbean Slave Society and Economy. The New Press, New York. New York, N.Y. 1991. Knight, Franklin W. The Caribbean, The Genesis Of a Fragmented Nationalism. Oxford University Press, New York, N.Y. 1990.

Book review †cold blood Essay

Book review of Cold Blood by the author James Fleming The surname (he is Ian’s nephew) and terse title might lead one to expect something purely commercial and hard-boiled of James Fleming’s Cold Blood. But this sequel to White Blood, though in the thriller genre, is both more idiosyncratic and awkward than that. The tone is set on page one with the hero-narrator’s introductory self-description: â€Å"I, Charlie Doig†¦ six foot two, strong across the shoulders and through the loins. † Set during the Russian revolution and its bloody aftermath, this is as much tongue-in-cheek historical romp as page-turning cliffhanger. The novel’s opening finds Doig, an entomologist with a taste for derring-do, in western Burma, where he is glorying in his discovery of a new species of jewel beetle. We are briefly whisked back to his ancestral home in Russia – his ancestry is exotically cosmopolitan – for a whirlwind reprise of some of the principal elements of White Blood, notably the rape and torture (so hideous that Doig feels compelled to put her out of her misery with a bullet through the brain) of his beloved wife, Elizaveta, by the evil Bolshevik Prokhor Glebov. Cold Blood tells the story of Doig’s single-minded pursuit of Glebov across civil-warravaged Russia. First stop is St Petersburg, where, with his Mongolian sidekick, Kobi, he witnesses the Bolshevik seizure of power and discovers that Glebov has become one of the revolution’s leaders, up there with Lenin and Trotsky. With the struggle of Red v White spreading across the land, Doig is forced to step up a gear in his pursuit of vengeance, assembling a ragbag troop of henchmen and women and commandeering an armoured train. Thus equipped, Doig will take on not only Glebov, but the whole of the Red Army. If Doig is single-minded, his creator certainly isn’t, for he throws any number of other odds and sods into the narrative stew. There’s a cache of stolen tsarist gold that everyone wants to get their hands on. There’s a mysterious American who proves to be up to no good. There’s an erotic interest called Xenia who also proves to be up to no good. There are any number of colourful bit parts that flit into the narrative, command attention for a couple of pages and then flit out again. If writers can be divided into minimalists and maximalists, then Fleming is out there on the militant wing of the maximalists. Thrillers need variation of pace: moments when the grip is relaxed, the better to sock the reader with the unexpected. Fleming’s relentless energy and garrulous black humour – as Doig and his band of eccentric ne’er-do-wells career across the steppes to an explosive denouement – produce flashes of brilliance, but at the expense of tension. Cold Blood has an original and talented voice behind it, but in the end perhaps goes to show that the comedy thriller is one of the trickiest of literary hybrids to pull off. Cold Blood by the author James Fleming.

Russian Folklore Baba Yaga as a Symbol of Mother Nature

Russian folklore plays an important role in contemporary Russian culture. Children learn folktales from a very early age and are taught folk sayings and proverbs, songs, and myths. While the most well-known manifestations of Russian folklore are folktales, there are many others, including Russian myths (bylina), the short funny songs called the chastushka, and various riddles, fantastical stories (nebylitsa), sayings, lullabies, and many more. Key Takeaways: Russian Folklore Russian folklore comes from the Slavic pagan tradition.Main themes of Russian folklore include the journey of the hero, the triumph of kindness and humble attitude over the clergys arrogance, and the dual nature of Baba Yaga, who initially symbolized Mother Nature but was depicted by Christians as a scary creature.Main characters of Russian folktales are Baba Yaga, Ivan The Fool or Ivan The Tsarevich, the Bogatyrs, and the Hero, as well as various animals. Origins of Russian Folklore Russian folklore has its roots in the Slavic pagan traditions. Long before Russia adopted Christianity in the 10th century, folk tales, songs and rituals existed as an established art form. Once Christianity became the official religion in Russia, the clergy did all it could to suppress folklore, worried that it was too pagan at its core. As the members of the clergy were often the only people who knew how to read and write, there was no official collection of folklore until the 19th century. Until then, only haphazard collections were made in the 17th and 18th centuries by foreign enthusiasts interested in Russian culture. In the 19th century, an explosion of interest in folklore resulted in several collections. However, the oral lore underwent significant editorial changes as it was being written down, and often reflects ideas that were prevalent in the 19th century. Themes and Characters of Russian Folklore The Hero The most common theme of Russian folktales is that of a hero who most often came from the peasant social class. This reflects the fact that folklore originated among the peasants and described themes and characters that were important to the common people. The hero was usually humble and clever and was rewarded for his kindness, while his opponents, usually of higher social standing, were often portrayed as greedy, stupid, and cruel. However, whenever the Tsar appeared in a tale, he was most of the time presented as a fair and just father figure who recognized the true value of the hero and rewarded him accordingly. This is an important point in Russian folklore, as it has remained a big part of the Russian psyche in modern times. Failings of various officials are often blamed on their greed and stupidity, while the current ruler is considered to be unaware of what is going on. Open book illustration russian fairy tale. iStock / Getty Images Plus Ivan the Fool Ivan is most of the time the third son of a peasant. He is considered to be lazy and foolish and spends all his time lying on the great house stove (a unique feature of Russian peasants houses, the stove was traditionally in the center of the log hut and retained heat for hours) until something forces him to go on a journey and fulfill the role of the hero. Although others think of Ivan as unintelligent, he is also very kind, humble, and lucky. As he goes through the forest, he usually meets characters whom he helps, unlike his two older brothers who have been on the same journey and failed. As a reward, the characters that he helps end up helping him, as they turn out to be powerful creatures such as Baba Yaga, Koschei the Immortal or the Vodyanoy. Ivan can also appear as Tsarevich Ivan, also the third son, who is often lost as a baby and doesnt know about his royal blood, as he is brought up as a peasant. Alternatively, Ivan Tsarevich is sometimes seen as the third son of the tsar, treated badly by his elder brothers. Whatever Ivans background, it always involves the role of the underdog who proves everyone wrong with his wit, enterprising qualities, and kindness. Baba Yaga Baba Yaga is the most popular and complex character in Russian folktales and traces its origins to the ancient Slavic goddess who was the link between life and death, or our world and the underworld. There are many versions of the origins of her name, including one that links Yaga to the verb yagatj meaning to be cross, to tell someone off, and others that connect the name Yaga to several languages with meanings such as snake-like, ancestral, and forest-dweller. Whatever the origin of the name, it has come to be associated with a crone-like character who sometimes catches and sacrifices children and is unpredictable in her behavior. However, this association is far from the original meaning bestowed on Baba Yaga, which was of nature, motherhood, and the underworld. In fact, Baba Yaga was the most beloved character in Russian folklore and represented the matriarchal society where it originated. Her unpredictable nature was a reflection of the peoples relationship with the Earth when the weather could affect crops and harvest. Her blood-thirstiness comes from the sacrificial rituals of the ancient Slavs, and the nastiness attributed to Baba Yaga is due to the way the clergy liked to portray her in order to suppress pagan Slavic values that remained popular with the common people despite Christianity being an official religion. You will come across Baba Yaga in most Russian folktales. She lives in a forest—a symbol of the crossing from life to death in Slavic lore—in a hut that rests on two chicken legs. Yaga likes to catch travelers and make them do the kitchen work, but she also welcomes travelers with food and drink, and if they answer her riddles correctly or display humble behavior, Yaga can become their biggest helper. The Bogatyrs Bogatyrs (1898) by Viktor Vasnetsov. Bogatyrs (left to right): Dobrynya Nikitich, Ilya Muromets, Alyosha Popovich. Oil on canvas. Viktor Vasnetsov  / Public Domain The Bogatyrs are similar to the Western knights and are the main characters in Russian byliny (Ð ±Ã'‹Ð »Ã ¸Ã ½Ã'‹)—myth-like stories of battles and challenges. Stories about the bogatyrs can be divided into two periods: pre- and post-Christianity. Pre-Christianity bogatyrs were mythological knight-like strongmen such as Svyatogor—a giant whose weight is so great that even his mother, the Earth, cannot bear it. Mikula Selyaninovich is a super-strong peasant who cannot be beaten, and Volga Svyatoslavich is a bogatyr who can take any form and understand animals. Post-Christianity bogatyrs include Ilya Muromets, who spent the first 33 years of his life paralyzed, Alyosha Popovich, and Dobrynya Nikitich. Popular Russian Folktales Tsarevich Ivan and the Grey Wolf This is a magical folktale—one of the most popular folktale types—and tells the story of the youngest son of a tsar. When the Firebird begins to steal golden apples from the Tsars garden, the Tsars three sons set off to catch it. Ivan befriends a talking wolf who helps him find the Firebird and free Elena the Beautiful in the process. The Hen Ryaba Perhaps the most well-known Russian folk tale, it is read to Russian children as a bedtime story from a very early age. In the story, an old man and an old woman have a hen called Ryaba, who one day produces a golden egg. The man and the woman try to break it but it doesnt break. Exhausted, they put the egg on the table and sit outside for a rest. A mouse runs past the egg and with its tale manages to drop it on the floor, where the egg breaks. Tears follow, with various inhabitants of the village crying, including the trees, cats, and dogs. The tale is considered to be a folk representation of the Christian version of world creation: the old couple represents Adam and Eve, the mouse—the Underworld, and the golden egg—the Garden of Eden. Tsarevna the Frog Illustration to the fairy-tale The Frog Princess. 1930. Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin / Public Domain This famous folktale tells the story of Tsarevich Ivan, whose father the Tsar orders him to marry a frog. What Ivan doesnt realize is that the frog is actually Vasilisa the Wise, the beautiful daughter of Koschei the Immortal. Her father, jealous of her intelligence, turned her into a frog for three years. Ivan finds this out when his wife temporarily turns into her real image, and he secretly burns her frog skin, hoping that she will forever remain her human self. This forces Vasilisa to return to her fathers home. Ivan sets off to find her, making animal friends on his way. Baba Yaga tells him that in order to kill Koschei and save his wife, he needs to find the needle that represents Koscheis death. The needle is inside an egg, which is inside a rabbit, which is in a box on top of a giant oak tree. Ivans new friends help him get the needle, and he saves Vasilisa. The Geese-Swans This is a tale about a boy who gets taken by the geese. His sister goes to look for him and saves him, with the help of various objects such as a stove, an apple tree, and a river.