... and white fazade hiding death and decay. Then there's the story of Marlow's predecessor Fresleven, a gentle, quiet man who goes on a wild rampage, and the office of the Company with the two women knitting black wool like the fates. The doctor who examines Marlow foreshadows his future experiences: "'I always ask leave, in the interest of science, to measure the crania of those going out there, he said. And when ... extraordinarily moral, just normal, the only normal ones we see amid the demented greed of the traders. He is shocked by the apathetic attitude of other colonials towards the...

• Word Count: 4081
• Approx Pages: 16
• Grade Level: High School

... taking out of the jungle, they were, at the same time, bringing light and progress to the jungle. We can ascertain from this painting that Kurtz was well aware of his company's hypocrisies and their many follies. But at some point we lost him to the wild. Conrad even goes as far to call Kurtz a symbol of the modern age. He symbolizes what Conrad feels is the decline in moral values in ... society, or rather the lack of morals when "society" is no longer present to lend a watchful ... eye. Kurtz's last words, "The horror! The horror!" seem to be a message to himself and, through Marlow ...

• Word Count: 1190
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

King Leopold's Ghost tells a story of the Belgian King Leopold II and his misrule of an African colony, named (at the time) the Congo Free State. It is a wild and unpleasant story of a man's capacity for evil and the peculiar manifestation of it. In telling this story, Hochschild does a wonderful job of giving detailed descriptions, especially of the colorful individuals involved, both good and bad. His analysis of the situation is very solid, starting with ... point out that the killing of the Congolese was not an elaborate program of the ethnic genocide, it nonetheless represented murder on...

• Word Count: 2087
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: Undergraduate