Heart of Darkness

- we should read Heart of Darkness for ourselves because we can come to different conclusions in different works, and by taking someone's word or interpretation without reading it ourselves, we are deprived.

- critics have called the book names such as "racist" and "sexist." if we mantain the theory or actions of "witness to a witness" as is mentioned above, then we can not read Heart of Darkness without ourselves being labeled such names.

- Heart of Darkness "invites reading as literature" in two ways: one, Conrad himself is completely displaced from the story, and two, the simile is used quite often to create layers of veils within the story that must be lifted one by one.

-Heart of Darkness is a book of irony, and interestingly enough, irony is "infinate absolute negativity." (this observation puts a whole new twist to the comments made by the critics above)

- the personification of darkness is a catachrestic prosopopoeia: darkness is given an identity despite the fact that is is more inanimate and names something that is incapable of being named. this is most commonly used in connection to the wilderness and is connected through to the Africans, each of whom acts as a representation of that wilderness.