Is Prsident Obama a good President?

1) So far, he's doing a great job!
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/07/20/obama_so_far_good_job_106379.html
2) So far, he's failing miserably.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/27134.html

Research Paper Draft 1

Achebe’s and Conrad’s View of Africa and Africans

                                                By: Brittany Brinegar

Achebe and Conrad have two completely different views on Africa and Africans. Achebe believes that Africans are people who have morals and are more civilized than most. However, Conrad is the complete opposite he believes Africans to be people who have no morals and behave more barbaric than most.

Achebe presents his view through Okonkwo, a leader in his African tribe who lives his life based on how much of a man he his. Then there is Conrad who shows Africa through Marlow, a European sailor traveling up the Congo River. It is because of these differing ways of looking at the world that the depictions of Africa vary in the two novels.

The people are described, not by their movements or skin color, but as having feelings and thoughts” (Achebe, Things Fall Apart)

In contrast Conrad says, “It was paddled by black fellows. You could see from afar the whites of their eyeballs glistening. They shouted, sang; their bodies streamed with perspiration; they had faces like grotesque masks.”  Conrad’s views that the African characters do not speak, and his depictions of them only focus on the color of their skin.

To Achebe, Conrad’s descriptions made him racist, an opinion he describes in detail throughout his critique of Heart of Darkness, “that namely that Joseph Conrad is a thoroughgoing racist”. (Achebe, “An Image of Africa”). Achebe believed that Conrad made people believe that Africa was a dark place with no civilization. He also believed that Conrad did not give a voice to the African’s, making them seem like heathens. Conrad on the other hand believed he was saying worse about the Europeans than the Africans and felt pity toward the Africans.

During Conrad’s travels, he actually went up the Congo River, much like the character Marlow, and was profoundly affected by this journey. Thus the book Heart of Darkness came to be. While Achebe says, what is happening in Africa today is a result of what has been going on for 400 or 500 years, from the “discovery” of Africa by Europe. Knowing what the Europeans had done in his homeland had a huge influence on his book Things Fall Apart.

Achebe viewed Africa and it’s people through the eyes of an African, one of them. He had grown up among these people, and had an understanding of their culture. In the book when Okonkwo is banished for Umofia, his feelings are described as, “He is an exile, condemned for seven years to live in a strange land. And so he is bowed with grief” (Achebe, Things Fall Apart).  This depicts an African as having the ability to feel grief and pain, this would not happen with the Africans in Conrad’s novel. Achebe was able describe the feelings of another African. Conrad on the other hand was a European, and he saw things in a European’s way. The entire reason for Europeans traveling to Africa was to conquer the people and to change them they couldn’t accept Africa’s way of life.

Throughout this whole ordeal neither Conrad nor Achebe could see the point the other was trying to make, because they never truly understood the point the other was trying to make.

Works Cited

Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. New York: Anchor, 1994. Print.

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1994. Print.

"Heart of Darkness, Things Fall Apart and Racism." Jow253 on HubPages. Web. 15 Feb. 2012. <http://jow253.hubpages.com/hub/HoDTFAracism>.

"Chinua Achebe's Response to Conrad." CaSaWoMo. Web. 15 Feb. 2012. <http://www.casawomo.com/essays/chinua-achebes-response-to-conrad>.

Sickels, Amy. "Salem Press." Salem Press. Web. 15 Feb. 2012. <http://salempress.com/Store/samples/critical_insights/things_fall_reception.htm>.

Spencer, Lisa. "Things Falling Apart at the Heart of Darkness." Lisa Spencer on HubPages. Web. 15 Feb. 2012. <http://lisa-spencer.hubpages.com/hub/Back-and-Forth-into-Darkness>.

"Achebe: An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"" Pictures of Kirby's Cats. Web. 15 Feb. 2012. <http://kirbyk.net/hod/image.of.africa.html>.

           

            

Make a Claim

 Achebe and Conrad have completely different views on Africans and how they perceive themselves. In “Things Fall Apart” Achebe views Africans as people who have morals, and are more civilized, while in “Heart Of Darkness” Conrad sees Africans as people who are barbaric and have no self-discipline.

Works Cited Page

Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. New York: Anchor, 1994. Print.

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1994. Print.

"Heart of Darkness, Things Fall Apart and Racism." Jow253 on HubPages. Web. 15 Feb. 2012. <http://jow253.hubpages.com/hub/HoDTFAracism>.

"Chinua Achebe's Response to Conrad." CaSaWoMo. Web. 15 Feb. 2012. <http://www.casawomo.com/essays/chinua-achebes-response-to-conrad>.

Sickels, Amy. "Salem Press." Salem Press. Web. 15 Feb. 2012. <http://salempress.com/Store/samples/critical_insights/things_fall_reception.htm>.

Spencer, Lisa. "Things Falling Apart at the Heart of Darkness." Lisa Spencer on HubPages. Web. 15 Feb. 2012. <http://lisa-spencer.hubpages.com/hub/Back-and-Forth-into-Darkness>.

"Achebe: An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"" Pictures of Kirby's Cats. Web. 15 Feb. 2012. <http://kirbyk.net/hod/image.of.africa.html>.

viewing guide-Heart of Darkness

1)How was Joseph Conrad's life similar to Marlow's?
Conrad like Marlow traveled up the Congo River and he saw what it was like for the Africans enslaved for ivory trade in the Congo. It was because of this that he wrote the book.

2)What were the historical forces that drove the ivory trade in the Congo?

When slavery ended they needed more money so they started the trade of wealthy goods such as ivory, gold, and diamonds.

3)In what way did Apocalypse Now imitate Heart of Darkness?

Americans represented another type of colonialism, not for goods, but as a ground for international battle

solitude and leadership, Lt Col. Daniel L. Davis

In the article “The American Scholar” this quote was used “Does being a leader, I wondered, just mean being accomplished, being successful?” No it does not because what makes a leader is someone who knows how to lead people in a situation and stay calm at the same time. To be a leader you need courage, sacrifice, strength, etc. I believe that Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis is not the type a leader we need.

Yes, he has seen many things since enlisting into the army in 1985, but that does not mean he knows everything that is going on because we learn something new everyday that we didn’t know yesterday. I believe that people have a right to know when the war is going to end especially for people whose dad’s and son’s are serving in the army, but that does not mean let’s tell the whole world about what the military is doing behind our backs.

I think that if the military wanted us to know they would tell us or at least give an explanation as to why things are going so bad, but its not right to base our decision on what Lt. Col Daniel Davis says because to every story there are 2 sides and we have only heard one side of it. We may never know the reason for it keeping it a secret maybe they have good reason to and are just looking out for the citizen’s best interest at heart. As I always say, “ everything happens for a reason” even if we don’t know what that reason is yet.

Also in the article is says, “That the U.S. Army is a bureaucracy and one of the largest and most famously bureaucratic bureaucracies in the world.” Lt. Col Daniel Davis serves in the military he is a very good soldier and fights for what he believes in I’ll give him that, but I just don’t see why go through all the trouble of telling us these things that they army is doing when and in fact that he serves in the army that are supposedly doing all these bad things. If the army wanted us to know they would tell us what gives us the right to judge them when in fact right now they are out there fighting, and dying for us because they want what is best for us.

In the article it states that “Why is it so often that the best people are stuck in the middle and the people who are running things” I think this statement describes accurately what is going on around us. When there is a problem the middlemen or in our case the citizens are always stuck in the middle when we had nothing to do with it in the first place. Lt. Col Daniel Davis has the citizens best interest at heart but is it really his decision as to whether or not we should be told about these so called allegations against the United States Army.

So I believe that Lt. Col Daniel Davis is not a leader we need and I stick by with this that there is someone more better and more qualified to lead us.