Essays on Darkness

Introduction

Saint John of the Cross
Influences of Saint John
Darkness
Darkness in Ps- Dionysius
Mystical Theology : The negative theology
Negations versus privations
Ascension of Moses and Ascent of the soul
Ps-Dionysius central concern
The Darkness as the summit
“Unknowing”
Divine Darkness versus Nether Darkness
Divine Darkness
The concept of beyond-being
Darkness in John the Cross
John’s Writings :
Dark Night of the soul
Ascent of Mount Carmel
Total purification through denial of everything
The place of silence in union with God
The various stages of the night
Active Night of the senses
Passive night of the senses
...

Gorgias: Socrates, let me ask you, are you aware of darkness?

Socrates: Yes, indeed. I am.

Gorgias: You should be. Let me pose another question to you

Socrates: Go ahead, pray do.
Gor: Is darkness the equivalence of nothingness?
Soc: Not at all. Darkness is something intangible but it has existence. Darkness has its own value without which there would be no light.
Gor: I beg to differ. Darkness is the absence of light, making it the lack of value. This is what I would call nothingness.

Soc: That is where I would suppose you go wrong in your assumptions.

Gor: I make no assumptions but only truths.
Soc: Darkness is not the absence of light. I would use the same argument for light and say that it is the absence of darkness.

Gor: How so?

Soc: ...

Long time ago when the colonizers were still the force behind every move in the world, the native people had no say on how to carry on with their lives of property. Everything at that time belonged to the colonizers. Our ancestors lived a state of unrest and no one could even dare gossip about their presences since they had spies in almost every village and locality. If someone, dared to utter a word those whites will sprint from nowhere descending on an individual mercilessly. The ancestors described the situation at that time as being in hell. The colonizers ...

The moon rises high in the sky, its silvery light creating an eerier aura, as the screams of a woman echoes through the landscape. The creature turns its head attracted by the sounds of pain and fear as it rips through the veil between the living and dead. “The night of Samhain,” it thinks, “the perfect night for escape.” As the time when the veil between the living and dead is the thinnest, Samhain is the time signally the end of lightness and the beginning of darkness. Exhausted creature slides down to the Earth, the first time it had ...

Joseph Conrad (his real name was Jozef Korzeniowski) is a classic of English literature of the twentieth century. He was born in the Russian Empire into a family of Polish patriots, who took part in anti-government protests. In 1874 he fled to Marseilles to become a cabin boy on a French merchant ship and three years later, while sailing in the Pacific Ocean, began to learn English. Over time, he became captain in the British passenger fleet. The marine experience gave Conrad the material for his literary works. After retiring, he devoted himself wholly to literature and in the ...

‘Instructor’s name’

‘Subject’
European colonial influences on African culture in Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” and Achebe’s “Civil Peace
Imperial powers employ different methods to control the nations ruled by them. Apart from force, they also use various ideological means as an indirect mode of attaining control over the colonized nation. Sometimes more than military prowess, ideological instruments makes the people of the colonies accept the power of the ruling imperialist nation, and make them receptive to the domination inflicted on them. Some of the ideological instruments include religion, literature, and education, and these instruments were used to create a ...

The paper is about Heart of Darkness written by Joseph Conrad. In the Heart of Darkness, Joseph is sharing the experience of a man that has identified through the acts, behaviors and deeds that he do with others. Also he refer efforts by all man with Congo. 1899 was the year of publishing the Heart of Darkness by Conrad. He explains with the words that he has experience throughout his career. This story is a journey of a person who is moving on a path to search himself and face the reality of the newest truth. The person highlighted ...

Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ is an affluent, paradoxical, vivid and layered novella, which combines autobiography with travelogue, adventure story, political satire, black comedy and spiritual melodrama. The novel was written in the latter half of the 19th century and is regarded as one of the pioneer’s of the imperial art. . The plot deals with a journey into darkest Africa, a region recognized as the ‘Congo-free State’ by the Berlin Conference of 1885, the private possession of King Leopold II of Belgium. Conrad depicts in ‘Heart of Darkness’, the ways in which men in Africa served, and ...

HOOK

When was the last time you did something bad? Something you regretted, or wished that you had not ever done in the first place? Even worse, what if you did something you personally do not regret, but hope no one ever finds out? How does this make you feel? Shameful? Guilty? Paranoid?

These are all feelings that someone who has committed sin has experienced at some point or another. Whether it is stealing a pack of gum or cheating on your spouse, a sin is a sin, and it can cause fairly intense feelings within us. These feelings ...

Discussion

My primary reaction to this story was that it is a timeless narrative. While the specific context of the colonial era and the technology of travel by steamship certainly places this within a tight time frame, the themes at work will never grow old. The notion that unlimited and unchecked power leads to unimaginable corruption is as old as King Herod and as recent as the era of apartheid in South Africa. The idea that, ultimately, people will do evil, if left to their own devices, is as old as Cain and Abel and as new as the young ...

A Critical Analysis

James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” (1965) is one of his best known stories, and it continues to attract critical attention and to attract new readers. Written during the Civil Rights Campaign of the 1960s, Baldwin eschews his habitual preoccupations with homosexuality and inter-racial relationships to write a moving story of two brothers. Clark 934) argues that the story “meticulously interrogates and dismantles the superficial, socially imposed aspects of men’s relationships precisely because the story is so uniquely asexual.” – unique in Baldwin’s work, he means. Famously, Baldwin uses the music of the blues and jazz as a ...

The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad is a fictional novel with the sturdiest statements on imperialism. Though it has other significant themes, the emphasis focusing on imperialism can be easily noticed by the readers. Conrad wrote a letter to William Blackwood, his publisher, stressing how imperialism affected Africans. The narrative is clear and it sheds light on the criminality of incompetence and the high degree of selfishness in Africa civilization claiming its justification. Conrad declares his thoughts in a way that appears simple but in the reality, it is not. The aim of this paper is to discuss ...

Heart of Darkness is a novel written by Joseph Conrad. The setting of the book is in Belgian Congo, which was the most infamous European colony in Africa. This is a story about the protagonist Marlow’s journey to self-discovery, and his experiences in Congo. Conrad’s story explores the colonialism period in Africa to demonstrate Marlow’s struggles. Along the way, he faces insanity, death, his fear of failure, and cultural contamination as he makes his way to the inner station. Conrad through the protagonist and antagonist life explores European imperialism and its effects to Africans.
Marlow is ...

Third world countries have the name underdeveloped countries, but it is better to call them over-exploited countries. Developed countries are implementing several foreign policies and trading blocks that have nothing to develop the less developed countries; on the contrary, they exploit the development and block growth in many ways such as imperialism, globalization, and capitalism. These practices of powerful nations prevent third world countries from developing. The countries that have advanced technologies and standard economical status are considered as the developed countries. Besides their growth, these countries have started taking advantage of third world countries that are also less ...

The day turns to night, and the night turns to day; but it wasn’t always so. It used to be that the days were just that, days. The sun would shine down on the mountains and the green grass, throughout the calendar year. However, people grew weary and tiresome working all day, and prayed to the gods for a few hours of darkness, where they could rest their eyes and their sore muscles from the days work in the fields.
Our story begins with a beautiful young woman named Pangita who was the daughter of a god and ...

Arguments are a collection of premises and a conclusion. It is made of one or more premises and a conclusion. Premises are statements whether true or false that support the claim made: conclusion. Arguments fall under deductive or inductive reasoning. Both types represent connected sequence of statements that are aimed at establishing a definite proposition.

The Professor uses good inductive arguments to support his existence of evil and as such God.

“God created everything that exists

Evil exists,

God created evil”

The professor’s arguments in this case are good. The ...

Introduction

This artistic work represents a classical religious and spiritual image of a burning candle. In addition, it shows an ancient practice in both esoteric spiritual practices and conventional religious sense. The burning candle ignites a people wishes and thoughts of spiritual and religious scenarios and events such as prayers. Considerably, almost every person who lights a candle is attached to particular feelings and understanding. Whether representing love, blessings or personal protection, burning candle produces a fire that signifies the internal inner flame of individual’s immutable spirit. Burning candle provides an insight of the person manifesting not only in ...

In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and in Francis Ford Coppola’s loose adaptation/re-imagining Apocalypse Now, the character of Kurtz is portrayed as a white man who has chosen to separate himself from his civilized contemporaries and rule over a native sect of people in a faraway land. While both characters come from the same source, there are significant differences between the two. While Heart of Darkness’ Mr. Kurtz portrays specifically the imperialism and hopeless ambition inherent in the ivory trade, Apocalypse Now’s Colonel Kurtz (played by Marlon Brando) inhabits the horrors of the Vietnam War and ...

"Araby" can be said to be a complex short story written by Joyce as a reflection of the life of a young boy growing up in Dublin city. The narrator, a boy, is not named, and Joyce, the author, uses him as the first person; though the narrator appears to be more mature than the boy referred in the short story. Araby, focuses on fantasy and escape; revolving around despair, darkness as well as enlightenment. The story is retrospective of Joyce's life and looks back of his past life as well as his constant struggles (Smith 10).
This story, ...

Classic English Literature

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, born in the small seaport of Taganrog, Ukraine in 1860, was a physician who wrote short stories and plays. While he spent his early years under the shadow of his father's religious fanaticism, he managed to support his medical studies by taking tuitions. As a doctor, Chekov spent his daytime caring for the needy while he spent the nights writing. His medical background is clearly evident in much of his plays as evidenced by the apathy many of his characters show towards tragic events. His plays and short stories are influenced by his doctoral research at ...

The central claim of this paper is: the movie Million Dollar Baby is a cinematic argument containing the central thesis of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave from Republic and Aristotle’s moral philosophy from Nicomachean Ethics. First, the allegory of the cave will be explained as well as Aristotle’s theory of virtue. The paper will give examples from Eastwood’s film to back up the thesis, along with possible counterarguments.
The story of the cave is Plato’s argument for how knowledge begins in darkness and ascends towards truth (517a). The ascent to knowledge is gradual. Darkness ...

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad is viewed as one of the best novellas in the English dialect. On the surface it is a dreamlike story of riddle and exploit set in focal Africa; in any case, it is likewise the story of a man's typical excursion into his inward being. An abundance of vivid subtle elements that are huge on both strict and typical levels helps the equivocalness of Conrad's story and has prompted clashing understandings of its importance. At the start of the last area of Part 3, Marlow has recently recuperated from his close deadly sickness. ...

Conrad's approach to his story of the rationalization and justification of racist Western imperialism presents a record of this despicable time that continues echoing the long-term evil in parts of former colonial holdings in 21st century Africa. Debate continues today about Conrad's intention writing this factual-based fiction (Bloom 6), and surely, exemplifies another literary offering of how racist ideas "were the basis of colonization" (Ginio 185). This academic exercise presents discourse about "Heart of Darkness" by Conrad with an analysis of the ideology of the justification of 19th century Western racism/imperialism connected to the distortion of Darwin's theory of ...

Joseph Conrad and William Faulkner are two of the most prominent writers of the modern literary era. In fact in an event held in the year 1957 at the Virginia University, Faulkner openly stated that his works were influenced by Conrad’s writing style. Faulkner have rated ‘ A Heart of Darkness’ as one of his favorite books, and reportedly when he travelled through Kent he remarked to his mother about the serenity of the place, and commented that ‘ no wonder Conrad writes such fine books from here’. ...

Originally debuted at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London in 1986, Andrew Lloyd Weber’s famous production, The Phantom of the Opera, was re-staged for television in a twenty-fifth anniversary performance at the Royal Albert Hall (PR Newswire 1). As a special televised performance, props and sets were designed for close-up viewing, and the regular Royal Albert Hall cast was augmented by special guest performances from original 1986 cast members such as Michael Crawford (the original Phantom) and Sarah Brightman (Christine Daae) (PR Newswire 1). These aspects lent a particularly surprising enhancement to an already classic and timeless production, ...

A few years after Doris Lessing’s wrote the Grass is Singing, Richard Wright releases yet one of the most compelling novel the depicts the story of an African American fugitive slave—The Man in the Underground (1945). In this novel, the lead character, Fred Daniels attempts to escape from a corrupt history and a corrupt society. From a privileged house servant, Fred Daniels character develops into an underground criminal. In the course of Daniel’s journey, Wright reveals a layer of racism above ground. This novel is also quite similar to Ralph Elison’s Invisible Man. However, Wright ...

The Native Americans that can be found in North America have their myths explaining how they were created and the reason as to why they occupy certain regions in America. Moreover, these myths are seen to be very different from each other and have different concepts and ideologies. The reason as to why there is no unified body associated with the mythologies is due to the different tribal groups that make up the Native Americans (Birrell, 1993). The tribes have their own creation stories in relation to how the world came into being, the appearance of people, and the ...

In Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, the young king Oedipus must deal with demons from his past and the uncertain nature of his future, as he learns the fate of the previous king and the ways in inextricably ties with his own parentage (and marriage to the former king’s bride). Oedipus Rex, being a tragedy, deals primarily with the phenomenon of dramatic irony, in which the main character does not know things that will inexorably change their point of view once they know it. Oedipus is directly contrasted with the prophet Tiresias, who is without eyesight but has a much ...

1. This statement is from a researcher involved in studying cases of feral children: In the sad and mysterious case of __Genie_ we have an instance of developmental deficiency produced, not by a loss of senses, but by deprivation of the power of exercising them.
Place the name of one of the feral cases covered in class in the blank space above then, in your own words tell me what you think this statement means as it relates to the case you chose as well as to all the cases of feral children. Support your point of view with ...

So what do you expect to find in a play written hundreds of years ago but is still read with unrelenting enthusiasm and interest as never before? What is that make this possible? Can you really tell the best way of presenting a play in which a character, cheered by his over ambitious wife, kills people mercilessly in order to gain power and safeguard it? These are some of the questions that you get answered as you read Macbeth, a Shakespeare’s play .In my analysis of this play, I am going to discuss some major characters ,themes and ...

Joseph Conrad’s novel, Heart of Darkness, is a colonial narrative which discusses the brutality of the British colonialists in Africa. The plot follows the central protagonist, Charlie Marlow, as he transports ivory down the Congo River. The novel presents a number of paradoxes with regard to its presentation of imperialism. The central paradox to all imperialism is obviously the enrichment of the colonial state which is juxtaposed with the decreased amount of national liberties; when the British Empire assumed control over Africa, they ...

UN POSITION ON NUCLEAR WEAPONS

There are more than two dozen countries of the world that have nuclear power, however, only a few have nuclear weapons and few are suspected of making nuclear weapons. During the cold war era between US and USSR, nuclear arms race was the most alarming feature as both the super powers rapidly built up their stockpiles of nuclear weapons. Later when both realized, there would be devastation caused by nuclear weapons, they embarked upon a number of agreements for reduction in the number of nuclear weapons. Efforts were speeded up after disintegration of the USSR; however, the issues remained ...

Genesis 1:1-5

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning – the first day (The Holy Bible, New International Version).
Human Condition: In Genesis 1, Moses gives us the account ...

Robert Frost’s, “Acquainted with the Night,” was written in 1928 and it is as haunting and lovely as any of his other works . The narrator of the poem possesses qualities typical of Frost’s narrators, as he assesses the loneliness of life, as well as the inevitability of death. Depression, as well as Frost’s unusual iambic pentameter use is also present. He is not one for rhyming, but instead uses a slow, steady cadence to draw the reader down a slow, almost familiar path that will inevitably lead us baffled at out so much could be said ...

For as long as people have created works of art to represent themselves and their conceptions of the world around them, the symbolism that the moon offers has provided it with a unique place among natural symbols. The moon earned its place thanks to the deep understanding of ancient peoples and their mythological use of the moon to explain natural and moral phenomena. In music, all of those ancient stories concerning the moon and its place in the collective human psyche are layered atop one another to create a dense, mysterious symbol defined best by the pieces composed to ...

Nineteen Eighty Four is a dystopian novel written by Gorge Orwell in 1948 and was later published in 1949. The novel depicts a totalitarian dystopian world where all the citizens are constantly brainwashed and are forced to be equal. The people in the book are forced to work for big brother without any freedom as their rights are infringed. The party in the novel suppresses the people’s thinking by making them equal in addition to creating fear in them through strict laws and propaganda in order to stop them from resisting (Bowker 102). Through this book, Orwell warns ...

“Instructor’s name’

‘Subject’
“The Birth-Mark” and “The Cask of Amontillado” – A comparative study
Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne are two important contributors of the nineteenth-century American literature. Edgar Allan Poe was one of the most celebrated authors, posthumously though, of the past century. Some of his stories are almost autobiographical, and though he lived in a previous era, his ideas were far ahead of his time. Nathaniel Hawthorne is an author, whose works are even today cited for seeking ethical guidance. His stories urge the reader to analyze his moral confusions. This essay is an attempt to compare and contrast ...

Book VII - On Shadows and Realities in Education

SOCRATES - GLAUCON
AND now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened: --Behold! human beings living in a underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a ...

The 1996 version of Romeo and Juliet is one of the best as it proves that Shakespeare can be updated no matter year or century. It is a modern version and a bit easier to understand than the book since it has been translated to modern English. The image photo is of Romeo and Juliet who loved each other deeply and no they believed that no man could put them asunder.
The image shows Romeo and Juliet when they first met in Capulet’s party. Romeo is dressed in blue attire while Juliet’s is red. They both appear ...

The two novels are literary works which show the patriarchal attitudes which surround the women of the society. The works also express the interrelation between the sexes and study the societal forces which govern our lives. Virginia Woolf in To the Lighthouse brings forth the feminist voice against the patriarchal prejudices through the characters of the novel. The novel goes on to critique colonialist patriarchy and the stereotypical assumptions about Englishwomen.
The starting of the novel does away with the masculine “sphere” of activity and thus shakes the opposition between the sexes. The public world of business and “high” ...