Another aspect that did not convince me in Heart of Darkness is the fact that some characters are named, but then they are not developed nor do they appear later within the story. I am referring to the characters at the beginning, when the ship’s crew is depicted, as they remain moored in London: an…
Heart of Darkness narrates the story of a sailor named Marlow, who one day decides to join a naval company that takes him from London to Africa. There he discovers how exotic the African continent is. The narrator refers to it as ‘the darkness’ – the obscure, the indefinable. It is not long before Marlow…
Cooper goes on to express her appreciation for the support and assistance received. Referring to six friends of her, she says “the six of them helped me figure out what I wanted to write, how I wanted to write it, and how to live with myself after I wrote it” (“my Liberian friends and cousins…
Doe’s government had never been stable and had always run the risk of being overthrown at any time, until the point that there was an attempted coup by Quiwonkpa, Doe’s former friend and comrade in arms. Samuel Doe came to be arrested but he managed to bribe the soldier who captured him and ended up…
Going back to Helene Cooper’s life, it became considerably more complicated when the Liberian civil war broke out, a factor that forced her to move to the United States, specifically to Knoxville, Tennessee, where her status changed radically, becoming a second-class citizen and realising for the first time that she was black (an Irish boyfriend…
Helene Cooper tells us that she had ancestors on the colonisation ships coming from the United States, specifically Elijah Johnson, a man with a lot of character and a bit of a rebel, who came on one of those ships that arrived at the Liberian coast to settle there. Shortly after the “deal” or rather…
The House at Sugar Beach is an autobiographical novel (it may also be considered quite simply a novel) written by the journalist and diplomatic correspondent of the New York Times, Helene Cooper. Cooper is a woman of Liberian origin who, over time, acquired American citizenship. In the novel, Cooper recounts her childhood and adolescence whilst…
The narrator’s voice maintains an objective and firm tone throughout, but on page 130, the narrator surprisingly expresses an opinion about the new, cruel Reverend Smith, saying that he should have known that the Kingdom of God does not depend on the masses. “He should have known that the kingdom of God did not depend…
Things Fall Apart is a classic piece of African literature, and why not, of world literature. The story portrays a typical African rural reality (Nigerian in this case), where the relationship between religion, white man and the colonisation of the African continent is explained. Certainly, back in the day in Africa (as on other continents…
Things Fall Apart is a novel that narrates the story of Okonkwo, an Igbo farmer and warrior who settled in the fictitious village of Umuofia (Nigeria) at some point between 1860 and 1890 (during the pre-colonial era and emergence of colonialism). Okonkwo is scarred by the negative image that he has of his own father:…