My day job is English teacher. I teach students to love literature.
Sigh.
If only that were true. What I really do is try to get them to look at literature differently--to look at it through an analytical lens so that then they can look at the world that way. Can see the symbolism in the mundane. Can read a little deeper into a sunset or a tree or a raven.
Sigh.
If only that were true. What I really do is try to get them to look at literature differently--to look at it through an analytical lens so that then they can look at the world that way. Can see the symbolism in the mundane. Can read a little deeper into a sunset or a tree or a raven.
This December, I will be teaching Joseph Conrad’s novella, The Heart of Darkness, for the first time. I read the book when I was in high school and to this day I have only frayed-edged memories of the book. But I have always remembered one line: “Mistah Kurtz--he dead.”
When I recently reread the novella to prepare to teach it, I got goosebumps at that part. Those four words the symbol of so much loss and yet so much freedom.
For those of you who have never read it (and for the rest of you for whom it's been decades), let me give you a brief refresher course: the narrator of the novel, Marlow, spends days sailing up river through the untamed Congo in order to meet this enigmatic man, Mr. Kurtz. To Marlow, Kurtz is a fantasy. A destination. An answer. Both esteemed and feared. For Marlow, Kurtz is larger than life.
The way Marlow describes him, he reminds me of a shadow puppet. You know, the ones your friends used to make when you were at a slumber party. Where someone held a flashlight up and your friends' tiny hands became giant butterflies or barking dogs or fire-breathing dragons. This is Kurtz. The Shadow Man.
Enduring danger, the uncomfortable, and the foreign, Marlow puts his life on hold to meet the dying Kurtz and return him to his home. His whole life dedicated to the task. So dedicated that his single-mindedness in reaching Kurtz becomes nearly hallucinatory.
When Marlow finally meets Kurtz, he finds him to be a somewhat normal man. A man with command and stature, but ordinary in his humanity, in his weakness. He dies, after all.
I, and I know I'm not alone, have so many Kurtzes in my life. So many end goals. So many Shadow Men.
These are the drives that move us forward. The ones we focus on so intensely that we almost become delusional in our quest to achieve them. In our minds, they are the shadow shapes on the wall. Giant. Indistinguishable. Elusive.
For Marlow, Kurtz acted like a magnet, drawing him ever-forward.
The Kurtz in my life with the strongest draw is a man I've moved towards for the past few years of my life. Like Marlow, in my mind, he lies at the end of the river. Powerful. Mysterious. Seemingly the only answer to this long journey. I have spent years working to understand our relationship--the ways in which it works and the ways in which it's broken. I have sailed the river of hope towards him, enduring the savagery of unfulfilled emotions. Dramatic, I know.
Recently, I have realized that this man, my Kurtz, is only a man. It is I who shines the flashlight on him and makes him bigger than he really is. I do this because I like the idea of it. The intangibility of it. How no matter how hard I try to grab at those shadows and capture them, I can't. It is in this mystery that he has power.
There are are Kurtzes in all of our lives. Those fears or hopes or drives or people that we have made larger than their actual size. The ones we blindly plunge towards regardless of our lack of real understanding about them, finding that, when we reach them, they aren't as life-answering or life-changing as we thought they would be.
I'm certainly not arguing that we should live without goals. But goals are different from these forces.
Perhaps that's why that line--"Mistah Kurtz--he dead"--resonates so powerfully for me. In Kurtz's death, Marlow had the opportunity (although most literary scholars would argue that he never seizes it) to find freedom and see Kurtz for who he really was. Just a man. Not a shadow.
In the death of these mysteries, there is freedom to see life as it really is. The life that is now. In this moment. Not the one that lies at the end of the river. We will get there eventually anyway; we might as well enjoy the tangible experiences and love and people who are here, now.
The way Marlow describes him, he reminds me of a shadow puppet. You know, the ones your friends used to make when you were at a slumber party. Where someone held a flashlight up and your friends' tiny hands became giant butterflies or barking dogs or fire-breathing dragons. This is Kurtz. The Shadow Man.
Enduring danger, the uncomfortable, and the foreign, Marlow puts his life on hold to meet the dying Kurtz and return him to his home. His whole life dedicated to the task. So dedicated that his single-mindedness in reaching Kurtz becomes nearly hallucinatory.
When Marlow finally meets Kurtz, he finds him to be a somewhat normal man. A man with command and stature, but ordinary in his humanity, in his weakness. He dies, after all.
I, and I know I'm not alone, have so many Kurtzes in my life. So many end goals. So many Shadow Men.
These are the drives that move us forward. The ones we focus on so intensely that we almost become delusional in our quest to achieve them. In our minds, they are the shadow shapes on the wall. Giant. Indistinguishable. Elusive.
For Marlow, Kurtz acted like a magnet, drawing him ever-forward.
The Kurtz in my life with the strongest draw is a man I've moved towards for the past few years of my life. Like Marlow, in my mind, he lies at the end of the river. Powerful. Mysterious. Seemingly the only answer to this long journey. I have spent years working to understand our relationship--the ways in which it works and the ways in which it's broken. I have sailed the river of hope towards him, enduring the savagery of unfulfilled emotions. Dramatic, I know.
Recently, I have realized that this man, my Kurtz, is only a man. It is I who shines the flashlight on him and makes him bigger than he really is. I do this because I like the idea of it. The intangibility of it. How no matter how hard I try to grab at those shadows and capture them, I can't. It is in this mystery that he has power.
There are are Kurtzes in all of our lives. Those fears or hopes or drives or people that we have made larger than their actual size. The ones we blindly plunge towards regardless of our lack of real understanding about them, finding that, when we reach them, they aren't as life-answering or life-changing as we thought they would be.
I'm certainly not arguing that we should live without goals. But goals are different from these forces.
Perhaps that's why that line--"Mistah Kurtz--he dead"--resonates so powerfully for me. In Kurtz's death, Marlow had the opportunity (although most literary scholars would argue that he never seizes it) to find freedom and see Kurtz for who he really was. Just a man. Not a shadow.
In the death of these mysteries, there is freedom to see life as it really is. The life that is now. In this moment. Not the one that lies at the end of the river. We will get there eventually anyway; we might as well enjoy the tangible experiences and love and people who are here, now.
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