Heart of Darkness Questions #2

1. When Marlow is repairing the boat, he hears the Uncle and Nephew talking about Kurtz, the ivory man.  The Uncle is upset that the administration was sent down to their exploration team and doesn't want anything to do with them/him.  He wants to get rid of him...he wants him out of the country; he'd rather be alone than have people like him out there with him.

2. At the end, they were gesturing towards the forest.  It looked appealing, but inside, there was definitely death to be had.  It was frightening. 

3. The cannible crew was definitely a shock.  They heard screaming from someone and they found disfigured bodies of white men scattered about, whose faces were in a variety of expressions.  Marlow had a theory about why they didn't go after them.  There was too much fog and they didn't want to leave their canoes.  He also didn't think that they would attack because the noise was different.  It wasn't the horrifying screams that would come if they were going to attack.  They were just sounds of grief and sorrow.  Marlow seemed to be impressed by their restraint when they saw the travelers.  There were thirty of them and only five travelers.  They could have taken them down in seconds, but they controlled themselves and held themselves back.  They didn't even touch them. 

Should the United States Send Peacekeeping Troops to Darfur?

Yes, I believe that we should send peacekeeping troops to Darfur to help with the situation there.  We seem to be the only country that would be able to have a significant impact on what's going on there.  We can't stand by and watch people kill their own people...like we did in Germany (until we finally intervened millions of people too late), Rwanda, and also Iraq, where Saddam killed many of his people.  We can't sit back and hope that other countries will step up and try to control what is going on there.  We have to take the lead, being the strong and influential country that we are.  It's our job, as one of the most powerful countries in the world, to help maintain and control peace.  If that means that we have to send troops in to help control what is going on, then so be it.  Something needs to be done over there and the first step in doing anything has to be for us to send a few troops.

Heart of Darkness Questions

1. The narrator of the book is Marlow.  He is telling the setting of the book and he is also telling about his adventure on the Congo River.  The story goes back and forth; one minute he's telling the story to people on board, the next minute he's explaining and narrating the actual story.  On The Nellie there were four people and the captain, called the Director of Companies.  

2. Marlow emphasizes that there are many people who have come from England who were adventurers.  The Thames has held such people as Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin...many different and noble people from England.  The Thames has a history with the English.

3. Marlow is trying to say that when people are conquering and exploring the Earth, they are bound to take away land from the people who are lower than them and those who have less power.  He understands that this is bad...he knows that he shouldn't take it from them because it was theirs but it makes them feel better when they know that they have the land.  They just don't think about the idea of taking land from different people.  He is justifying the colonization of land; he thinks that it is okay because he is setting up a place for people to live.

4. I don't think that he wants to use maps.  He wants to explore just like his ancestors and the people who have been explorers before him.  They did just fine and he realized that he could explore without them.

The United States Should Withdraw from the United Nations

Sixty years ago, the United Nations was made after other failed attempts of bringing countries together to try to bring peace to the world and avoid another world war. Their intentions were great; there were going to be rules and regulations that the countries would have to follow and everyone would work together. Now, sixty years later, the United Nations has shown to be a disappointment, not helping in areas where it should and leaving the countries to fight it out. I think that we do need to have the United Nations to have something that will step in, when acceptable, to bring peace. I do think the UN needs to be reformed.
After watching the moving Broken Promises, and seeing all of the flaws that the United Nations has, I figured out that it needs to be reformed, not taken away. I think that the charter, or rules, should be changed in certain events. For example, in Rwanda, where we knew a genocide was happening, the rules of the UN should have been cast aside and we should have stepped in. The United States, being the great country that it is, should have used its power to help control what was going on and bring in peace. There is no reason why we sat on the sidelines and watch one million people perish in a matter of months. It was uncalled for; we knew that there was killing happening there and we didn't do anything to stop it. Also, in the movie, it said that in the Rwanda episode that the United Nations played both sides as a referee. They needed gone against the aggressor and help the victim. All they did was make it easier for people to kill.
The United Nations. It doesn't need to be stopped, it needs to be reformed.