AP ESSAY SUBMISSION THIS WEEK

My server at home appears to be down, and I am out of town. If you cannot connect to send me the paper, you can e-mail it as an attachment (RTF or Word Format) to dpogreba@gmail.com.

It should be back and running by 2:00-3:00 a.m. tonight.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

I stumbled across this article by Robert Solomon , who argues that not only is existentialism not a pessimistic philosophy, it is the philosophy that America needs today. Some highlights:

I do not disagree with the diagnosis, but I am disturbed by the continued reference to existentialism as a pessimistic, negative philosophy. It is often considered such. Only a few weeks ago I heard a radio commentator declare that the "nothing really matters" lyric from Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" was truly "existential." And I still hear pundits and some of my university colleagues decry existentialism as the source of our nihilistic gloom, the reason why our students don't vote and why they experiment with dangerous drugs. I listen to such comments with a mix of amusement and horror because I like existentialism and I think that existentialism, not pessimism, is what America needs right now.
In short, existentialism is not a philosophy that allows us to feel sorry for ourselves in the midst of our malaise. It is a philosophy with which we can come to grips with these terrible times and actually change them. The recent midterm election was encouraging. What it suggests is that America is collectively recouping its existentialist roots, not because of national pessimism but because of what I hope is the beginning of a cooperative optimism and the sense that things as they are cannot stand.

A selection of interesting observations about the end of Things Fall Apart and short story week. For a complete list of blog posts, click here:

Some additional thoughts about Things Fall Apart to discuss, comment on, or at least consider:

Image I spaced actually publishing these to the main page. If you would still rather write about Heart of Darkness, you can take until the 28th. Love in the Time of Cholera essays are still due on the 27th. 

1. Chinua Achebe argued that Heart of Darkness is an “offensive and deplorable book” that “set[s] Africa up as a foil to Europe, as a place of negations at once remote and vaguely familiar, in comparison with which Europe’s own state of spiritual grace will be manifest.”
Is Achebe correct about Heart of Darkness? Does it reduce Africa and its people to the role of a foil for Europe? Or is Conrad’s point of view more complicated, using Marlow as an ironic commentator on colonialism?

2. Explain how Heart of Darkness functions allegorically, focusing on characters. If you’re not 100% what an allegory is, look it up! 

3. Explain the deliberate juxtaposition of The Intended and the The Mistress. What do we learn from their implicit comparison? What lessons does Marlow learn? 

4.Explain the significance of Marlow’s reliability as a narrator. How accurate is his portrayal of Africa, especially his description of the end of Kurtz’s life?