Two orphaned boys grow up to become politically interested authors, one a poet and the other a novelist, who use their maritime literature to expose the prevailing evils of society European Union, in particular the unfair treatment of African peoples. These are just some of the similarities between the lives and works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Joseph Conrad, both British citizens although one by birth and the other by immigration. Despite the fact, however, that Coleridge's famous poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Conrad's short story Heart of Darkness share great similarities, surprisingly few scholars have approached any kind of comparison. Perhaps the explanation for this oddity is simple: no one wants to be the one to answer an obvious question; although this reasoning does not seem to prevent anyone from joining the ranks of those who have written about the anti-imperialist sentiments of Conrad's most famous book. Regardless of the reason for the lack of scholarship on the topic, a comparison of Coleridge's The Ballad and Conrad's Heart of Darkness will highlight the related beliefs espoused in these two works, as well as the stylistic and thematic reflections. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including the time Heart of Darkness was written when the British Empire was "at its Victorian zenith" (Maier-Katkin 585), Europe had some very specific ideologies regarding the continent African and its inhabitants. As the writer M. van Wyk Smith described Victorian impressions, “…sub-Saharan Africa…is the true Africa of Renaissance exotic myth and savage hordes, of lost civilization and elusive paradise, and it is the Africa that became the great continent inviting 18th and 19th century explorers. This idea that the continent was “calling” to the English makes several assertions: first, that land was available – indeed, even existed – for the taking; second, that the “lost” inhabitants of the continent were inferior beings, incapable and undeserving of maintaining their own resources. Because the English believed that Africans had not evolved beyond their “primordial state,” they viewed them as inferior, more closely associated with natural nature. world than to the kingdom of humans, and they had no qualms about “mining” this old continent “for slaves to send to the new world” (Wyk Smith 13). Victorian sensibilities dictated that Africa, with all its resources, could and should be exploited to develop new civilizations. Thus Africans were accustomed to doing hard labor wherever Europeans or Americans needed it, whether on sugar cane plantations in the tropical Pacific or in ivory or rubber diggings in the Congo. Although they lived and wrote at different times, Coleridge was born in 1772 and published The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in 1798, and Conrad was born in 1857 and published Heart of Darkness in 1902, over a century after Coleridge's best-known work: there are compelling evidence that Coleridge and Conrad were both responding to Europe's guilt in exploiting the African continent and its people. And since both men were actively involved in human rights discourses and revolutionary thought outside of their writings, as well as within their other works, the possibility that Rime and Heart contained elements that espoused their beliefs is strengthened. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was at the forefront of revolution in many areas of human rights. In 1794, he and two friends composed a play sympathetic to the British radicals who were reeling after thegreat bloodshed of the guillotines in 1793, and had rejoiced when the French Revolution took place in 1789. According to Debbie Lee, in her cogent article “Yellow Fever and the Slave Trade: Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Coleridge “was completely engaged in the social and political issues of the moment, from the latest theories on epidemic diseases to the debates on abolition and slavery". Lee also informs that Coleridge “was an abolitionist active in Bristol from 1795 until at least the year he wrote The Ancient Mariner. At one point in his career, he even gave a lecture on the "Origins of the Human Race" in which he disagreed with the predominantly popular British idea that Africans were closely related to and resembled apes. Interestingly, according to one biographer, Paul Fry, Coleridge's highest aspiration was not to be a poet: he did not even consider it his primary calling; Coleridge desired more than anything "to produce a major work of moral and religious philosophy." As Lee and Fry, and “many readers” would agree, this highest “great work” was The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a poem in which many readers found an allegory of imperial expansion and the slave trade ”. This probability will be discussed further shortly. Like Coleridge a hundred years earlier, Joseph Conrad was also very politically involved and had a soft spot in his heart for oppressed people. Having “entered British society at a time when its political landscape was being radically reshaped,” Conrad, like Coleridge, had the opportunity to champion multiple causes, including – interestingly – women's suffrage (Simmons 114). Conrad's concerns for the oppressed, however, hit closer to home, as most of them stemmed from personal experiences. While Coleridge was born a subject of the British Empire, Conrad was born in Russian-occupied Poland and considered himself only “the spoiled adopted son of Britain and even the Empire” (Simmons 111). Having been taken over by another, by parents who were "ardent nationalists" and ultimately died for their revolutionary beliefs, Conrad knew firsthand the evils of imperialism. His dislike of the practice increased during his time serving in the British Merchant Navy, when he witnessed the “full horror of colonial excesses”. This experience undoubtedly led him to the conclusion that “the conquest of the earth, which above all means taking it away from those who have a different complexion or a slightly flatter nose than ours, is not a good thing if you look too closely,” a comment which comes from the mouth of the main character of his story Heart of Darkness (Conrad 4). His most famous work was a testimony to the fact that Conrad was particularly disturbed by the practices approved by Belgian King Leopold II in the Congo Free State, which he described as “the vilest plundering spree that has ever disfigured the history of human conscience and geography". exploration". Having established that both Coleridge and Conrad were actively involved in the human rights struggles of their respective times, especially regarding the treatment of Africans, the next step in comparing the similarities between The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Heart of Darkness is to explore the messages common in the two works. Fortunately, while few scholars have conducted research comparing both works, there are many studies that explore issues related to each work individually. By looking at what others have said about each individual work to complement and support my findings, I intend to expose the great similarities between Conrad's short story and Coleridge's poetry.First, one of the major similarities between the works of Conrad and Coleridge is that they both address one of the aforementioned major European colonial beliefs about Africans: the belief that Africans were part of nature but not necessarily human beings. This concept is the most obvious in Heart of Darkness, as Conrad provides numerous direct examples throughout his story where Africans are portrayed and described as an extension of nature. In one example, after an African was beaten for allegedly setting fire to a grass hut where European goods are stored, “he arose and departed, and the silent desert took him back into its bosom” (Conrad 20). There are other examples of Africans “clinging to the earth,” “moving like ants,” “walking on their hind legs” like “a dog in a travesty of trousers and a feathered hat,” “appearing as if they had climbed up from land,” and many other references that blend Africans with their surroundings. Many scholars believe that Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is an allegory of the slave trade; and if this is true, then Coleridge also addresses the colonial perception that Africans are more closely associated with the natural world than the human world. Pyeaem Abbasi and Alireza Anushiravani, in their article “The Ancient Mariner: Colonizer or Colonized?” state that “the sailor's transatlantic journey begins with the killing of the albatross – a colonial act of killing natives – which exposes him to the colonial world and transforms him into an involuntary victim of the slave trade” . Likewise, Debbie Lee agrees that Coleridge's poem is about the slave trade, although she bases her argument in her research on the fact that the consequence of the "murder" of the albatross was the infliction of yellow fever on the sailor and crew. Although Lee does not directly identify the albatross as a representation of an African slave, he does so indirectly by providing more than enough compelling evidence to show the connections between the slave trade in Africa and the Caribbean and yellow fever. His choice of the word “murder” to describe the killing of the albatross also seems to suggest a symbolism of the bird as a human being. Furthermore, Coleridge himself, in the argument that introduces the poem, attributes the “many and strange judgments” that befall the ship to the fact that the sailor “cruelly…killed a sea-bird” “in contempt of the laws of hospitality.” of the African continent as an “invitation” to Europeans could shed light on a possible interpretation of Coleridge's inclusion as “in contempt of the laws of hospitality.” If the Mariner was indeed on a slave trading ship, it is assumed that the slaves were taken from their home, the same African continent that welcomed the Europeans. In light of these ideas, it seems likely that Coleridge intended the killing of the albatross to symbolize the African slave trade, in which case Coleridge is addressing both the colonial perception of Africans as an extension of nature and the idea that Africa welcomed the Europeans. A second major similarity between Rime and Heart of Darkness is that both authors wrote their literary pieces to combat and punish the colonial mentality that mistreating Africans was acceptable. At the time Coleridge was writing, slavery was a staple in the European economy, and Africa and the Caribbean were the primary places where this type of exploitation occurred (Lee 675). In his argument at the beginning of "The Rime", Coleridge traces the geographical path followed by the ship, and it is no coincidence that the ship "made her course towards the tropical latitude of the Great Pacific Ocean". Although theAlthough the poet never explicitly states the purpose of the journey, many scholars believe that the poem is clearly an allegory of the slave trade. Debbie Lee, who also believes the poem is Coleridge's warning to Europeans about the consequences of slavery, argues that the author intended readers to understand that yellow fever was the natural punishment for wrongs inflicted on African slaves. In his article, he provides much information regarding the historical facts of British susceptibility to this tropical disease, “a plague that attacked like an army during the height of British colonial slavery” and “accounted for nearly 71% of all European deaths in the Caribbean ”. Lee also provides a number of textual examples that support his belief that the deaths of the crew on the Mariner's ship, as well as the European readers would have believed that Mariner's symptoms were caused by yellow fever, which was a much feared epidemic at the time the poem was published. Indeed, the wedding guest would have had reason to "fear you, ancient Marinere", whose "thin hand so brown" and "long, thin and brown" body recall the appearance of someone who has suffered from yellow fever ( Fry 46). Since yellow fever was a highly contagious and deadly disease, anyone suspected of carrying the pathogens would be a pariah, as the sailor in the poem appears to be. Both Coleridge and Conrad use nature as a force that punishes the European characters in their lives. literature. It is important to note that before the crimes are committed, nature is depicted as a friendly force. At Rime the sun “shined bright” and “a good southerly wind rose behind” before the albatross shooting (Fry 32). After the sailor commits his horrible crime, however, Coleridge uses “The silence of the sea,” “a warm, coppery sky,” “the cursed sun at noon,” a ship idle due to no breeze, “ slimy things” , “Fires of Death” and a “Horned Moon” that curses the sailor “with the eye” and, probably, Yellow Fever to punish the Sailor and crew. And in Heart of Darkness, before Marlow ventured too far into the horrors of the Congo, “the voice of the waves” was described as “a positive pleasure, like a brother's speech.” However, once Marlow begins to encounter and become more involved in the ivory exploitation business, nature's attitude begins to become threatening. For example, almost immediately after the positive comment about listening to the surf, Marlow sees a “warship anchored off the coast” that was “bombarding the bush” (Conrad 11). Nature does not respond kindly to this recklessly destructive “shot at a continent” and it is fitting that in the next paragraph the reader discovers that “the men on that lonely ship died of fever at the rate of three a day” (just as in Coleridge's poem , Conrad describes the fever as a consequence of wrongs committed against Africans). Conrad provides many other images of nature as a punitive force. Nature is described as trying to “ward off intruders.” Marlow recounts that at one point during the journey “a shed full of calico, cotton prints, beads and I don't know what else burst into fire so suddenly that you would have thought the earth had opened up to let in a fire avenger. consume all that rubbish." The “great wall of vegetation” that lines the banks of the river down which the boat descends is described as “a tumultuous invasion of silent life, an undulating wave of plants, piled up, crested, ready to topple… to sweep away every little man of us outside of his little existence". And in the definitive description of the nature of the entire novel, Marlow states: “theearth seemed otherworldly. We are used to looking at the shackled form of a defeated monster, but there…there you might be looking at a monstrous, free thing.” Not only does nature become a punishing force in Heart of Darkness, it is personified. Marlow says that nature “looked at you with a vindictive look.” The fog itself seemed to scream. “The look of the forest was gloomy,” at one point. Not only is nature depicted as a punishing force in both The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Heart of Darkness, but it cannot be defeated. In Conrad's tale there are several instances where nature is clearly better than humans. An example is when the grass hut catches fire; even when one of the Europeans runs back and forth from the river with water to put out the flame, Marlow notices that “there was a hole in the bottom of his bucket” . In another case:There was an old hippopotamus who had a bad habit of going out onto the shore and wandering around the station at night. The pilgrims came out in droves and emptied every rifle they could get their hands on. Some even stayed up at night for him. All this energy, however, was wasted. That animal has a charmed life. And just as in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the ingenuity of technology and civilization in Conrad's story is at the mercy of nature. In both works, the movements of the ships are subject to the whims of the surrounding environment. If nature is a punitive force that cannot be defeated, then in both literary works the only way to survive nature is to bless it. In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, after the sailor suffers "alone on the wide sea," his "soul in agony," he looks at "the water serpents" and "a spring of love flows from his heart / And he blessed them unknowingly” and – lo! – “at the very moment he could pray and with his neck so free The albatross fell and sank like lead into the sea” (Fry 49-50). , Coleridge is clear about one thing: the moral of his story. The end of the Sailor's tale leaves the listener with what the reader assumes to be the kernel of truth that the poem intends to convey: "He who loves well prays / Let him be a man." what a bird and beast / Pray best he who loves best / All things, great and small: By the dear God, who loves us / He created and loves everything.” Ironically, the moral of Heart of Darkness is perhaps the only area in which Conrad's story is more ambiguous than Coleridge's poetry. However, the juxtaposition between the way Marlow sees and treats Africans and the way his European colleagues see them, and the fact that Marlow survives to tell his tale – without sharing the fate of his predecessor or Kurtz – it definitely means something. Marlow understood from his experiences in the Congo that “the conquest of the land… is not a beautiful thing if you look too deeply into it” (Conrad 4). And while it is sometimes difficult to discern how Marlow felt about colonialism while participating in the act of furthering exploitation, he has some bright moments where he recognizes the value – even humanity – of Africans. These moments, as they progress through the novel, show Marlow's growing separation from typical European views of Africans during the time he was writing. In the first instance in which Marlow recognizes the possible humanity of Africans, he uses uncertain words. He states: and the men were... No, they were not inhuman. It would slowly arrive at one o'clock. They howled, jumped, turned around and made horrible faces; but what moved you was precisely the thought of their humanity - like yours - the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate tumult. As Marlow enters into a closer relationship with the Africans, however, he begins to not only accept themhumanity, but marvel at it. Considering the fact that the cannibalistic members of his crew must have been hungry, as they had long since run out of dead hippopotamus meat and had not yet resorted to eating the Caucasians on board, Marlow "looked at them as you would any human being, with a curiosity about their impulses, motivations, abilities” and “weaknesses…”. Even later in the story, after Marlow witnesses “the horror” of what colonialism has turned the European Kurtz into, Marlow goes so far as to value the life of one of the Africans over that of Kurtz. While he "cannot forget" Kurtz, he is also "not ready to say that the man was exactly worth the life... lost in reaching him;" Marlow refers to "his late helmsman" who he "missed... terribly... even while his body still lay in the wheelhouse." Placing more value on the life of an African than a European would certainly have been unheard of for those who supported Victorian ideologies of Africa and Africans. As their European readers would largely hold the views expressed earlier, that Africans were extensions of Africa and Africans. nature, and whose justification that “European exploitation of native peoples [followed] the same logic as the exploitation of nature,” the concept that nature punished Europeans for the wrongs of colonialism was cleverly appropriated by Coleridge and Conrad (McCarthy 626). The idea of ​​nature as avenger would have emerged especially in the period in which Conrad was writing, says Jeffrey Mathes McCarthy in his article “A Choice of Nightmares: The Ecology of Heart of Darkness”, because “British readers” in this period “encountered nature ” as a “passive object of imperial trade”. Furthermore, most late 19th-century nature writings showed humans engaging with “nature as a space of relief from time and a place of contemplative beauty.” McCarthy points out that "Heart of Darkness does something different: it challenges familiar representations of nature with a natural world that is anything but comforting." with the human psyche. According to Alan Perlis, one of two scholars who conducted research comparing elements of these two works, in his article "Coleridge and Conrad: Spectral Illuminations, Widening Frames", both Conrad and Coleridge wrote in the chiaroscuro style, a focused on the contrast between light and dark tones – used “to represent configurations of consciousness and to suggest relationships between appearance and truth”. Perlis further argues that: “these two works could be considered prototypes of a particular type of descending literature in which progressively deeper and less accessible levels of consciousness are conveyed not only through more deeply buried narrative frames, but also through the technique of composition in chiaroscuro". ."And indeed both works rely on the juxtaposition of day and night, light and darkness, and black and white, and often depict the psychological state of the main character - the Sailor and Marlow, respectively - as each makes progress along his psychological journey. According to Birgit and Daniel Maier-Katkin, in their article “At the Heart of Darkness: Crimes Against Humanity and the Banality of Evil,” Conrad creates a story that can be psychoanalyzed by “merging elements of realism with states and dream environments” to explore “the heart of darkness in the primitive recesses of the human soul and life itself.” Some of the main psychological elements addressed in both The Rime and Heart of Darkness are feelings of loss, isolation and disconnection. In Conrad's story, Marlow describes his psychological state at a particular time as “the idleness of a. 2011.