Write a 1,000 word paper comparing two literary representations of imperial power as it is exercised in particular colonial contexts. Whether in the Belgian Free Congo as depicted in Heart of Darkness or the French colony of Vietnam as depicted in the film The Quiet American, readers are confronted with systems that contradict the old myth that modern colonial expansion (from the 18th to the 20th Centuries) was not a dehumanizing system of exploitation but a “civilizing mission” intended to bring the advantages of modern society and good governance to benighted regions of the earth. It was a myth that worked well in imperial metropolises and was even touted in the colonies themselves as a way of cultivating what collaborative agents could be nurtured there (native employees and students). Yet each of the works listed above seem intent upon undermining this fantasy of benevolence if not entirely extirpating it either.
In this paper I want you to compare two of the works listed above, each of which demonstrate authorial ambivalences about colonialism. In two of these works we hear a voice that seems eager to condemn the excesses of the colonial enterprise while suggesting that certain levels of participation might be excused because the intentions of the participant (usually the person narrating the story) are well-meaning or neutral. Such voices also imply that, with some modification, the colonial system might be improved or perfected, making it a boon to indigenous populations in the territories involved. At least one of the above novels takes a more adversarial position—if from the standpoint of an unidentified, omniscient narrator who sounds like the voice of history itself, not a participant in the actual events making it up. (You can also compare this colonial enterprise to certain episodes in Kafka’s novel The Trial in a way that suggests that such enterprises are not unlike modern administrative states endeavoring to colonize the psyche of its citizens in order to establish totalitarian control over whatever residual will to subjective autonomy might still exist.)
After you present your topic and thesis in an introduction, develop your argument about the two novels separately, focusing a page or two on one novel first and the remaining pages on the second one (avoid referring back and forth between the two novels except as you conclude the discussion of the second one). Don’t forget to include a strong conclusion. Try also to support your arguments with examples and quotations from the novels you are comparing and/or from two scholarly secondary sources, all of which must be included in a Works Cited list.
