The Heart of Darkness Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The Heart of Darkness - Essay Example As he travelled from the Outer Station to the Central Station and then up the river to the Inner Station, he saw torture, cruelty, and near-slavery. The men who work for the Company, saying that what they were doing as â€Å"trade,† and their behavior towards native Africans as part of the civilizing process, were making those "ignorant African people" stop their horrid, barbaric ways. Kurtz is the symbol of European imperialism in the story. His vicious honesty led him to his end, as the evil practices of Europeans in Africa were in danger of exposure through his accomplishment. He is did not hide the fact that he took ivory by force and treated the natives with violence and intimidation. He represented imperialism in its entirety in Africa. Kurtz’s greed for ivory represented Europe’s desire for the whole world. This greed made him the animal that Marlow found. Kurtz is imperialism and his life in the Congo represented imperialism and the eventual destruction E uropean imperialism itself. On page 14 of Part 3, Conrad described Kurt as the imperialist he had been. â€Å"I thought his memory was like the other memories of the dead that accumulate in every man’s life—a vague impress on the brain of shadows that had fallen on it in their swift and final passage; but before the high and ponderous door, between the tall houses of a street as still and decorous as a well-kept alley in a cemetery, I had a vision of him on the stretcher, opening his mouth voraciously, as if to devour all the earth with all its mankind. He lived then before me; he lived as much as he had ever lived—a shadow insatiable of splendid appearances, of frightful realities; a shadow darker than the shadow of the night, and draped nobly in the folds of a gorgeous eloquence†. The vision of Kurt in the stretcher opening his mouth voraciously as if to devour all the earth and all its mankind signified the torture, cruelty, intimidation, violence and insatiable greed that come with the process of â€Å"civilizing† the natives by imperialists, the ultimate goal of having the world in their hands. In this sense, Kurtz's personality was a symbol of the imperial goal of Europe. There is a striking similarity between the history book King Leopold's Ghost, by Adam Hochschild and Conrad’s the Heart of Darkness. It seems that Leon Rom of the Force Republique was the equivalent of Kurtz character. The collection of African heads surrounding Kurtz's house, and Rom’s collections, represent the villainy of both characters. Adam Hochschild, in his book said the following: The 'Inner Station' of Heart of Darkness, the place Marlow looks at through his binoculars only to find Kurtz's collection of the shrunken heads of African 'rebels,' is loosely based on Stanley Falls. In 1895, five years after Conrad visited this post, Leon Rom was station chief there. A British explorer-journalist who passed through Stanley Falls that year described the aftermath of a punitive military expedition against some African rebels: 'Many women and children were taken, and twenty-one heads were brought to the falls, and have been used by Captain Rom as a decoration round a flower-bed in front of his house! If Conrad missed this account, which appeared in the widely read Century Magazine, he almost certainly noticed when The Saturday Review, a magazine he admired and read faithfully,

Can food ever be too cheap Can consumers be denied choice Can Essay

Can food ever be too cheap Can consumers be denied choice Can supermarkets offer the lowest prices and still be ethical You - Essay Example There is an argument if it is ethical for business community to overlook the environmental damage cause by the transportation of food from thousands of miles away, consume fossil fuels and cause green house gases. On the other hand people argue that the imported organic food items creats much of the CO2 at its production site. For instance, lamb imported from New Zealand produce around 1500 pounds of CO2 per ton while the same produce four times if raised in Britain. Since I am an staunch supporter of importing items from other countries, it is important to make one understnd that carbon emission is not the only reason for global warming issue. Other factors, which economists term as ‘factors inputs and externalities’, like use of fertilizers, packaging disposals, irrigation methodology, use of different types of transportations etc. are also considered while using ‘Food Mile Calculator’, a technique to quantify the carbon emission footprints. Secondly, grow ing population of the world has made it impossible to feed through local grown production. Therefore, rather an effort to control the obsession for food of our consumers, go beyond the borders, utilize naturally fertile lands and provide sustainable products irrespective of the season. The new deal drafted by World Trade Organization is helping new economies to emerge. It ensures that trade balance does not fall in favor of rich countries only. Countries like Indonesia and Bangladesh with huge populations are discouraged to depend only on American and European economic aids, and adopt ‘catch-up’ policies to reduce their trade deficit. The Soil Association (UK) voices for the â€Å"food miles† labelling system but insists that it is not trying to stop air-freight, produces more carbon dioxide than any other tansportation means. Reseachers believe that concentrating only on air-freighted products, that constitutes only 0.5% of the global production (Soil Associatio n), will hurt the economic efforts to build local economies of the under-developed countries. I can, therefore, confidently state that the real issue is not about the global warming but the accessibility of our consumers to a sustainable organic product and information about the economic and social impact of intercontinental world trade. Despite of freedom of choice, more environmental friendly and financial boost that each â€Å"food mile† brings to the international communities, people stand against it. I am not against the local producers, but people tends to be over conscious when it comes to air-freighted food. Of course, it does not bring the price down, but makes it possible to offer the food they like when it is not being home grown. The availability of such items gives an added-value to the supermarkets and for that businesses are entirely elligible to add increased cost of transportation and logistics. For instance, locally grown British broccoli, available only fro m February to April, is much cheaper than the Zimbabwean purple broccoli, available through out the year. Personally, I would prefer ‘food miles’ labels tagged rather denying our consumers from having healthy food choices, just because of a false notion. This is unethical business practice and does not help the local as well as international societies in any way possible. There are several