Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad takes place in Africa during the late ninteenth centery. The two main characters are Marlow and Kurtz. Marlow is an independent person who is skeptical of the people around him, he is also a great storyteller, and althought he has many prejudices he sees through the world and knows theres more then what he sees. Kurtz is the chief of the inner station and a gifted musician as well as a painter. he is a great leader who has lots of charisma.

I decided to annotate this book to learn how to write. Conrad uses lots of symbols in his writing which helps readers to go deeper with their thinking and to get more out of the book itself. Some symbols he used were the river and fog. The river symbolizes white people being seperate from africans. Its like a barrier between the two races that neither race crosses easily. Fog symbolizes a hazy way of looking at things. Its like when a person gets some information but not enough to figure everything out. It causes people to make wrong decisions.

This book is also full of foreshadowing, which is a great way of hinting at what will come next in the book as well as a wake up call to see if the reader is paying attention and still thinking deep while reading this book.

Also, the way Conrad reads makes it easy for the reader to paint a picture of what is happening throughout the book. The reader can see whats happening as well as feeling what the characters in the book feel. " I dismiss you! I will report you- I wont look at the tusk. I forbid you to touch them. I order you to throw them into the river. You- you!" (p169) While reading this I can see and feel the anger that Kayerts feels toward Makola since Makola sold some of the men for tusks.

Heart of Darkness was a great book that I enjoyed reading. I enjoyed reading about each character as they further developed into better people. Its a great book to read to better understand how people can change based on the people and surroundings they are around.

The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald takes place in the 1920's. The main Characters are Nick Carraway, Jay Gatsby, Daisy and Tom Buchanan and Jordan Baker. Nick is the narrator who moves to new york to learn about the bond business. He ends up renting a house right next to Gatsby. Nick notices that Gatsby lives in a huge mansion and has huge parties every Saturday night. One night Nick goes to Daisy and Tom's house and meets Jordan, Jordan tells Nick about Tom's "lover." It is then when I realze that the people in this book are not who they appear to be. They all have their secrets and they will do their best to hide them.

I then decided that I was going to annotate this book by creating trails. This book is fast moving and a lot happens on just one page and I knew that if I was going to keep all the characters and everything that happened straight then I needed to know what was going on when and with who. Annotating helped me do that. I found myself guessing what was going to happen before it did then I became surprised when it did happen. By annotating this book I found that I had to really slow down my reading and thinking and start thinking about what happened so far and summarizing it in my mind and writing down my thoughts.

I really enjoyed the description in this book, everything was very visual in its description and since I am a visual learner, having a book that really painted a picture in my mind helped me to understand this book on a deeper level. I could visualize all of the characters and the setting they were in. The word choice also helped keep me interested, word choices such as "They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house." (p8)

However, I didnt really like how shallow the characters in this book were. All they seemed to care about was money, power, parties and sex. They didnt really care much about things that really mattered like family. They would do anything to get on top. They just wanted to be with the people who had the most money.

My view point of life is very different. I think that people should care more about people inside as well as out and not be so concerned with just materializm. They need to realize that there is more to life then going to a party or how much money a person has. If they would just realize that then they may just find that they are happier with life.