Heart of Darkness and Things

Heart of Darkness and Things Fall Apart the five terms that I could quickly associate with Africa before reading the books include the following. The first term would be the noun poverty; this term is the most obvious one to associate with Africa because of the utterly hopeless situation many of its people continue to face everyday in their countries. Poverty is Africa's biggest problem today and prevents the continent from ever making any progress politically, economically, and socially. The second term to be associated with Africa would be the noun famine, since this is an unfortunate and common occurrence there. It is one of the leading causes of Africa's poverty and is a problem well-known to the world through the media. Images of starving and sickly children serve as terrible reminders of the effects of famine throughout the land.

The third term that can be associated with Africa is the adjective tragic. This is because the continent faces many major problems that it has not yet been able to solve, poverty and famine being just some of them. These other problems include warfare, the AIDS epidemic, and various other diseases. Due to this, it would have to be admitted that Africa finds itself in a tragic situation. The fourth term to be associated with Africa would have to be the adjective simple. This is because I often believed that the lifestyle there was not as complicated and stressful as it is here. For example, I could not imagine that most people there had to commute to work or school every day and had to worry about working around the clock. The fifth and final term that I associated with Africa was the adjective mysterious. This is because I did not really know very much about Africa and its people, aside from many problems it faced as reported in the news.

After reading Joseph Conrad's novel, "Heart of Darkness," I found that I would have to add some more terms to describe Africa. The first term that came to mind after reading the novel was the noun wilderness. This is because Conrad's vivid descriptions of the wild African jungles and meadows made it known that much of Africa remained untouched by human hands. The second term to be added is the adjective rich; even though this may be contradictory to the term poverty mentioned earlier, it is actually used here to mean the untapped and abundant natural resources that the continent possesses. These resources, one of which is ivory as mentioned in the novel, have largely remained out of reach of humans for a long time. This is why it can be said that Africa is rich (in resources).

From the novel "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe, I found that I would have to add and change a few more terms. The first term I would include is the adjective complex. This term would be used to replace the term I used earlier in describing Africa, which was the term simple. This is because after reading the book I realized that Africans did not lead such simple lives. They also had to worry about making a living, raising families, abiding by public and religious laws of the land, and building a reputation among people. They may not lead as fast-paced a lifestyle as we do here but that does not mean their lives are simple either. It just means they have different issues and concerns to worry about in their lives.