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Darkness
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What is Darkness?

Darkness as a literary and philosophical concept appears across multiple disciplines, including literature, philosophy, and cultural studies. It functions both as a physical condition and a symbolic register for moral ambiguity, psychological depth, and the unknown. Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness dominates academic treatment of this topic, drawing sustained attention in courses on modernist fiction, postcolonial literature, and narrative theory. The novella's characters—Marlow, Kurtz, and the colonial world of Africa they inhabit—give students a rich framework for exploring how darkness operates as metaphor, critique, and narrative device. Beyond Conrad, the topic extends into other works, including Milton's Paradise Lost and H.G. Wells's short fiction, as well as philosophical frameworks such as Jean-Paul Sartre's concept of bad faith from Being and Nothingness.

Student papers on this topic take several distinct approaches. Many focus on close literary analysis of Conrad's novella, examining how Marlow's journey and Kurtz's character embody moral and imperial darkness. Comparative essays are also common, pairing Heart of Darkness with texts such as Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych or with film adaptations like Apocalypse Now. Some papers analyze modernist techniques, while others place the work in historical and cultural context, particularly regarding power and Africa.

A strong essay on darkness stakes a clear interpretive claim rather than simply cataloguing symbolic instances. Evidence drawn from specific scenes, character behavior, and narrative voice tends to carry the most analytical weight. The most common pitfall is treating darkness as a self-evident symbol without accounting for how a particular text constructs and complicates its meaning.

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Research Paper Doctorate

Motivic recall and dramatic meaning in Puccini's "Che gelida manina"

Giaccomo Puccini's opera La Boheme is a mature work in the verismo mode in which the early aria "Che gelida manina" creates a dramatic situation that colors all that follows even as fragments from the aria appear again…

Research Paper Doctorate

Chinua Achebe's critique of Joseph Conrad's racism

Judith Ortiz/Cofer writes about a young woman of Puerto Rican descent just as she discovers the opposite sex. Elena is not naive about prejudice; she is often teased about being Puerto Rican by Black girls in her school.

Research Paper Undergraduate

Denial and fate in Kolyma Tales and Invitation to a Beheading

When comparing the passage(s) from Kolyma Tales and the Beheading the reader is much like the two main characters in the stories; Cincinnatus and Dugaev, in that, like these two characters, the reader too is surprised…

Research Paper Doctorate

Gary Kessler's approach to studying Western religion objectively

In his book, "Western Ways of Being Religious," (Kessler, 1999) the author Gary E. Kessler identifies the theological, philosophical and societal ramifications of the evolution of religion in the West.

Paper Undergraduate

Children's letters to Eleanor Roosevelt during the Great Depression

Censorship has been part of the human experience since people gathered together in communities. The idea of political censorship is designed to keep the public either unaware of certain situations or to use propaganda to influence their viewpoint. For instance, in war, it is often the task of the media to portray the enemy as "the other" or evil so that the population can be rallied against the cause. The very crux of the argument comes to the central point of censorship – who must be protected and why must they be protected? Ideas, political, social, or otherwise, may be the most dangerous form of literature ever.

Paper Undergraduate

Dizzy Gillespie's "Blues after Dark": musical analysis and performance

This order is a review of four performances by Dizzie Gillespie, Sonny Sitt, Ray Brown, Lou Levy, and Gus Johnson. They were all from the same performance played in 1958 in Belgium. The order examines all four songs in great depth, looking at the roles of each instrument, styles used, and how solos were added to increase the complexity of the overall melodic style.

Research Paper Doctorate

Human sensory adaptation demonstrated through tactile, visual, and temperature experiments

This report is a summary of the three of four experiments required for this assignment. The objective of the experiments was to test and also demonstrate how the human body has the ability to adapt in certain experiences.

Paper Undergraduate

Charles Simic's poetic response to childhood trauma and displacement

This is a four page paper. It is about poetry, and the poet selected for investigation is Charles Simic. The object of the enterprise is to analyze a theme in one of Simic's poems and connect that theme to the prevailing historical events and also to Simic's personal biography. The theme selected for the paper is isolation and alienation, which is connected with the poet's experience as an immigrant.

Essay Doctorate

Wind as metaphor for escape from pain and suffering

What would it take to hitch a ride on powerful winds raging against my window…

Research Paper Doctorate

Narrative perspective and alienation in Kafka's The Metamorphosis

In his well-published and -- renowned short story, "The Metamorphosis," Franz Kafka has elucidated through effective symbolism the influence of change and difference to the psyche of the individual.

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