Compare and contrast Poe and Conrad (in so far as we have read Conrad).

 During this new semester, we have seen in class two different authors from different Eras: Edgar Allan Poe and Joseph Conrad. Edgar Allan Poe is well known for his short stories, but also for introducing the British horror stories and detective stories to American literature. On the other hand, Joseph Conrad was a person that lived on three different countries, and is known for his novel Heart of Darkness. Even that Conrad and Poe are different on their writing style, they share some themes and motifs on their respective works.

Edgar Allan Poe emphasizes his stories on revenge and baseness, but Conrad highlights themes like slavery and the idea of what is civilized and not. Edgar Allan Poe, in his short stories makes the principal character to revenge against another character in order to reestablish a “natural order”. On ¨Hop Frog¨, we see that the main character wants to kill the dumb king for making him humiliations. Joseph Conrad makes the main character on Heart of Darkness to start telling a story on how he went to Congo and to tell about slavery and the civilization there. When Marlow was telling how he became Captain, he recalls a story from Captain Fresleven, who was in charge of the Africans but due to a lack of patience, he hurts the chief from the African Village and his son, trying to save his father, kills the Captain. Comparing them, the two of this situations (Poe’s stories and Conrad’s novel) have murder, but one is really intentioned and the other it was just for pure defense of individuals. So, maybe there are alike on some themes, but they focus on different perspectives.

Another point about Conrad and Poe is the way they represent this idea of darkness in their works. Edgar Allan Poe represents darkness as something evil, madness, and it can be related in many of his stories with murder. For example, on “The Pit and the Pendulum”, the main character is on a type of prison where sometimes is very dark, representing that way of being nearly dying and suffering. On the other hand, Conrad has this idea of darkness as the unknown, mystery and also we can say fear about something or somewhere. The clear example is the title of the book Heart of Darkness, where later the main character will have fear saying that being inside the jungle will be like being on a “heart of darkness”. Even that they expose different kinds of darkness, the two of them can represent opposite sides of it: civilized versus the uncivilized, good versus bad, instincts versus reason; also both play an important part of their works.

Joseph Conrad and Edgar Allan Poe works can seem so far different, but on some aspects they are alike. Even that some themes are quite different, we can relate them and see that they both expose detailed situations and make the readers to let out their instincts or their sensitive part of them. Also, both of them center on same ideas or motifs, but they represent them on different ways. As from what we have read in class, we can conclude that not only because they were from different Eras or from different countries, does not mean that some authors can have similarities. Because as humans, we might not exactly be like others, but we share something in common: that we keep learning to understand each other.