Gabby Melo-Moore

9/21/2010

Period 4, AP Lit.

The Inconceivable Mystery of A Black Soul- Elaboration

The day this poetry assignment was assigned, the first thing that ran through my

mind about a specific theme was anger. After reading Heart of Darkness by Joseph

Conrad, I wanted to possibly explain to others readers what it is like to essentially be in

the position of an African character. I thought separately about racism, anger, and

injustice. Suddenly, I came up with the idea to incorporate all of those topics into one

poem representing a theme that in a sense, all of the topics could be integrated into. From

these topics, many different ideas, and revisions, I finally came up with, The

Inconceivable Mystery of A Black Soul.

While looking through the text of Heart of Darkness, I was enthralled by the high

qualified variety of words I could include in my poem. I wanted to create a poem that

would show how an, African, specifically, may have felt at the time of inequality and

prejudicial injustices. In part 1 of The Inconceivable Mystery of A Black Soul, I decided

to express the idea about how this character or person has so many dark, unwanted

memories from the past. I capitalized certain words or phrases to emphasize and illustrate

the meaning of the word‘s purpose. I capitalized words such as “Unhappy, Devils, Hate,

etc.” I wanted to make it evident that the theme of the novel may have affected many

people’s lives. The fact that back in the 1800s and a few years after, men were greedy and

desired nothing but power. They did whatever it took to benefit for themselves. For

example in Heart of Darkness, it is a stressed fact that Imperialism was being spread
throughout the world. This being represented by the Europeans taking over the land in

Africa. Even though these men had power and were considered superior, they were still

burdened by their cruelty.

In relation to Andrew Roberts’ essay, “Masculinity, Modernity, and Homosexual

Desire” based on Heart of Darkness, Roberts express his idea that he believes Marlow

had some sort of homosexual infatuation with Kurtz. I do not agree with this belief, as it

is evident in my poem, (lines 8 and 9) only for the simple fact that men were far more

respected by other men and women at this time. Men always want to be looked at by

society as strong, powerful, and the best there is. Any man of high authority was

respected,. Other men, mostly Africans and women were degraded.

Being that women were also inferior, this brings me to my next topic of

discussion. In Lissa Schneider’s essay, “Iconography and the Feminine Ideal” Schneider

expresses how women did not have power and men put them on a pedestal to look good,

but not do anything beneficial. This is elaborated on line 8 in my poem, “Men, Devils of

desire…” because they did not give women a chance to exert themselves and show that

they are capable of better things than just looking elegant. Schneider also brings up the a

very appealing point from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness found on pages 475-476, the

contrast between the unearthly glow of a European women to the “helmeted head” of

Kurtz’s African mistress. The contrast between the European woman and the African

woman is ridiculously opinionated in this story.

In part 2 of The Inconceivable Mystery of A Black Soul, I elaborated on how angry

this character has become about the topic of racism. Not only is the character dwelling on

the unfair past, but he/she is also losing himself because the memories still haunt him. It’s
something he will never be able to forget. Another thing that bothers this narrator, (which

is evident in lines 2-4) is that countless amount of people knew about these racial and

gender injustices, yet they did not do anything to at least try to stop the madness. They

acted like nothing had happened, primarily because people of other ethnicity were not in

the place of an African at that time.

In part 2 of the poem, readers can see how angry the narrator has become about

his past. He’s tearing himself apart, emotionally, physically, and mentally. Many people

tend to think that because harsh racism was in the past that others c an easily get over the

fact that so many people, humans, were criticized, stereotyped, and discriminated against

just because of their ethnicity. It is evident that this is not true, being that in the poem, the

narrator express that he’s held in so much anger towards the subject that he is beginning

to fall apart and he can not get over everything he had witnessed. It is almost as if these

thoughts and horrid images are taking over his entire mind set and control.

The 3rd part of the poem I defiantly wanted this part to be the most powerful,

shocking moment. When the narrator points out that this subject has taken over his mind.

The narrator over thinks the subject and what the intentions of it were that he begins to

cry from all the torture and overwhelming pain he’s had held inside for so long. There’s

this excessive burden of emotional and mental pain that sits on his shoulders for years

causing him to become an emotional wreck. His emotions are so uncontrollable. I wanted

to make this certain character feel like no one around him understood his past and they

probably never would. He was lonely in his present life, not physically, but mentally and

emotionally. He’s so angry that no one understands what he went through that it came to

the point where he just let loose and this is what readers get, the character’s inner self.
The reasons why this African character’s past happened the way it did is indefinable,

myself defining it as “the Monstrous Mystery“.

In part 3, lines 9 and 10, I incorporated the title of the poem into the stanza. When

I had first written this poem, I named it A Significant Black Soul, until my poem was peer

edited and a member of my group helped me incorporate a line into the title calling it,

The Inconceivable Mystery of A Black Soul.

Getting help from my peers with editing did help me out a lot more because

getting more than one person’s opinion is always great. When I did my own revisions, I

asked myself, “What could I do to make this poem better? Does it explain/ illuminate the

theme of the poem? Does the poem fit my intentions in writing it? How may different

people interpret this poem?“ People do interpret things differently, so having my poem

read by multiple people gave me insight on what I should change, make better, and the

overall thematic explication.

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness was a well written novel. I do not disagree

that Conrad is a brilliant writer. He, as a writer was expressing himself and perhaps his

personal thoughts and there is nothing wrong with that. The reason why I depicted the

topic of racism from his novel was because he interprets the topic throughout the entire

book. Through men, women, imperialism, and more. There is always two main sides of a

story. To be able to understand why a writer writes is far more astounding than just being

able to understand the text of the certain piece of literature. To understand both,

demonstrates that the writer has done a well enough job showing what his initial purpose

was.

Overall, my intentions of writing this precise poem The Inconceivable Mystery of

A Black Soul, based off of Heart of Darkness was to get readers to quickly understand

what it is or what it was like for someone who faced racial injustices. As the writer, I

personally put myself in the shoes of a character, someone who had experienced it all and

thought what they would have felt deep down inside. Someone who lived in the past

times of inequality. The narrator was to express his anger through thoughts and emotions.

In actuality, the very dark and ominous thoughts this narrator had and what he/she felt

was significant.