One Story, One Perspective

I've always been proud of where i'm from. Each and every time I hear about Colombia and not Columbia or in a good way my heart skips a beat. I feel pride and take my country and culture passionately. However, I am subject of ignorance and negative accusations about my country. As not everyone has come here and learned the truth, they focus their thoughts on single stories. Everyone, including me, is susceptible to the "dangers of a single story", with which we only focus on what we've been told without bothering to look in deeper. 

Last year I went to a summer camp in France with three other colombians. It was a small camp of about fifty students, of which most were Spanish or from German speaking countries. I was quite offended to hear some spaniards ask if "we could speak some colombian", as they wanted to hear our dialect, and  constantly asked "how we spoke spanish so well". I was left dumbfounded as to me it was common knowledge that the spanish had conquered colombia, and we had therefore inherited their language and many of their cultural traditions.

Most of them knew more than 3 languages, which impressed me even more. Some knew english, spanish, french, german and italian or Portuguese. I was shocked as to how they could know so much, and yet so little. They might have not known were I was from, or if that even existed, but they knew so many things about the world I was blind too. Many of the countries in the middle east I was left to think on which was which, and then I realized how this superficiality is wider than I thought. How this ignorance not only affects others, but it also affects those already affected. 

Women: African and Europe

Is there a difference between african and european women? Or more accurately, is Conrad trying to demonstrate some hidden point through his portrayal of two woman from different cultures? Through the depiction of women from different races, Conrad is able to reveal his true thoughts on each race and therefore his real thoughts on racism. By classification and comparison Conrad achieves this. 

In the book very few women are mentioned. Of those I recall important there are only three: Marlow's most beloved aunt, Mr. Kurtz native mistress, and Mr. Kurtz european fiancé. The differences found when comparing the description of each woman are very direct.  While he describes Kurtz's native woman as "savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent... [looking at us] like the wilderness itself, with an air of brooding over an inscrutable purpose.", the tone and syntax of the other passage of his fiancé is quite more elegant. Conrad described the european woman as "[Dressed] in black with a pale head...She was in mourning...It was more than a year since his death, more than a year since the news came; She seemed as though the she would remember and mourn forever...She had a mature capacity for fidelity, for belief, for suffering. (Pg. 139) He describes her with much more delicacy and sentiment. He is more careful with which words he uses to describe her. She is portrayed as a lady, not as a simple woman, but as an graceful lady in mourning. The contrast between these two woman might reveal what Conrad thinks of them both. He might be racist against the native woman, portraying her as wild and a part of nature which could be perceived as negative, however he doesn't explicitly say anything negative about her, he just merely implies it.

We are left to decipher ourselves what he really means, we have to pick the meaning behind his words. What these comparisons do really is nothing. They do not really give us the answer to our question, but they deepen it and raise it even more. We are left uncertain on what Conrad truly thinks about racism, or if it even is what he thinks but rather what Marlow thinks. We do not know if Marlow is supposed to represent Conrad, or the European vision towards racism at all. We are just left with uncertainty and more questions. What we do know is that there is a difference, that is clear. So there clearly is something that differs these two women, and thus these two cultures. We just do not know which of them is good and which is bad.