In this essay, I assess the works of Charlie Wesley in his paper, Inscriptions of Resistance in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. In doing so, I tease out the underlying assumptions/premises that Wesley’s paper is built on, and assess the validity of his analysis, given those assumptions. I also present a space for furthering the approach of Wesley in creating meaningful readings of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
The strength of my analysis, I believe, is in finding the critical assumptions that Wesley makes in the construction of his essay. From Wesley’s approach, I was able to uncover what I think are some important attitudes that he holds regarding the usefulness of literature and how it should be criticized/analyzed. In other words, I was able to find Wesley’s underlying literary theory.
The piece of my essay that is most lacking might be my assessment of Wesley’s rhetorical analyses. I spent a lot of time on discussing Wesley’s assumptions and in doing so, I may have neglected the actual work that he is doing: namely, developing a way of analyzing certain scenes of Conrad’s novel in a way that creates meaningful historical insight. While my essay didn’t focus as much on this area of Wesley’s paper, this is in part due to the fact that Wesley’s rhetorical analysis is accurate, insightful, and exhaustive.
Overall, I think that my assessment of Charlie Wesley’s essay developed an in-depth discussion of his analyses, approaches, and assumptions. In addition, the extension that I offered could make for a reading of Heart of Darkness that is equally valid and insightful compared to Wesley’s essay.