Download or read book Hearts of Darkness: Melville, Conrad and Narratives of Oppression written by Paweł Jędrzejko and published by M-Studio. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume came about as a result of a joint effort at a bifocal reflection of the international community of Melvillians and Conradians in Szczecin, Poland, in August 2007. What became clear in formal and informal discussion among the participants of that international gam was that Herman Melville and Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski shared the intuition that the essential liquidity of the existential human condition necessitates a “universal squeeze of the hand.” This idea, beautifully conceptualized by Melville in chapter 94 of Moby-Dick, caused both writers to examine in their complex narratives the ways in which various kinds of oppression prevent this desired possibility (read more in the Introduction).