I understand and appreciate that many are going to read this review and think I misread the text, because this book is a classic. I would remind them that no work of literature can be kept free from critique because it has stood the test of time. And beyond that, I do not believe this is at all a surface reading. It’s been pushed in the minds of many that reading this book as racist is a surface-level interpretation, but I genuinely believe that the racism is what you get upon close reading. Even if you consider yourself a night owl, you’re still only human—you don’t have the sharp night vision that owls have. For human eyes, reading in low light is hard work. And like other parts of our body, our eyes get tired if they work hard. This eye fatigue is also known as eye strain. The easiest way to avoid reading in the dark is rather obvious: Turn on a light. But there are more things you can do to cut down on eye strain: And so, Marlow’s journey through the jungle is also a trip into a primaeval past, before civilisation. But, further still: it doesn’t take the overheated wilderness of a remote, lonely and prehistoric tropical rainforest for the metamorphosis of the European culture into a slaughterhouse to happen. Kurtz, the man who sank into insanity and monstrosity, is described chiefly as “a voice! a voice!” Where that voice comes from is not entirely clear either. Is that just Kurtz’s voice? Is that Marlow’s voice telling his story? Conrad’s voice writing his novel? Or some other deeper voice that surfaces from a hollow, dark, ominous silence?

But these weaknesses in the book’s approach to gender are also strengths, because they help us to understand what’s wrong with the book’s severely flawed narrator, Genly Ai. Genly Ai is a misogynist. This becomes more apparent to me every time I reread The Left Hand of Darkness, and it’s the main reason why Genly is bad at his job. Until this modern-day Oedipus, now an ancient, cursed soul in faraway Colonus, expiates the last dirty remnants of his crime before the very gods themselves.wanted to shoot me, too, one day—but I don’t judge him.’‘Shoot you!’ I cried ‘What for?’‘Well, I had a Unholy Union (Marvel Comics crossover: featuring the Hulk, the Darkness, Ghost Rider, Witchblade, & Dr. Strange).

Collects Army of Darkness (1992) #1-3, Army of Darkness: Ashes 2 Ashes (2004) #1-4 and Army of Darkness: Shop Till You Drop Dead (2005) #1-4, Army of Darkness vs. Re-Animator (2004) #1-4, Army of Darkness (2005) #5-7 and stories from Tales of Army of Darkness (2006). No light, but rather darkness visible": in 10 syllables Milton conjures the paradox of Hell. What makes these lines so moving is not just the intellectual sprezzatura (his Inferno is not geographical, like Dante, but metaphysical and impossible), but our knowledge that he was probably already blind when he dictated the line. In his ineffably moving sonnet "On His Blindness", Milton does not talk of his own sightlessness; rather, he turns an inner eye on "this dark world and wide". But it is his final work, Samson Agonistes, which confirms Milton as the poet of insight in sightlessness. As Samson says: "O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon / Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse". He – Milton or Samson – is not describing blindness here. He is describing depression and alienation and every single thing the existentialists worried about over their absinthes. "The sun to me is dark / And silent as the moon". The world is turned upside down, and the ideas have to be, in response. When the Devil is trounced in Paradise Regained, "Darkness now rose / As daylight sunk, and brought in louring Night / Her shadowy offspring, unsubstantial both, / Privation mere of light and absent day". For the blind Milton, there is no real darkness. 4. Alexander PopeBloom Books is an imprint of Sourcebooks, which focuses on publishing women authors and allowing authors to have more authority in the final decisions regarding their books than some traditional publishers. Their intent is to attract entrepreneurial self-published and traditionally-published authors.