• a great weariness.
• Well, boy, you're not going to get lung cancer, are you?

  • the intimacy of the question immediately shatters the wall between them -- in an uncomfortable way of course
• And you're not going to have any more kids, are you?
   PETER: [a bit distantly] No. No more. [Then back, and irksome] Why
   did you say that? How would you know about that?
   JERRY: The way you cross your legs, perhaps; something in the voice.
   Or maybe I'm just guessing. Is it your wife?
   PETER: [furious] That's none of your business! [A silence.] Do you
   understand? [JERRY nods. PETER is quiet now.] Well, you're
   right. We'll have no more children.

  • Peter is so polite that when he insults Jerry he immediately feels bad and allows Jerry to interrogate him some more
• ERRY: [ignoring the above] Where do you live? [PETER is reluctant.]
   Oh, look; I'm not going to rob you, and I'm not going to kidnap
   your parakeets, your cats, or your daughters.

  • A sign of the times-- a request for an address by a stranger is immediately an indicator of danger
• two picture frames, both empty
• You're a very sweet man, and you're possessed of a truly
   enviable innocence
• Interesting
   that you asked me about the picture frames. I would have
   thought that you would have asked me about the pornographic
   playing cards.
• when you're a kid you use the cards as a
   substitute for a real experience, and when you're older you use
   real experience as a substitute for the fantasy
• But I have found a way to keep her off. When she talks to me,
   when she presses herself to my body and mumbles about her
   room and how I should come there, I merely say: but, Love;
   wasn't yesterday enough for you, and the day before ? Then
   she puzzles, she makes slits of her tiny eyes, she sways a little,
   and then, Peter ... and it is at this moment that I think I might
   be doing some good in that tormented house ... a simple-minded
   smile begins to form on her unthinkable face, and she giggles
   and groans as she thinks about yesterday and the day before;
   as she believes and relives what never happened.

  • here we see a great example of lack of communication. Jerry does not have to actually sleep with her--just plant the idea in her mind that it happened.
• [as if to a child]
• What I am going to
   tell you has something to do with how sometimes it's necessary
   to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a
   short distance correctly; or, maybe I only think that it has
   something to do with that
• What I mean is: animals are indifferent to
   me ... like people [He smiles slightly] ... most of the time
• [PETER winces.] Don't react,
   Peter; just listen.
• It was
   as if he had never eaten anything in his life before, except like
   garbage. Which might very well have been the truth. I don't
   think the landlady ever eats anything but garbage.

  • parallels between the landlady and the dog
• PETER raises a hand in protest.]
• A bite for ya
   pussy-cat? I wanted to say: No, not really; it's part of a plan to  
   poison a dog I know. But, you can't say 'a dog I know' without
   sounding funny; so I said, a little too loud, I'm afraid, and too
   formally: YES, A BITE FOR MY PUSSYCAT.

  • Saying he wants to kill the dog is OK--just cannot say "a dog I know" -- THAT would be objectionable
• malevolence with an erection,
• She stopped me in the hall
   the same evening of the attempted murder and confided the
   information that God had struck her puppy dog a surely fatal
   blow.
• I told her, and there was so much truth here, that I
   didn't want the dog to die. I didn't, and not just because I'd
   poisoned him. I'm afraid that I must tell you I wanted the dog to
   live so that I could see what our new relationship might come
   to.
• We have to know the effect of our
   actions. [Another deep sigh.]

  • and how can we know this? Isn't that part of the problem?
• But during that twenty
   seconds or two hours that we looked into each other's face, we
   made contact.

  • and making contact is the point of the whole play
•  It's just ... it's just that ... [JERRY is abnormally tense, now.] ...
   it's just that if you can't deal with people, you have to make a
   start somewhere. WITH ANIMALS !
• Don't you see.? A person has to have some way of
   dealing with SOMETHING. If not with people ... SOMETHING.
   With a bed, with a cockroach, with a mirror ... no, that's too
   hard, that's one of the last steps. With a cockroach, with a ...
   with a ... with a carpet, a roll of toilet paper ... no, not that,
   either ... that's a mirror, too; always check bleeding. You see
   how hard it is to find things ? With a street corner, and too
   many lights, all colours reflecting on the oily-wet streets ... with
   a wisp of smoke, a wisp ... of smoke ... with ... with porno.
   graphic playing cards, with a strong-box . . . WITHOUT A
   LOCK ... with love, with vomiting, with crying, with fury
   because the pretty little ladies aren't pretty little ladies,  with
   making money with your body which is an act of love and I
   could prove it, with howling because you're alive; with God.
   How about that? WITH GOD WHO IS A COLOURED QUEEN
   WHO WEARS A KIMONO AND PLUCKS HIS EYEBROWS !
   WHO IS A WOMAN WHO CRIES WITH DETERMINATION
   BEHIND HER CLOSED DOOR ... with God who, I'm told, turned
   his back on the whole thing some time ago ... with ... some day,
   with people.

  • perhaps the most important speech of the play--worthwhile thinking about the indivual objects he wants to make contact with
• feign
• I have learned that neither kindness
   nor cruelty by themselves, independent of each other, creates any
   effect beyond themselves; and I have learned that the two
   combined, together, at the same time, are the teaching emotion.

  • difficult and complex thing to say and to understand wabout relationships. Sounds skinnerian
• We neither love nor hurt because we do not try to reach each
   other. And, was trying to feed the dog an act of love? And,
   perhaps, was the dog's attempt to bite me not an act of love? If
   we can so misunderstand, well then, why have we invented the
   word love in the first place ?

  • " and if we can so misunderstand" -- absurd lack of comm.
• JERRY: [tickles Peter's ribs with his fingers] Oh, come on.

  • jerry's insistence on getting a reaction out of peter
• [JERRY stops tickling Peter, but the combination of tickling and his
   own mad whimsy has PETER laughing almost hysterically.
• [Punches Peter on the arm, hard.] MOVE OVER!

  • kindness and cruelty are the teaching emotions, as said before

  • keep in mind what he said earlier about love and violence being the teaching emotion.
• ETER: LONG ENOUGH. I've put up with you long enough.
   I've listened to you because you seemed ... well, because
   I thought  you wanted to talk to somebody.

  • Is this Peter's rel motive?
• PETER: [furious] Look, you; get off my bench. I don't care
   if it makes any sense or not. I want this bench to myself;
   I want you OFF IT !

  • Jerry got his reaction.
    
    And note how the whole play you think Peter will be killed -- but it is Jerry who dies
• Don't you have
   any idea, no even the slightest, what other people need ?
• I'm a responsible person,
   and I'm a GROWN-UP. This is my bench, and you have
   no right to take it away from me.
• PETER: [suddenly awakening to the reality of the situation]

  • reality!
• JERRY: Now you pick up that knife and you fight with me.
   You fight for your self-respect; you fight for that goddamned
   bench.

  • because if Jerry and Peter fight they will finally really engage with ne another
• JERRY: Thank you, Peter. I mean that, now; thank you very much.
• You don't know how afraid I was you'd
   go away and leave me.
• and I decided that I would talk to you ... I would
   tell you things ... and things that I would tell you would

  • what would the things he would tell peter cause?
• PETER: [almost fainting] Oh my God!

  • from this point on this is all peter can say... and what does it mean? Is there even a God?
• JERRY: [his eyes still closed, he shakes his head and speak;
   a combination of scornful mimicry and supplication] Oh ... my ...
   God. [He is dead.]

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• Notice he doesn't say that he cannot say out loud that he wants to kill the dog -- just cannot say -- a dog I know out loud - Aviva Rosensweig on 2008-12-11

• An Outpost of Progress

  
    by Joseph Conrad
• two white men
• Carlier, the assistant,
• Kayerts, the chief
• third man on the staff was a Sierra Leone nigger, who maintained that his name was Henry Price.
• Makola
• Makola, taciturn and impenetrable, despised the two white men.
• pretended

  • everyone fools everyone
• The plank floor was littered with the belongings of the white men; open half-empty boxes, torn wearing apparel, old boots; all the things dirty, and all the things broken, that accumulate mysteriously round untidy men. There was also another dwelling-place some distance away from the buildings.

  • no discipline, everything has deteriorated
• this outpost of progress.
• He had been, at home, an unsuccessful painter who, weary of pursuing fame on an empty stomach, had gone out there through high protections.
• He got on very well with his god. Perhaps he had propitiated him by a promise of more white men to play with, by and by
• The director was a man ruthless and efficient, who at times, but very imperceptibly, indulged in grim humour. He made a speech to Kayerts and Carlier, pointing out to them the promising aspect of their station.
• Carlier, an ex-non-commissioned officer of cavalry in an army guaranteed from harm by several European Powers, was less impressed

  • he is more like marlow, who knew that the company was run for profit
• Look at those two imbeciles. They must be mad at home to send me such specimens.
• I always thought the station on this river useless, and they just fit the station!"
• They had been in this vast and dark country only a very short time, and as yet always in the midst of other white men, under the eye and guidance of their superiors. And now, dull as they were to the subtle influences of surroundings, they felt themselves very much alone, when suddenly left unassisted to face the wilderness; a wilderness rendered more strange, more incomprehensible by the mysterious glimpses of the vigorous life it contained.
• Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings.
• the affirmation of the unusual, which is dangerous
• The climate here, everybody says, is not at all worse than at home, as long as you keep out of the sun. Do you hear that, Carlier? I am chief here, and my orders are that you should not expose yourself to the sun!"
• No two beings could have been more unfitted for such a struggle.
• They could only live on condition of being machines
• lifelong prisoners who, liberated after many years, do not know what use to make of their freedom.
• to earn a dowry for his girl
• But the two men got on well together in the fellowship of their stupidity and laziness.
• They lived like blind men in a large room, aware only of what came in contact with them (and of that only imperfectly), but unable to see the general aspect of things.
• Kayerts sat on his chair and looked down on the proceedings, understanding nothing. He stared at them with his round blue eyes, called out to Carlier, "Here, look! look at that fellow there--and that other one, to the left. Did you ever such a face? Oh, the funny brute!"
• the two pioneers of trade and progress
• That print discussed what it was pleased to call "Our Colonial Expansion" in high-flown language. It spoke much of the rights and duties of civilization, of the sacredness of the civilizing work, and extolled the merits of those who went about bringing light, and faith and commerce to the dark places of the earth.
• the chief of the neighbouring villages
• Gobila
• these were his brothers

  • much more humane than the white attitude to him
• Now and then one of them had a bout of fever,
• Five months passed in that way.
• a knot of armed men came out of the forest
• It sounded like one of those impossible languages which sometimes we hear in our dreams.
• There were ten station men who had been left by the Director.
• only a very faint notion of time in general), had been serving the cause of progress for upwards of two years.
• Better get a fine lot of ivory, then he say nothing."
• This Makola is invaluable."
• Makola, a civilized nigger, was very neat in his person
• We took care of them as if they had been our children."
• If you are so irritable in the sun, you will get fever and die--like the first chief!" pronounced Makola impressively.

• We can't touch it, of course," said Kayerts.

  "Of course not," assented Carlier.

  "Slavery is an awful thing," stammered out Kayerts in an unsteady voice.
• Makola--you beas
• But they were only mourning for those they had lost by the witchcraft of white men, who had brought wicked people into their country.

  • the white men bring the witchcraft -- everyone suspects the other as a conduit to the dark forces
• t was not the absolute and dumb solitude of the post that impressed them so much as an inarticulate feeling that something from within them was gone, something that worked for their safety, and had kept the wilderness from interfering with their hearts.
• And out of the great silence of the surrounding wilderness, its very hopelessness and savagery seemed to approach them nearer, to draw them gently, to look upon them, to envelop them with a solicitude irresistible, familiar, and disgusting.
• His legs were much swollen, and he could hardly walk.
• That was the root of the trouble! There was nobody there; and being left there alone with their weakness, they became daily more like a pair of accomplices than like a couple of devoted friends.
• Come! out with that sugar, you stingy old slave-dealer."
• All at once he looked dangerously in earnest. "You flabby, good-for-nothing civilian--take that!" he howled.
• He had shot an unarmed man.
• He seemed to have broken loose from himself altogether.
• e had been all his life, till that moment, a believer in a lot of nonsense like the rest of mankind--who are fools; but now he thought! He knew! He was at peace; he was familiar with the highest wisdom!
• there was a fog,
• A shriek inhuman, vibrating and sudden, pierced like a sharp dart the white shroud of that land of sorrow. Three short, impatient screeches followed, and then, for a time, the fog-wreaths rolled on, undisturbed, through a formidable silence. Then many more shrieks, rapid and piercing, like the yells of some exasperated and ruthless creature, rent the air. Progress was calling to Kayerts from the river. Progress and civilization and all the virtues. Society was calling to its accomplished child to come, to be taken care of, to be instructed, to be judged, to be condemned; it called him to return to that rubbish heap from which he had wandered away, so that justice could be done.

55 more annotations...