| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Burning Daylight by Jack London: all the steel ships are built, isn't half as wide as Oakland
Creek down there, where all those old hulks lie? Why ain't it a
Firth of Clyde? Because the Oakland City Council spends its time
debating about prunes and raisins. What is needed is somebody to
see things, and, after that, organization. That's me. I didn't
make Ophir for nothing. And once things begin to hum, outside
capital will pour in. All I do is start it going. 'Gentlemen,'
I say, 'here's all the natural advantages for a great metropolis.
God Almighty put them advantages here, and he put me here to see
them. Do you want to land your tea and silk from Asia and ship
it straight East? Here's the docks for your steamers, and here's
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: herself had tried to ward off intruders; in and out of rivers,
streams of death in life, whose banks were rotting into mud,
whose waters, thickened into slime, invaded the contorted mangroves,
that seemed to writhe at us in the extremity of an impotent despair.
Nowhere did we stop long enough to get a particularized impression,
but the general sense of vague and oppressive wonder grew upon me.
It was like a weary pilgrimage amongst hints for nightmares.
"It was upward of thirty days before I saw the mouth of
the big river. We anchored off the seat of the government.
But my work would not begin till some two hundred miles farther on.
So as soon as I could I made a start for a place thirty
Heart of Darkness |
