Which was good because Ms. M-P saved the best for
last: Heart of Darkness by Joseph
Conrad. Over the course of what had to be months, we dissected every detail.
The plot was simple enough: Marlow (the narrator) is sent by The Company to
retrieve Kurtz, a wildly successful ivory hunter from deep in the Congolese
Jungle. But the symbolism! What did the colors – black, white, yellow – mean?
Howabout that decaying railcar Marlow, the narrator, spends pages describing?
Why did the accountant dress the way he did? And we got to watch Apocalypse Now in class, so that was
pretty sweet. With Ms. M-P as our guide, we were all shocked at how much we
were able to pull from a novella written by a man who didn’t even speak English
until his third decade.
However, when it came time for us to pin down the
theme of Conrad’s work, it was Ms. M-P’s turn to be surprised. Removed from the
constraints of society, in the most primative setting possible, it was clear
that Kurtz’s humanity had become something dark, twisted, and sinister. The
class decided that his famous quote “The horror. The horror!” meant that Kurtz
had realized that his path was not unique – that any man, removed from the
confines of society, would suffer the same fate. At its core, mankind is savage.
Ms. M-P was floored. “Surely, you must have found some
sliver of hope,” she asked. “Every other class before you did.” We shook our
heads glumly. We wanted to find something, we really did. We just couldn’t.
It was a strange feeling, having no hope. There is
always supposed to be hope and even when there isn’t, it’s only because it’s
not that big of a deal anyways. Well here was a man saying there was no hope.
Not in a the-Twins-will-never-get-past-the-Yankees-in-the-playoffs kinda way,
but in a there-is-something-fundamentally-evil-within-humanity kinda way.
Before and since, I have never encountered something that had a theme like
Conrad’s Heart of Darkness – until I
finished “The Wire.”
If you haven’t seen David Simon’s five season opus
the rest of this won’t make much sense so I suggest you stop reading and start
watching immediately. This blog will be waiting for you when you finish.
The HBO miniseries follows a hodgepodge of characters
through the underbelly of Baltimore’s…well…underbelly. The show takes a four-minute Randy Newman song and gives
it names, faces, and life. Ostensibly, the first season is about the cops, the
second about the dockworkers, the third the drug dealers, the fourth the schools,
and the fifth the newspapers, but characters drift in and out freely and the
storylines weave to and fro like playful dolphins, trailing the wake of the
last ocean liner bound for Patapsco terminal. The show also raises serious
questions about education, drugs, justice, race, family, and the general state
of the American city.
The plot lines are certainly entertaining, but it’s
the characters that drew me in. Amongst the dozens, three stood out to me in
particular. There’s Norman, Carcetti’s aide who never loses his sense of
perspective and is the only other person in the room (besides me) chuckling
when Daniels and Rawls reveal just what their department has been up to during
season five. There’s Chris Partlow, Marlo’s* hobo-styled hitman. Somehow,
Partlow comes across as a consummate family man while simultaneously being
Stanfiel’s ruthless assassin. Then there’s the cop, Sgt. Thomas Hauk. He never
kills anyone (at least directly) and is more stupid than dirty, but there’s
something about Herc that makes me think he is the worst human being I have ever met.
As a matter of fact Grantland found 32 characters so
compelling they made a mini-bracket out of the thing.
Of course Omar won*, but more interestingly I think, David Simon got mad,
saying:
“…they [those
doing things like the Grantland bracket] want to break it down like a deck of
cards, and argue over whether the jack of spades is better than the jack of
hearts.. "The Wire" wasn't about whether Stringer was better than
Omar, or this scene better than that scene, or season 2 versus season 3.”
He’s right, and right in more than just a
he-made-the-show-so-what-he-says-goes sense. The bracket (and discussions like
it) is fun but misses the point because “The Wire” isn’t about cool at all.
It’s not about good versus bad or winners versus losers. It’s about what
happens when all that stuff gets lost in the flood and you start creating
serial killers or inventing quotes or whaling on commuters or killing citizens
just because. David Simon’s Baltimore is a picture of what happens when all
those rules that bind and govern our society just fall apart, and a man is left
to run a station deep in the jungle all by himself.
*Even Obama voted for him!
So after everything. After Sherrod, Carcetti leaving
Tony Gray out to dry, Randy, Avon and Stringer, Ziggy, Alma going to bat for Gus, Wallace,* the
cop Prez shot, Butchie, Hamsterdam, and Carver doing Colicchio. After D'Angelo, McNulty using
his kids to tail Stringer, Bodie, Frank, Kima getting shot, and Cutty what
really changed? What about Baltimore is substantially better or even just different
from when the series began?
*Where’s
Wallace String?
People move on but the roles remain. Bubbles comes
out of the basement, but Duke picks up his needle, just like Michael picks up
Omar’s gun. Carcetti politicked his way to governor and as a result won’t
really be any better than his predecessor. The co-op finds a way to keep it
together, the dope still flows, and the Greek perseveres. Clay Davis keeps his
seat and Scott wins a damn Pulitzer. At least Cheese gets got and Namond has a
good home. But really, after all the evil done in the name of both good and bad
– after five seasons of all that shit
– what does it mean when the only thing that’s different is Commissioner Stan
fucking Valchek? I’ll admit that I don’t know for sure, but I really think the
best explanation might have been given by an ivory trader nearly 200 years ago.
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