The Prince

After reading I don’t see how Machiavelli would be associated with “evil”, I didn’t think there was evil to this book; it seems just informational about the different type of Princedoms and what it takes to be prince. The only “evil I could find after thinking of the theme evil in every possible way is thinking of evil metaphorically. “For since men who are well treated by one whom they expected to treat them ill, feel the more beholden to their benefactor, the people will at once become better disposed to such a Prince when he protects them, than if he owed his Princedom to them” (Pg/25). When I reread over this passage I thought of the “evil” in politics; sort of the “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” theory, doing deeds for one another behind closed doors.
Today it is almost obvious to anyone to see how corrupt and devious politics are these days and the passage mentioned before is a perfect example to the deceiving faces we see in high official offices. In another class we just talked about the conferences on the other night and how when they say they want our money to aid education there was a good point brought up, “how can money get Tony to do his homework every night?” well it really can’t. So what can we be sure of when we give our money to politicians for education, it’s near impossible to say the money is really going to help education for kids.

Heart of Darkness

When we talk about nature vs. nuture we would bring up the question if man is born good/evil or if he is taught by society to be good/evil. "Heart of Darkness" is a title that jumps out at the reader and right away we can make the observation that the book is about the evil in man that is either born or molded into us by society. Looking at Kurtz and because he was brought up by the natives through most of the time in the Congo he was uncivilized and protective of the natives. This was the nuture of Kurtz because it was how the society around him lived. His nature is easy to tell it was the way he survived in the Congo; just like "White Fang" Kurtz was used to a society's life style, but when it came to survival his instinct was what guided him instead of what he learned from society. Another example is when Kurtz went on the steam ship and he was so anxious while aboard the boat because he felt the manager of the ship was going to somehow take away his credibility with company or in other words the ahhh factor the company has for the mysterious Kurtz. His need for power is another example of the nature of Kurtz. "He died as he lived. His end was in every way worthy of his life." (Pg/71)