Our first session was devoted to exploring background information on our next novel,Conrad's "Heart of Darkness." I provided historical background on colonial exploitation of Africa, specifically Belgium's exploitation of the Congo's people, ivory ,and rubber and tied this history with Conrad's biographical information including his personal experience navigating on the Congo River for a Belgian commercial enterprise. I then discussed Conrad's symbolic and inconclusive style including quotes from the author explaining why he writes symbolically . Next, I addressed the narrative framework , and we discussed the similarities between the novel's narrative framework and the narrartive framework of "Rime of The Ancient Mariner." Further, as literary allusions run beneath the surface of the plot during our second session I discussed both Dante's "Inferno" and the Faust legend as it manifests in German and English literature. We studied a summary of the "Inferno" and Dante's nine stages of hell followed by redemption and I explained how that motif appears in the novel. We then studied the Faust legend as it first appeared in German folklore and later in Marlowe's "Faustus" and in Thomas Mann's Dr.Faustus. I defined the term "Faustian bargain" and we explored how that motif appears in other movies and literary works, for example ,the movies "Apocalypse Now" based on our novel ,"Heart of Darkness "and "The Natural" based on Bernard Malamud's novel.