Colonization and Wealth in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness has allowed me to view the world through a multitude of new lenses. In seeing Kurtz and Marlow’s disintegration when removed from society’s watchful eye, I began to understand that all people have a streak of darkness in them under the right circumstances. While the narrator, and many readers at the time of this novella’s publication, believed that the African natives being colonized were “savages”, this book sheds light on the true brutes in this scenario: the thoughtless Europeans. The other complexity that I never truly understood until reading this book, is the idea that there is a single story told about Africans in Western literature. Africa is portrayed as weak, primitive, and impoverished in most books

Africa, being the second largest continent on earth, has always enticed foreigners to exploit their land and way of life. The biggest offender of trying to diminish their way of life is the western presence, always attempting to alter their normality into their own because they see it as the best way to live, which is not always the case. Throughout history, Africa has been under the impression of the white man and their customs, which can be demonstrated in the novels The Posionwood Bible, by Barbra Kingsolver, and The Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad. Both Conrad and Kingsolver display the futile efforts of the western presence to “civilize” Africans with their numerous points of view, clever symbolism, and conveying diction.

Marlow’s evolution renders ‘Heart of Darkness’ a remarkable work of literature, but it is not simply the budding of the narrator’s mind that makes the novel sensational. Marlow’s perception of the voyage is what truly renders the work exceptional. European expansion, as written by European writers, was generally cast in a positive light. When Conrad depicts the desolation of the journey and reveals the sanities and lives robbed through the conquest, he clearly does not conform to the writers of his time. This exposure of European expansion in such a sinister a fashion was innovative for writers of the late 17th century. This revolutionary perception is what truly allows ‘Heart of Darkness’ to be considered a novel rich in moral and detail.

Joseph Conrad 's Heart of Darkness is both a dramatic tale of an arduous trek into the Belgian Congo at the turn of the twentieth century and a symbolic journey into the deepest recesses of human nature. On a literal level, through Marlow 's narration, Conrad provides a searing indictment of European colonial exploitation inflicted upon African natives. By employing several allegoric symbols this account depicts the futility of the European presence in Africa.

The novella, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, is a piece that pushed the envelope of its time due to an oppositional stance on the forced imperialism of primitive and/or impoverished countries. The protagonist of this story is the self-proclaimed explorer, Marlow, who decides to leave the heart of light and purity (Europe) and take a job as a steamboat captain in the dark jungles of the Congo Free State in Africa. Upon his arrival, Marlow begins to see the impact of Belgium’s intrusion on the Congo by means of implementing slavery, commandeering ivory (a valuable resource), and presenting a negative attitude toward the primitive population. Marlow eventually becomes obsessed with an ivory

Edward Said, author of “Two Visions in the Heart of Darkness”, provides commentary on the work of Conrad exclaiming that Conrad provided readers a sense of humanity to the inhumane treatments regarding colonization by European powers. Said understands that the primary theme of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness lies in the dissonance of culture and purpose of these African citizens as a result of imperialism.

The destruction of culture and people is not limited to coastal Africa. European powers plunged deep into the heart of the continent with destructive force, exploiting the people and resources which resided there. This aggression was most prominent in King Leopold’s Belgian Congo, the setting for Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The Belgian Congo was different from other colonies in that it “had nothing to sell. [It] was not interested in turning Africans into consumers but only in using their forced labor” (Hawkins 291). Leopold’s Congo proves itself to be a great offender against the ideal, exemplified in “an inefficiency that was peculiar to King Leopold's Congo. The two best examples are the building of the railway and the inadequacy of

The presence of Europe in Africa in the late nineteenth century was one of extreme power. The countries of France, Britain, and Germany had especially large claims to the African continent during this time. The motives of imperialism for these countries greatly define Europe at this time. Insatiable desires for economic markets, power and political struggles, the motivating belief in Social Darwinism, and the European idea of superiority were the driving forces at the European home front in the late nineteenth century. Many of the causes for imperialism in Africa were evident in Joseph Conrad’s turn of the century novel, Heart of Darkness.

In the late 1800s, third world countries, primarily Africa, were infiltrated by European colonizers. In Things Fall Apart, Heart of Darkness, and “Shooting an Elephant”, we see the direct impact of the colonizers on the beliefs of the natives. Post-colonial literature centres mainly around how beliefs are questioned and eventually altered; a transformation that can manifest in numerous ways as it is not fixed. In each of the stories, a different form of colonization is elucidated. In Things Fall Apart, the curiosity of the natives with regards to the culture of the europeans leads to colonization. The oppression of the natives exerted by the europeans in Heart of Darkness leads to colonization as well. Finally, in “Shooting an Elephant”, the roles of the colonizers and the colonized are reversed as it is the natives who take on the position of the oppressors.

In Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, the imperialism of Africa is described. Conrad tells the story of the cruel treatment of the natives and of the imperialism of the Congo region through the perspective of the main character, Marlow. Throughout the novel, Marlow describes how the Europeans continuously bestow poor treatment to the native people by enslaving them in their own territory. Analyzing the story with the New Criticism lens, it is evident that Conrad incorporates numerous literary devices in Heart of Darkness, including similes, imagery, personification, and antitheses to describe and exemplify the main idea of cruel imperialism in Africa discussed throughout the novella.

Chinua Achebe, a well-known writer, once gave a lecture at the University of Massachusetts about Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, entitled "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness." Throughout his essay, Achebe notes how Conrad used Africa as a background only, and how he "set Africa up as a foil to Europe,"(Achebe, p.251) while he also "projects the image of Africa as 'the other world,' the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization."(Achebe, p.252) By his own interpretations of the text, Achebe shows that Conrad eliminates "the African as a human factor," thereby "reducing Africa to the role of props."(Achebe, p.257)

Greed can push both ruthless and innocent people to hurt others. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Europeans wanted to imperialize many countries in Africa for land and resources such as gold and cash crops. They also desired economic, social, and political control along with the success of converting Africans to European politics and religion. Europeans sought to have an economic and political dominance over African Americans. The cruelty that the Africans faced is displayed in Joseph Conrad’s, Heart of Darkness. Raising questions about both racism and imperialism, the novel includes Kurtz, a character with greed for the valuable resource, ivory. Conrad comments on the horrific corruptibility of humanity through the narrator, Charles

In Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, the interpretation of pre-colonial times is interesting in a way that supersedes other books I’ve read because it’s very honest with how the world worked it that era. The central aim which the shipmates in Heart of Darkness are pursuing is the expansion of their home countries’ empires. Yet many people are hurt in this enterprise, and it’s not only the colonized territories that are impacted negatively by imperialist Europe. Europe’s explorers that go to the Congo are constantly dying of sickness. Compare the ways in which the consequences of imperialism affect the different groups of people in the book, the more one can understand about characters’ actions.

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe are two novellas written to make a statement about the struggles of early societies. Both stories stir up moments of hope, anger, disappointment, despair, and enlightenment in an attempt to inform the reader of the injustices and societal differences during the 1800’s. Heart of Darkness tells the story from a European Colonist perspective while Things Fall Apart illustrates the outlook of the African tribe member being colonized. Throughout this piece I will investigate these unique texts in hopes of revealing the symbolism behind the trying stories. I will compare and contrast the narratives and decipher the outlooks so that the reader can learn to appreciate and

In Chinua Achebe’s essay, “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad 's Heart of Darkness,” Achebe purports that Joseph Conrad’s short story, Heart of Darkness, should not be taught due to it’s racist caricature of Africa and African culture. In Conrad’s book, Marlow, a sea captain, is tasked with venturing into the center of the Congo, otherwise known as the Heart of Darkness, to retrieve a mentally unstable ivory trader named Kurtz. Marlow narrates his adventures with a tinge of apathy for the enslaved Congolese who are repressed beneath the foot of the colonizing Belgians. In Heart of Darkness, the Africans are reduced to “savages” and cannibals with little or no moral values. It is Achebe’s argument that due to these characterizations, it is an abomination that Heart of Darkness be continued to be taught. Despite Achebe’s vehement opposition to the teaching of Conrad’s novel, academics should not only continue to teach Heart of Darkness in a lyrical sense, but also a historical one.