One World, Two Stories
Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” and Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” are two significant and well-known works treating colonialism in Africa. When reading these two stories, one cannot help but realize that though the two authors are making two separate points about two groups, Africans and Europeans, they both have somewhat of the same theme. In Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” and Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”, the theme seems to be acceptance. Both main characters, Okonkwo and Marlow, change their behaviors based on their surroundings and on what they feel like they need to be or do in order to be accepted in their communities.
In Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart”, the two main characters that I found to be the most relevant in
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Sadly, even though he expresses a bond or connecting line between the British and the Africans, Marlow goes on to tell his listeners that the bond is not a good one. When the book first began, Conrad made it seem as if Marlow was the good guy in this story. He made it seem like Marlow would be the one to go to Africa and see the beauty of it, and show others a better way to treat the native Africans. Instead, Marlow joins the European group of people in Congo to participate in mistreating the Africans there as well.
The second character that I found interesting was Kurtz. At a first glance, Kurtz seems to be like the guy that everyone looks up to. Throughout the story, it becomes clear that he is very manipulative though. Despinte his charisma and the bright light he is viewed in, he uses that to the loss of knowledge of others. That is, Kurtz is a great writer, but instead of using that talent to inform people about the wrong that is happening in Africa, he pads all of his words so that people can not see the true gruesome deeds being done there. Kurtz plays an important role in the conclusion of the story. He dies leaving behind a complicated construct of injustice, corruption, and intrigue. His actions caused nothing good and were more or less intended to degradingly exploit the African natives.
To me, “Heart of Darkness” is filled with an awful lot of greed
In "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness," Chinua Achebe criticizes Joseph Conrad for his racist stereotypes towards the continent and people of Africa. He claims that Conrad propagated the "dominant image of Africa in the Western imagination" rather than portraying the continent in its true form (1793). Africans were portrayed in Conrad's novel as savages with no language other than grunts and with no "other occupations besides merging into the evil forest or materializing out of it simply to plague Marlow" (1792-3). To Conrad, the Africans were not characters in his story, but merely props. Chinua Achebe responded with a
Joseph Conrad's novella, Heart of Darkness, describes a life-altering journey that the protagonist, Marlow, experiences in the African Congo. The story explores the historical period of colonialism in Africa to exemplify Marlow's struggles. Marlow, like other Europeans of his time, is brought up to believe certain things about colonialism, but his views change as he experiences colonialism first hand. This essay will explore Marlow's view of colonialism, which is shaped through his experiences and also from his relation to Kurtz. Marlow's understanding of Kurtz's experiences show him the effects colonialism can have on a man's soul.
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
Marlow compares his experience in Africa as the Romans did “nineteen hundred years ago,” they both were shocked when they got there. When Romans came long ago they did not expect to see anyone, and when Marlow came he expected something different. He thought that the natives were happy to have civilization and wanted to integrate into their society. But he was wrong, they were being treated as “criminals” and were not even respected. He knew that something else was going on there. The men that were there were just “lusty, red-eyed devils” looking for their fortune. They did not
Heart of Darkness and Things Fall Apart illustrate the different ways of presenting Africa in literature. In Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad shows Africa through the perspective of the colonizing Europeans, who tend to depict all the natives as savages. In response to Conrad 's stereotypical depiction of Africans, Chinua Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart through the point of view of the natives to show Africans, not as primitives, but as members of a thriving society. Things Fall Apart follows Okonkwo 's life as he strives for prestige in his community. When European missionaries come to Umuofia, Okonkwo 's clan, Okonkwo tries to protect the culture that the missionaries would destroy in the name of "civilizing" the natives. However his rigid mentality and violent behavior has the opposite of its intended effect, perpetuating the stereotype of the wild African in the eyes of the European readers.
European society may have supported this impression of an African that was not human and only used for work. The men have tricked the African into believing that a spirit would come after him if he did not perform his given duty. Conrad would have experienced some kind of African spiritual culture during his travels. Here, he disrespects this culture through Marlow to dominate an African and once again simply “put him in his place” to serve the white men. Through Marlow, Conrad struggles to still recognize the humanity of Africans, even when a kind act is done.
Achebe’s essay “An Image of Africa” analyzes the book Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. He dissects the false representation of the african people and the bias in his book. In “Heart Of Darkness,” Conrad feels that the people of Africa are undeveloped and they are savages; he looks at all their culture and tradition and only sees it as uncivilized, he has no appreciation for their beliefs. This relates to Achebe’s book, Things Fall Apart, because Conrad’s views represents the white colonist and their feelings towards the africans. The colonists did not respect their culture or their gods. Okonkwo is well-respected by his tribe, he is extremely traditional and values his culture. The colonists are a threat to that because they do not understand or respect the African ways, they want to change it and convert them to Christianity. Okonkwo has a need to stand up for his culture and his beliefs, he feels he has to be able to prove that he is a strong and powerful man. Okonkwo worries that if he does not protect his customs, he will be seen like his father: cowardly and feminine. He has been haunted by that fear his whole life, “It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father. Even as a little boy he had resented his father’s failure and weakness, and even now he still remembered how he had suffered when a playmate had told him that his father was agbala”(Achebe 12). His need to distinguish himself from his father and protect his people are what drive him to make do things like kill Ikemefuna and the messenger. Things fall apart for Okonkwo because the other villagers do not have the same passion and drive as him. The
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)
A famous criticism of Conrad’s novella is called An Image of Africa, which was written by an African native named Chinua Achebe. In Achebe’s criticisms of Heart of Darkness, he points out the difference between descriptions of the European woman and the African woman, who was Kurtz’s mistress. The narrator describes the European woman as being calm and mature, and the African woman as being “savage” (341 Norton). Even though many writers claim that Marlow is kind to the Africans by bringing light to their situation, the real problem does not lie in his description of their situations, but his descriptions of the people themselves (30 Heart of darkness Interpretations).
Marlow says that, "They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force-- nothing to boast of."(p.58 Heart of Darkness) . Marlow compares his subsequent tale of colonialism with that of the Roman colonization of Northern Europe and the fascination associated with such a voyage. However, Marlow challenges this viewpoint by illustrating a picture of the horrors of colonialist ventures as we delve deeper into the novel. White Europeans are used as symbols of self-deception, and we find that Marlow sees colonization as "robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind - as it is very proper for those who tackle darkness."(p.58 Heart of Darkness) This shows how Conrad feels about colonialism through Marlow, because Marlow feels strongly adverse to the actions of the whites in the Congo.
In “An Image of Africa”, Chinua Achebe comes to the bold conclusion that Joseph Conrad “was a bloody racist” (788), with his discussion centering primarily on Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as a racist text. Achebe’s reasoning for this branding rests on the claims that Conrad depicts Africa as “a place of negations at once remote and vaguely familiar in comparison with which Europe 's own state of spiritual grace will be manifest” (783), that Africans in Heart of Darkness are dehumanized through both the characterization of individual Africans and the Congo as a setting, and finally that Marlow is no more than a mouthpiece for Conrad’s personal views on race and imperialism. However, Achebe makes critical oversights and contradictions in the development of each of these argumentative pillars, which prove fatal to the validity of his overarching contention. This should not be construed, though, as a yes-or-no assessment of whether Conrad was a racist outside of what his written work suggests—Achebe himself has “neither the desire nor, indeed, the competence to do so with the tools of the social and biological sciences” (783)—but as an assessment of claims specific to Heart of Darkness and their implications for Conrad’s views and attitudes.
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe both focus on the subject of colonialism and imperialism during the Scramble for Africa, however, Achebe’s novel is a direct response to the racism and the incomplete picture of Africa that Conrad creates. Heart of darkness is a story of Marlow, a steamboat captain, who witnesses the harsh treatment of the natives by the Belgian as he travels down the Congo River. Things Fall Apart tells of Okonkwo and his life in Nigeria and the troubles the Ibo tribe faced as they were colonized by Europeans. While Conrad lumps together African culture as a single “dark” mass Achebe transforms this notion in Things Fall Apart by differentiating the Ibo tribe in Nigeria.
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.
The overall meaning of the paragraph, that connects to the overall meaning of the novel, is that the average person has a deep resonance with the natives and their “savagery” lying within our minds and hearts. Marlow has crumbles of this mentality through his journey,when he comes into contact with the natives on various occasions, and is able to distinguish an odd relationship between the denizen and the citizen. In this particular instance, as Marlow travels to through the Congo River on a steam boat, he is able to meet and interact with the African natives, both on and off the steamboat. With the various interactions, he slowly finds himself learning about the social interactions that the natives have and are capable of, and has his previous mental notions and structures of the community shaken and reconstructed. Finally, Marlow comes to conclusion; both the average city dweller and African native share a link of ancestry, humanity, and are no internal difference between one another. The only difference that can be found is based of societal expectations and thinking that fools people into believing that the two are not mutual in any degree, which would be the root of evil practices, such as dehumanization. Conrad has a keen eye for the particular lengths and punctuations being used throughout the novel, and can be clearly identified within the given paragraph. Through literary techniques-such as syntax-Conrad is able to implore the audience to realize such a mindset, and