Essay Comparing The Poisonwood Bible And Heart Of Darkness

According to Chinua Achebe, Joseph Conrad in his novella, “Heart of Darkness” represents Africa in an opposite way to what Africa really is. He says Conrad depicts Africa as different and unknowable in contrast to Europe. He views it as the exact opposite of Europe. Africa is viewed as uncivilised. Joseph Conrad’s novella eliminates “Africans as a human factor and represents Africa as a blank stage where Europeans enter an implicitly dangerous zone which functions as a plot

Joseph Conrad in the book Heart of Darkness showcases Africa through the viewpoint of colonizing the Europeans who view all the natives as savages. On the other hand, Chinua Achebe in the book things fall apart depicts Africans as people who are not primitive as they are usually viewed by many people. The book depicts Africans as member of a prospering society. His book follows the life of Okonkwo as he succeeds for prestige in his society. When the missionaries from Europe visit his clan, Okonkwo puts efforts to safeguard that missionaries aim to destroy by trying to civilize the natives. However, one thing to note is that his strong mentality and aggressive behavior does not offer the intended effect. It makes the missionaries and other people develop the notion that Africans are very wild and more violent (Achebe, 2009).

Those in control saw this opportunity to civilize other lands as a profit of wealth. There was natural resources among these foreign lands, and countries such as Europe did anything in their will to gain them. Europe told many that colonizing these other countries would lead to a wealthier economy and would help the “savages” gain an education and better life. However, this was not the whole truth. Europe would enact violence and harm to the inhabitants just to gather the resources for their own benefit. Conrad experienced this terrible act for himself in the Congo. According to the Norton Anthology, what he saw during this time “shocked him profoundly and shook his view of the moral basis of colonialism...indeed of civilization in general” (Greenblatt 1952). His journey to the Congo not only impaired his health, but also his imagination. Joseph Conrad wrote Heart of Darkness to present his readers with his traumatic experience of colonialism and the negative effects of it. He reveals the horror of this Modern problem and is doubtful of the whole

A darkness lurks in the tangled foliage and vines shrouding inland Africa. All the civilized world exists in but a bright flash of materialism and wealth, undercut by a looming darkness, a desire for wealth and power, and an inherent tendency towards gluttony and corruption. The darkness gnaws away at morality, stripping away the notion of right and encouraging mankind to subjugate those different from themselves in the interest of personal gain. Joseph Conrad, in his novella, “Heart of Darkness,” criticizes this corruption and subjugation of the lower class brought about by the imperial system, illustrating mankind’s inherent greed for dominance and its role in fostering atrocity and savagery.

Achebe says that “Heart of Darkness portrays the image of Africa as ‘the other world,’ the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization, a place where man’s vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant bestiality”. (15) Savagery and primitiveness which are the distorted images of Africans are evidently represented in the novella.

Conrad’s Heart of Darkness illustrates how the power from the imperialism that the Europeans have causes them to treat the native people of Congo Africa as slaves and as bodies that are meant for work. Conrad expresses the horrors of the Europeans toward the natives of Congo through the state of the natives’ bodies. Conrad describes the Congo as though it is a graveyard for all of the natives that are being treated as slaves by the Europeans. The natives in the setting are characterized as living inferior to the Europeans that come to conquer the land. In “Envisioning Africa: Racism and Imperialism in Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness,’” Peter Firchow examines Heart of Darkness and the allegations of racism against the novel. In response to Heart of Darkness, Firchow states how Conrad’s own experiences to Africa may play a role in his perception of the Congo and Africa in general. Firchow focuses on how Conrad draws racism into Heart of Darkness by exploring “misrepresentations of Africa and Africans”. The “misrepresentations” of Africans include how the natives are assumed to be weak and poor although their type of civilization is the opposite of the Europeans and of Conrad’s. The poor state the Africans are assumed by the Europeans to be a call for help. Misrepresentations of Africa are further described as being an opportunity to explore one’s hidden, dark inner self. The poor state that Africans live in can easily be overruled by stronger forces such as European countries. Imperialism places a strong suit in the overruling of the Africans as Europeans start to

   In Joseph Conrad's novella, Heart of Darkness, the socially constructed differences of African and European cultures are effective in representing the power sites of the time. The alleged `superiority' of the European culture can be recognized by comparing their ideologies to those of the primitive, `inferior' `savages.' Conrad's personal experiences in the Belgian Congo, in the 1890s, influenced the compilation of Heart of Darkness, reflecting the waste and inefficiency of British Colonialism. Conrad referred to the colonization of Africa as, "the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience and geographical exploration."(Joffe, 78) The cultural

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

Heart of Darkness is mix of characters, setting, imagery, and plot that carefully unravels the complexity of human behavior. In addition to this, the work also focuses on Africa—the unknown “Dark Continent” and how its exploration and colonization allowed it to be subjugated by “civilized” European countries, an idea which is deconstructed itself in the novella., Heart of Darkness has been both praised for its quality in writing and criticized for its overt racism that would be extremely offensive by today’s standards .Nonetheless, Heart of Darkness analyzes society itself by questioning the

Joseph Conrad’s s novel Heart of Darkness portrays an image of Africa that is dark and inhuman. Not only does he describe the actual, physical continent of Africa as “so hopeless and so dark, so impenetrable to human thought, so pitiless to human weakness”, (Conrad 154) as though the continent could neither breed nor support any true human life. Conrad lived through a time when European colonies were scattered all over the world. This phenomenon and the doctrine of colonialism bought into at his time obviously influenced his views at the time of Heart of Darkness publication. Very few people saw anything amiss with colonialism in Africa and the African people. From a Eurocentric point of view, colonialism was the natural next-step in any powerful countries political agenda. The colonizers did not pay heed to the native peoples in their territories, nor did they think of the natives as anything but savages. In the Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad uses Marlow to contradict the acts of man and the destruction they brought forth to Africa and their people. Conrad shows, through fiction, that the blindness and lack of morality in Africa allowed for the release of the darkness from the hearts of the colonists.

Joseph Conrad, in his novel Heart of Darkness, comments on the nature of imperialism, the individual psyche, and the evil inherent in the human condition. Chinua Achebe, a contemporary literary critic, argues that as the protagonist, Marlow, travels through the Congo, Conrad maintains a Western imperialist attitude towards the African natives. According to the novel, the natives are a sort of animalistic backdrop, a part of a landscape to merely house Kurtz and Marlow’s metaphysical battle. The environment is devoid of all humanity, and the European imperialists are the only “civilized” and human figures, while the Africans are feral, earthly, and savage brutes. Although Conrad’s purpose is certainly not to perpetuate racism and advocate for an enduring policy of white supremacy, there are racist elements underlying the entirety of the story from a modern perspective. Although he uses loaded language and anecdotal evidence, Achebe certainly makes a valid point that as an inherently dehumanizing and racist novel, Heart of Darkness should no longer be considered an enduring piece of literature.

Chinua Achebe argues that African society is commonly misrepresented or misunderstood. Things Fall Apart, Achebe’s novel, aims to properly illustrate the daily life of native Africans and the eventual destruction of their society as a result of European colonization. Likewise, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness also depicts the effects of European imperialism in the Congo. The novels differ in that Heart of Darkness follows the story of Charles Marlow, a European, while Things Fall Apart focuses on the history of Okonkwo, an Igbo warrior. Both novels impart the negative consequences of colonization, yet propose alternate reasons for the issues that arise. Because there are underlying social complexities in colonization, and because the authors view the context of colonization differently, Achebe believes there are no grounds for Europeans to colonize Africa due to its detrimental ramifications for Africans, whereas Conrad believes the colonization of Africa should not take place because it is not beneficial to the colonizers.

Heart of darkness, by Joseph Conrad, is a prime example of European imperialist power over the lower less developed countries of Africa. Joseph Conrad’s book ensued many critics and other authors to question if Conrad was a racist.

The United Nations labeled and sold European colonization in the Congo during the early twentieth century as the idea that the Congo would be transformed from a savage jungle into a place of international trade, education, and development. The harsh realities of imperialism crushed this idealistic idea of having a flourishing civilized place in Africa. The King of Belgium exploited the Congo along with its people and used it as slave labor in order to personally profit off his new purchase. Joseph Conrad’s novella “Heart of Darkness” reveals these truths about European colonialism through the main character’s recollection and retelling of a past voyage to the Congo he had experienced. The novella tackles problematic Eurocentric ideas of Africans and their culture, while also revealing European supremacy as the white washed illusion it is. The author draws on his own past to tell not only a thrilling adventure, but also expose Europe for its exploitative actions during the early twentieth century.

Africa has been the embodiment of european perspectives before and after the Colonialism; these perspectives have attempted to provide insights on the facts behind it. In those terms, Africa has been reduced an atmosphere of concepts such as deep darkness, mystery, and madness, a place in which attrocities arise at any time of the day, and people are savages and chaotic. From that colonialist viewpoint, Africa was a place that needed help and control urgently in order to save it form itself and civilize it; therefore, white European men felt the need of accomplishing this mission and bring civilization to black men, which only meant to do thing as Europeans did. In Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1993), these European visions are portraited to