Heart Of Darkness Essay

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 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.

In Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad exposes the evil of the imperialism and pays sympathy to the oppressed Africans. But affected by imperialist ideology, he serves as a racist and a defender of the imperialism when he attempts to condemn the colonizers. This paper will be analyzing the distorted images in Heart of darkness from the perspective of post-colonialism and Orientalism theory.

The claim of the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe that Heart of Darkness is “offensive, deplorable”, “sets Africa up as a foil to Europe” and glorifies European colonization is not true. Achebe further claims that the book’s writer Conrad hardly provides any hint at Heart of Darkness being ironic or critical of imperialism, which is absolutely strange because the book has many examples of Conrad being ironic, through the voice of its main protagonist Marlow. In fact, the book should be read as a good criticism of the European imperialism and unjust commercial exploitation of the African lands, through the false pretenses of religion.

Joseph Conrad’s treatment of race in “Heart of Darkness” differs significantly from Neil Bissoondath’s “I’m Not Racist But…” From Neil Bissoondath’s perspective, racial discrimination occurs everywhere and is conducted by everyone, either willfully or ignorantly. Bissoondath’s attempt is to inform the reader of the connection between stereotyping and racism and in turn condemns such acts. Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” however, exposes the brutality of the Europeans on Africans. While Bissoondath’s work addresses the sensitivity of racial judgement and racial superiority intended to bring hatred or abuse used against any given group of individuals, Conrad’s work describes how the Africans are racially judged and brutally treated by the European settlers. According to Conrad, the European settlers suppressed Africans from their freedom and supplied no medical care nor food. By dominating over the Africans, the European settlers in Africa are not only able to use the Africans as cheap labours but are also able to exploit the African’s raw materials with less restriction. Nevertheless, both Bissoondath and Conrad condemn the community on their approach to racial treatment.

A fierce Achebe radically condemns Conrad as "a thoroughgoing racist" in his article, arguing that Heart of Darkness is not a piece of great literature, but "an offensive and deplorable book" (Achebe 1791). He structures his argument around a few central ideas, such as the grotesque perception of the Africans by the protagonist, the antinomy between the Thames and Congo River, the lack of historical fact, and the parallel between the African and the European women, among others.

Achebe passionately believes that the book is racist and the writer of it is to. He thinks the book should not be taught and analyzed in learning centers anymore. He has expressed his thoughts through lecters and pieces of writing or interviews. One of the pieces of work is An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness where he clearly shows his opinions and gives evidence for it. Something that he used for a quote from the book that clearly shows the racism is, “We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there-there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly and the men were-No, they were not inhuman.”. That quote shows the racism that is in Heart of Darkness about how he explains Africans. The writer uses very strong words by explaining Africans as “monster” and throughout the book he says similar things. He portrays characters in a way that the white men are above the black and also how he uses no Africans as main character. He just uses them as a backdrop for the story, Achebe also made that point in his writing. The racism is clearly shown throughout the

Racism is still a problem today, even though it has changed over time. In the past, it was more open and something that was normal. Now, there are less people who are racist, or, those who are racist have just gotten better at hiding their thoughts and changing their words so that they seem like normal comments. In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the main character, Marlow, journeys the Congo and describes what he sees. In a response to Heart of Darkness, Chinua Achebe wrote “‘An Image of Africa’: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness”. Here, he explains his views on what Conrad wrote and what he thinks it means. One of Achebe’s famous novels was Things Fall Apart, based in a

Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is placed in a colonized Congo. "...despite Heart of Darkness 's (Joseph Conrad) obvious anti-colonist agenda, the novel points to the colonized population as the standard of savagery to which Europeans are contrasted" (Tyson 375). He tries to showcase the evils of these Europeans, but sacrificed showing the effects on the people most affected. The Natives. Nearly 50 years after Conrad’s death, Chinua Achebe wrote a criticism of the role of Africans in Heart of Darkness. Achebe writes most about Conrad using Africa as an antithesis to Europe, by illustrating Africa as uncivilized and primitive. Tony C. Brown speaks about Marlow’s changed view of the West through a more ‘primitive image’.

The philosophy of the human conscience and what makes a society civil are two elements that inspire curiosity in both Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. The two works demonstrate opposing views of the white men versus the black men in the Scramble for Africa. While Conrad’s piece shows the perspective of the Europeans, Achebe’s work depicts the natives view of the situation. While Joseph Conrad depicts African natives as quiet, weak and uncivilized, Chinua Achebe portrays them as strong, organized, and moral human beings. Through Conrad’s ideas of the African male his belief that natives are lesser, savage people projects, whereas Achebe’s thoughts depict the African male as equally civilized and competent as their white counterparts.

Thus, the true intentions of colonization as expressed by Conrad are that it is for selfish purposes and looks to exploit rather than help the natives. This novel is slightly different to other books that have the theme of colonisation. Unlike Chinua Achebe in Things Fall Apart, Conrad in Heart Of Darkness pays more attention to the damage that colonisation does to colonial masters than to the natives. Although this focus on the colonial masters makes the novel slightly unbalanced, it conveys more effectively the intentions of colonization and extends its criticism on this theme to its corrupt source, the colonial masters. Therefore, Conrad presents such truths on colonization through the portrayal of Kurtz and other

The structure and eloquence that Conrad uses in descriptive details helps the reader paint a vivid picture of what is happening, but it also has a deeper meaning. He uses this skill to really show the distinction between the civilized European world and the jungle “savages” in Africa. Throughout the book, ideas of what civilization is are constantly brought up; this truly makes the reader question which the industrial world is. Some view Conrad as displaying an insulting racism while others see it as a true depiction of his thoughts. In Heart of Darkness, Conrad uses the contrasting locations and ideas about European imperialism to display the differences and similarities between civilization and the wild.

Chinua Achebe is considered as the man who redefined our way of reading Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Indeed, while focusing on the description of Africa, the father of African literature criticized the novella for its racist stereotypes towards Africans and highlights the colonizer’s oppression on them. Even after thirty four years after his first delivered public lecture excoriating the book, “An image of Africa” he spoke again against it in an interview with Robert Siegel where he related that its author “was a seductive writer. He could pull his reader into the fray. And if it were not for what he said about me and my people, I would probably be thinking only of that seduction."

Achebe contradicts what Conrad illustrates in a scene where he is supporting the single story that Africans are unintelligent people. Conrad describes how the white men walk past the Africans on their journey, which displays his views on the white man in comparison to the Africans, “We glided past like phantoms, wondering and secretly appalled, as sane men would be before an enthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse”(Conrad). Conrad is seemingly presenting that Africans are insane people by comparing them to the inmates in a madhouse. He makes the white men seem superior in intelligence by saying how the white man avoids contact with the Africans; this is presented when he describes the movement as a glide which would mean they are trying to not interact with the Africans, but try maneuver their

The themes of racism and discrimination against the people living in Africa (Congo) are present in the novel Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. There have been many discussions about whether Marlow (the main character and narrator) and Conrad are the same person and the literary critics are still at war regarding this question. There are some who claim that Conrad is a "bloody racist" for his "white racism against Africa" . First of all, Africa is presented as an . Secondly, the people are described as animals, savages, with no rights whatsoever, as compared to their sophisticated British fellows whose only aim is to "educate and civilize them". Moreover, the natives are totally dehumanized by not having even proper names and therefore they