Racial Comments in Joseph Conrad´s 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

After the publishing of Chinua Achebe’s review on Heart of Darkness, in which Achebe infamously claims the book’s author, Joseph Conrad, is a “bloody racist”, famous Conrad scholar Cedric Watts publishes his own article, defending Conrad and his novel. Essentially claiming Conrad was not a racist, in his article “‘A Bloody Racist’: About Achebe’s view of Conrad”, Watts argues that the novel, in reality, debunks racial myths, and exhibits a level of liberalism that should be applauded, and not reprimanded. What Watts fails to notice is that Achebe never denies the existence of some sort of liberalism; instead, what Achebe does is criticize the form in which that liberalism was portrayed. Watts’ critique to Achebe, as a result, appears shorthanded.

If you view Africa as a whole, both blacks and whites should be viewed the same. Mr. Kurtz, being an example, can also be viewed as a cannibal as it is strongly believed by the Company that he has become a savage, like the Africans. My point being that the blacks confining from eating humans, does not show Conrad’s as a racist but quite the contrary. Mr. Kurtz’s involvement of the African customs and beliefs

This reveals the author’s intolerance towards the Africans, making it clear that he views the Africans from the perspective of an outsider who is unfamiliar with tribal customs. Along his journey, Conrad notices a “stillness of life” and acknowledges that in other circumstances this would have a peaceful effect (Conrad); however, due to his unfamiliar surroundings and fear of the unknown, he finds the stillness threatening and foreboding. Overall, Conrad conveys a message to the reader that Africa is uncivilized and inferior to other societies.

Conrad wrote Heart of Darkness as a political allegory to the people of Europe to hopefully show them how foolish it is to think that their race of people is superior to another. Conrad hoped that his novella would show that the people of Africa are people and not savages, just people looking to survive in the wild and unruly expanse that is Africa. Achebe is a man of great intellect and he should have been able to see this if he were not clouded by emotion. Achebe should not logically deny Conrad’s original purpose in writing the novella for he is a man of great intelligence, yet others may simply pass it off as Achebe did by only reacting with emotion, or others may not be able to understand the work due to the complex style and excellent vocabulary of Joseph Conrad. Heart of Darkness is a novella that should be looked at intellectually at the college level for if it were to be examined with the smoke of emotion or through the eyes of one without the ability to comprehend the political allegory behind it, it would be interpreted and passed off as one of the most extreme and racists works of the late nineteenth century even though that title is not befitting of this novella. Heart of Darkness is not that; it is not a racist work. Conrad’s purpose was not racist and if one was to intellectually examine the novella that would be apparent and that is why it is a work that is deemed only appropriate for a college

In his famous critical essay, “An Image of Africa” (1975), Chinua Achebe takes a strong stance against Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. He asserts that Conrad was a racist and his novella is a product of his racism. A following quote that is good to show Achebe opinion for Conrad is:

He uses derogatory and offensive remarks that devalue people of color and make them out to be savages. Chinua Achebe, a well-known writer, talked 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 "set Africa up as a foil to Europe,"(Achebe) while he also "projects the image of Africa as “the other world”. Africa is said to be a “prehistoric” world. Conrad described this land as non-advanced and inferior to the western countries.

Chinua Achebe creates a strong argument against Joseph Conrad, attempting to point out the racism innate within Conrad's "Heart of Darkness. In Achebe's essay, he explicitly said, "Joseph Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist" (343). Achebe depicts the narration, and setting of "Heart of Darkness" to further prove his point. But, he falls short in one aspect of his argument, when he decides to declassify "Heart of Darkness" as a great work of art.

“An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness”. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: Norton Print.

The very nature of the book is crawling with dehumanizing and objectifying remarks. Achebe had successfully argued his point of the racism in Conrad, but he had failed with the addition of an extra remark. The fact that he dissociates “Heart of Darkness” from great art is the flaw in his argument. Ideology and art should not associate each other with the objective decision in deciding if some art is great art. Everyone is entitled to their personal decision for liking art, but this subjective conclusion should not invade the objective resolution of the greater classification of

Additionally, Achebe uses diction to counter Conrad's Heart of Darkness by showing that he is racist and it is not right to characterize Africans the way that he is characterizing them. When Marlow is describing the land, he says that they “were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet.” (Conrad para. 1). Marlow is saying that he is on a “prehistoric earth” and that he feels like he has gone back in time. When we think of prehistoric, we think of ancient and uncivilized, which means that he is calling Africans uncivilized. Conrad’s specific choice of words prove that he was racist and had no respect for those who he saw as different from him. To summarize his view on Conrad, Achebe says that “The point of [his]

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.

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.

One of the blinding factors of society in the novel is Racism. Throughout the novel racism is omnipresent although it may not be explicitly stated, within the characters in the novel. The African’s were depicted in a degrading tone, they were spoken down to, bossed around and portrayed as savages which is something Chenua Achebe, a Nigerian novelist, touches upon in his essay -“ An Image of Africa: Racism in ‘Heart of Darkness”, where he describes the many ways Conrad dehumanizes, insults and uses racial slurs against Africans. Achebe states:

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