Essay about Racism Exposed in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

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.

Constantly throughout the novel, Joseph Conrad describes the Africans using words bearing a negative connotation. Africans are portrayed in Conrad's novel as inhuman savages with no language other than sound. For example, he describes Kurtz’s African mistress as “savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent.” (5; part 3) Conrad uses the word savage frequently when describing Africans in the novella. Kurtz’s mistress is used in contrast to a European girl who loves Kurtz.

European prejudice against Africans is shown through the journey that the protagonist ‘Marlow’ takes through Africa, he describes all the natives he encounters as savages, comparing them to animals and creatures of the jungle. In the book, Marlow discovers a death pit (an open pit where the natives go to die). He describes the Africans by saying:

There is an abundance of literature in which characters become caught between colliding cultures. Often, these characters experience a period of growth from their exposure to a culture that’s dissimilar to their own. Such is the case with Marlow, Joseph Conrad’s infamous protagonist from ‘Heart of Darkness’. Marlow sets off to Africa on an ivory conquest and promptly found himself sailing into the heart of the Congo River. Along the way he is faced with disgruntled natives, cannibals, and the ominous and foreboding landscape. Marlow’s response to these tribulations is an introspective one, in which he calls into question his identity. This transcending of his former self renders the work as a whole 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.

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

   Chinua Achebe challenges Joseph Conrad's novella depicting the looting of Africa, Heart of Darkness (1902) in his essay "An Image of Africa" (1975). Achebe's is an indignant yet solidly rooted argument that brings the perspective of a celebrated African writer who chips away at the almost universal acceptance of the work as "classic," and proclaims that Conrad had written "a bloody racist book" (Achebe 319). In her introduction in the Signet 1997 edition, Joyce Carol Oates writes, "[Conrad's] African natives are "dusty niggers," cannibals." Conrad [...] painfully reveals himself in such passages, and numerous others, as an unquestioning heir of centuries of Caucasian bigotry" (Oates 10). 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.

“Black figures strolled about listlessly,pouring water on the glow.” (p.30)” Marlow describes the Black men as objects rather than men or what he would classify white people (men,woman,boy and girl). This shows Conrad’s perspective on the Europeans to be ignorant and racist against the Africans because they judged them based on what they looked like but on who they

Traditionally, literature portrays races in a certain light, usually white references to purity or honesty, and black to evil and lies. Before even reading Conrad’s novella there is already a preconceived idea of race for the reader. One example of this can be seen through Allingham’s analysis of the symbolism used throughout the novella, “as the story unfolds, Marlow reverses the normal symbology of the black-white dichotomy, so that gradually darkness comes to mean truth, whiteness falsehood” (Allingham). Conrad overturns the traditional view of race in literature. While

　　In Heart of Darkness, it can be inferred that the Native Africans are supposed to represent the primitive savages and the white Europeans are supposed to represent the civilized men. However, what we hear from Marlow’s tale is that the white Europeans were the ones acting like savages, whereas the “savages”, such as the cannibals, acted more respectable, even though these cannibals were exactly that: cannibals who ate human flesh. However, Marlow was surprised to find that they were able to control their urges aboard the ship and seemed to operate on a code. He will eventually realize the darkness that exists within all man.

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:

Marlow observed a group of African men and exclaims that their “black rags were wound round their loins, and the short ends behind wagged to and fro like tails” (Conrad 305). It is also added that the men he saw had iron collars on their necks and were called “unhappy savages” (Conrad 305). Not long after, he encounters a young man staring at him with sunken eyes and had “nothing else to do but to offer him one of my good Swede’s ship’s biscuits I had in my pocket” (Conrad 306). Altogether these examples make the natives seem like dogs that are treated unfairly and are dying as if nothing terrible is happening. Marlow just observes his surroundings and never takes action to help the natives or talk with the other

During Joseph Conrad’s lifetime, little trouble was made over his 1899 novel Heart of Darkness. The tale is about sailor Charles Marlow’s time as captain of an ivory-hauling steamboat on the Congo River. The novel, fixed in Conrad’s own experiences as a sailor on the Congo, vividly shows the horrors of Belgian colonial rule and the mistreatment of Africa. Many aspects of the book are nothing short of brilliant. However, in the last hundred years there has been a lot of negative feedback against Conrad’s famed novel. These negative attacks were directed toward the seemingly racist nature of Conrad’s narrative. In 1975, author Chinua Achebe analyzed Conrad’s portrayal of Africans in the book and accused Conrad of racism. However,