Theme Of Racism In 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

In the article "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness," Chinua Achebe criticizes Joseph Conrad for his racist views toward the natives of Africa. After one reads Achebe’s critique, it is clear that Conrad wanted the novella to be perceived as a racist text. Conrad depicts the uncivilized treatment of nonwhites during the period of colonization without condemning such actions. After analyzing Achebe’s famous work and Conrad’s novella I have come to agree with Achebe; Conrad “was a thoroughgoing racist.” (Achebe) Heart of Darkness portrays this position clearly. Throughout the novella, Conrad describes and represents the Africans and Africa itself in a racist way. According to Chinua Achebe, the harsh behavior of English people towards the natives, the lack of equality felt by the English towards the Africans, and the word choices of the English to and about the savages reveal Conrad's racist position in the work.

  Conrad has been accused of racism because of the way he portrays the natives in his novel, Heart of Darkness. It has been argued that the natives cannot be an essential part of Heart of Darkness due to the manner in which they are depicted.  However, a careful reading reveals that the story would be incomplete without the natives. Marlow develops a relationship with one of the natives - perhaps the first time in his life that Marlow creates a bond with someone outside of his own race.

Conrad, in Heart of Darkness, challenges the values of colonialism, but at the same time he conforms to the constraints of popular culture of the time in which he wrote. In this way, the extent to which he challenges mainstream ideas is limited in regards to the angles of his criticism. Conrad’s detailed descriptions of the Europeans in Heart of Darkness implicate his discontent towards colonial practices whilst certain references to the “black fellows” who reside in Africa show his opinions are influenced by his time, and thusly impact his acquired knowledge of what is politically correct or incorrect. Conrad challenges stereotypical

Achebe argues that the racist observed in the Heart of Darkness is expressed due to the western psychology or as Achebe states “desire,” this being to show Africa as an antithesis to Europe. He first states Conrad as “one of the great stylists of modern fiction.” [pg.1] He praises Conrad’s talents in writing but believes Conrad’s obvious racism has not been addressed. He later describes in more detail that

When I read Heart of Darkness, I did think it was a racist book. The story revolves around a character named Marlow who goes to work in the Congo. The labor for the company he works for comes from the slavery of the native people. The author, Joseph Conrad, depicts these people as savages, which is also very racist. Also, when he refers to them he uses a racial slur, rather than calling them black people or finding another way to state that they are not white. Throughout the book Conrad also depicts a lot of violence towards these people which I saw as unnecessary since most of the time it is not explained and does not further develop the story. These are the reasons why I think Heart of Darkness is racist.

Although the controversy-inducing novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad displays strong tones of racism and dehumanization of an entire race, it is a story that forces readers to alter their perspectives on the beliefs and preconceived norms of society. Referred to as a ‘minor work’ by critics of his time, by the 1960’s, Conrad’s novella had risen to become a standard reading in many high schools and colleges. Many modern critics, including Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe and American literary critic J. Hillis Miller, have regarded this novel as either deserving of close intellectual reading or a novel that should not even be read at all. Heart of Darkness should be taught in the 21st century, as a part of the Western literary canon, not

　　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 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.

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

Joseph Conrad’s novella, Heart of Darkness, effectively exposed the racism that was common during his lifetime. Through the harsh behavior and word choice of the characters and narrator, Conrad displays the uncivilized treatment of nonwhites that occurred during the period of colonization. Edward Garnett, an English writer and critic, summarized the plot of Heart of Darkness as being “an impression… of the civilizing methods of a certain great European Trading Company face to face with the “nigger” (145 Heart of darkness backgrounds and Criticisms). Conrad use of harsh language and terrifying situations, which were based off of his own experiences, capture the audience’s attention and helps them see the cruelty of the European

For the most part people who read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad may feel that the novella is strictly a story of exploration and racial discrimination. But to Johanna Smith who wrote “’Too Beautiful Altogether’: Ideologies of Gender and Empire in Heart of Darkness” it is much more than that. Johanna Smith along with Wallace Watson and Rita A. Bergenholtz agree that throughout Heart of Darkness there are tones of gender prejudice, but the way that these three different authors perceive and interpret those gender tones are to a certain extent different.

This is expressed at both the start and the end of the novel. The “light” of Marlow, and his subsequent psychological awareness and evolution, is contrasted by Kurtz, who, as many have expressed, may represent the “dark” half of Marlow.

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.