Heart Of Darkness Research Paper

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, while being a great piece literary work, no longer has a place in the classroom. Conrad’s novel discusses important themes such as what creates a civilized society, superiority of a civilization and raises questions on racism, however these topics can no longer be directly explored and discussed through the circumstances that Joseph Conrad uses to present his argument. He uses the violence associated with the colonization of the Congo to discuss the injustices forced upon the society of the Congo. Yet colonization is not an event entirely relevant with today’s society. Additionally, while racism is still present, it is not due to the fear or lack of knowledge about people group of a specific race or ethnicity.

The Westerners “were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet (31)”. While this is not a justifiable cause, this is what most likely caused an aspect of racism to come into play. In a land with people who act differently from them, “prehistoric” and “unknown” behavior creates a sense of fear in the Westerners. This then leads to violence, which emerges from a sense of superiority to this unknown and strange behavior. Marlow takes in this violence and cruelty when he recounts, “I had expected to see a knob of wood there, you know. I returned deliberately to the first I had seen—and there it was, black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids—a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and, with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth, was smiling, too, smiling continuously at some endless and jocose dream of that eternal slumber.” This violence and cruelty that is depicted with the severed heads is another accurate representation of events that where happening under King Leopold II’s supervision, as further illustrated by the Congo natives holding the severed hands of their people next to the British missionaries. This violence that Conrad recounts in his novel is used to raise question of racism in the novel from the low view of the native people from the perspective of the Westerners

This phrase itself demonstrates how the white men where burdened by this task, meaning that they had to stoop down, out of a sense of responsibility, to help these uncivilized Congo natives. While this task is a relatively racist point of view, it was done with the purpose of eliminating famine and sickness as Kipling mentions. While these positive intentions do not negate the negative actions taken by the Belgians, they do provide a basis to analysis the state of mind of the Westerners of Belgians at the time.

The Westerners were acting out of a sense of duty and responsibility; their actions weren’t carried out for the purpose of being racist. In today’s society racism has taken on a different form. As mentioned previously, the development in society has raised an understanding of what it means to be racist, and due to this racism no longer spouts from good intentions or a lack of knowing better. Due to this, Heart of Darkness is not able to exemplify racist themes because while the effect of racism might have been the same, the cause has changed and developed with the