The Controversy Between Chinua Achebe and Candice Bradley Over Conrad's Heart of Darkness

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Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS has initiated controversy for numerous years. One side of the argument is that the novella was very racist while other ones assertion that it wasn't racist at all. Although I personally don’t think it's racist, for persons like Chinua Achebe the novella is nothing but, while others like Candice Bradley fight back the text.

Chinua Achebe composed an essay titled "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS" interpreting his attitude on the novella. In his essay, Achebe states that “Heart of Darkness projects the likeness of Africa as “the other world”, the antithesis of Europe and thus of civilization, a place where a man’s vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant bestiality”(Achebe 783). Readers are hit by the insensitivity and savage way in which European colonists advanced the tribal heritage they searched to “civilize". Chinua Achebe cites numerous points in the text where this concept is shown. Achebe also argues that the river Thames is mismatched to the river Congo, its “very antithesis” (3), where the activity in the innovative is centralized. Achebe argues that what is concerned about Conrad is not the definiteness, but the lurking hint of kinship, of widespread ancestry. For the Thames too ‘has been one of the dark locations of the earth.’ It conquered its darkness, of course, and is now in daylight and at calm. But if it were to visit its primal relation, the Congo, it would run the awful risk of hearing grotesque echoes of its own disregarded darkness, and dropping victim to an avenging recrudescence of the mindless frenzy of the first beginnings. Achebe is most interested in the novel’s characterization, that is, its portraits of Afri...

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...s. Over the course of Marlow’s article he discovers the likenesses between the European race and indigenous community of Africa. They may proceed in different ways, but the reason for their activities garners the acknowledgement of their morality. The innovative explores the information obstacles between Europe and the evolving world through Conrad’s gradually unraveling description of African civilization and the environment of humanity inside the African persons. Due to European greed for power and selfish superiority they could not see past the differences in the way of life in the Congo. Africa is utilized and compared to Europe and the evolving world due to the views of the Europeans and the extremes of European exploitation. Still Marlow looked past this barricade and the compare of the two worlds to find humanity and he beings to realize African principles.

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