Prejudice in Heart of Darkness
Slavery has been with us since the Egyptian times and with it prejudice
towards certain humans have also come about. In Conrad's Heart of Darkness
these prejudice feelings are reflected throughout the story by the characters
and their descriptions. The main character, Marlow shows much prejudice
feelings towards the native black slaves by much of his descriptions and
actions towards them.
One of the most noticeable prejudice descriptions that Marlow gives to us
is in the way in which Marlow describes the Themes River in two different
positions. He first describes the river as being a place where many people
seek to follow their dreams. In a way, his descriptions are like a great
fantasy with great feelings of serenity and full of liveliness. This
description of the river also contained many words of color; this Marlow
rarely uses to describe events. The description of the river going upstream
was extremely different from the former description. Marlow described it as
this "The air was warm, thick, heavy, and sluggish. There was no joy and
brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted,
into the gloom of overshadowed distances" (Conrad 2:16). Upriver was where
all the natives lived and this is how it is described, quite the opposite of
what he had thought before. Marlow feels extremely uncomfortable going to
this area, he even says that it seems as if the large trees hanging over the
river swallow the boat up as they move up. These words give the impression
that this area is very uncivilized and even animal like. Marlow constantly
feels that something is watching him and he called this watching monkey
tricks (Conrad 2:2). Obviously referring to the natives watching him.
Yet another description that Marlow gives to us that is somewhat
different is in the reactions of Kurtz's girlfriends to his departure and
death. We first meet Kurtz's native girlfriend. Her descriptions were much
of her savage appearances. Marlow refers too much of her jewelry as
barbarous ornaments and gifts of witch-men. This he does not know but only
assumes so. When he describes her facial expressions, they aren't very human
like but more like an animal.
In conclusion Native Americans were lead close to extinction after the discovery of the New World. They suffered damages from diseases and injuries the europeans brought. They had to relocate their tribes only to fulfill european demands. As well as to change their belief for the ones the europeans brought with them in order to survive and avoid the risk of extinction.
In the book “Heart of Darkness”, Joseph Conrad wrote about the horrors that were committed by Leopold’s regime. As one of the first insider to witness these horrors, he wrote “Heart of Darkness”, with this book, he was able to spread the word about the atrocities he had seen in Leopold’s greedy pursuit of rubber and ivory in the congo. This book details closely how Leopold made his humongous profit. Leopold issued decrees on the Congo such as that the native people may only trade with his state agents or with his concessions. Leopold’s concessions were private companies that would sell the ivory and rubber, they would give Leopold 50% of their profits. The Abir Congo Company was one of these concessions that harvest the natural rubber of the Congo.They were granted a large portion of the land in the north and had the right to impose a rubber tax on its inhabitants. It was through concessions like these but also from his personal company (the Congo Free State) that Leopold created his personal wealth. This book brings us one step closer to answering our question since it tells us how Leopold got ahold of all of his profits. But this brings us to another question of, exactly how much money did the Congo bring to Leopold II?
Another misconception is how North American natives roamed the land in small groups to hunt, fish, and gather their food. They actually were much more settled and even had better
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Without personal access to authors, readers are left to themselves to interpret literature. This can become challenging with more difficult texts, such as Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness. Fortunately, literary audiences are not abandoned to flounder in pieces such as this; active readers may look through many different lenses to see possible meanings in a work. For example, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness may be deciphered with a post-colonial, feminist, or archetypal mindset, or analyzed with Freudian psycho-analytic theory. The latter two would effectively reveal the greater roles of Kurtz and Marlow as the id and the ego, respectively, and offer the opportunity to draw a conclusion about the work as a whole.
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Native Americans lived on the land that is now called America, but when white settlers started to take over the land, many lives of Native Americans were lost. Today, many people believe that the things that have been done and are being done right now, is an honor or an insult to the Natives. The choices that were made and being made were an insult to the Native Americans that live and used to live on this land, by being insulted by land policies, boardings schools and modern issues, all in which contain mistreatment of the Natives. The power that the settlers and the people who governed them had, overcame the power of the Natives so the settlers took advantage and changed the Natives way of life to the
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