Heart of Darkness and Things Fall Apart illustrate the different ways of presenting Africa in literature. In Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad shows Africa through the viewpoint of the colonizing Europeans, who tend to portray all the natives as brutal savages. In response to Conrad's stereotypical representation of Africans, Chinua Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart through the viewpoint of the natives to prove Africans, are not primitives, but members of a prosperous society, just one the Europeans do not care to understand. Things Fall Apart follows Okonkwo's life as he strives for status in his society. When European missionaries arrive to Umuofia, Okonkwo tries to defend the culture that the missionaries would annihilate in the name of "civilizing" the natives. However, his unyielding approach and vicious behavior has the opposite of its planned effect, perpetuating the stereotype of the savage African in the eyes of the European readers.
European prejudice against Africans is undoubtedly present in Heart of Darkness. In traveling through Africa, Marlow describes all the natives he encounters as savages, comparing them to animals or the jungle itself. Marlow sees a death pit literally an open grove where natives go to die. He depicts the men there saying: “Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees, leaning against the trunks, clinging to the earth in all attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair they were nothing earthly now, nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation One of these creatures rose to his hands and knees and went off on all fours towards the river to drink.” (Conrad 1171)
The men are not individuals, but rather formless shapes with no human characteristic to differentiate one man from another. No...
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...hosen the title of the book, after much thought: The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger"."(1693) The title itself demonstrates that the District Commissioner is already prejudiced against the native Africans and Okonkwo just reified his beliefs; how he acted is all the Commissioner will consider, he will not take into account the complexities of Igbo society or the civil way most Umuofians act.
Heart of Darkness exemplifies the European and Conrad’s notions that all Africans are the same: savage, primitive, and inhuman. Chinua Achebe retaliates with Things Fall Apart, displaying a civilized and civil African society. Regrettably, Okonkwo was not a true depiction of a civilized African. However, since he was an important member of Igbo society his violent behavior and refusal to yield merely confirms the European's attitude toward the natives.
Chinua Achebe, a well known writer, once gave a lecture at the University of Massachusetts about Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, entitled "An image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness." Throughout his essay, Achebe notes how Conrad used Africa as a background only, and how he "set Africa up as a foil to Europe," (Achebe, p.251) while he also "projects the image of Africa as the other world,' the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilizations" (Achebe, p.252). By his own interpretations of the text, Achebe shows that Conrad eliminates "The African as a human factor," thereby "reducing Africa to the role of props" (Achebe, p.257).
In fact Conrad referees to the Africans as uncivilized people in some points in the novel, but he also proves that they are primitive people. For example, when one of the natives says to Marlow pointing to a man "catch 'im , Give 'im to us" so that he could "eat 'im" and he get surprised when he knows that Europeans kill thousands of people without eating them and asked Marlow "then why do they kill 'im". Marlow distances himself from the Europeans who are pretending to be civilized and kill thousands of innocents for the sake of killing while the natives kill people for their basic
Culture makes us who we are. Each individual has their own culture from their experiences in life and is developed from societal influences. The various cultures around the world influence us in different ways which we experience at least once in our lifetime. There are occasions, especially in history, where cultures clash with one another. For instance, the English colonization in Africa changed their culture. Chinua Achebe, the author of Things Fall Apart, portrayed this change in the Igbo people’s society, especially through the character Okonkwo in the village of Umuofia; the introduction of Western ideas challenged him. In the novel Things Fall Apart, the author Chinua Achebe introduces to us Okonkwo whose character’s response to the
Marlow, the main character in Heart of Darkness, often recognizes the Europeans' dehumanization of the Africans. As Marlow approaches the company offices at the Outer Station he sees "a scene of inhabited devastation" (Conrad 24). He catches sight of a chain gang of half starved, animal-like Africans. Trying to rationalize the situation, Marlow tells himself that these Africans are criminals, and somehow deserve their ...
Conrad’s main character Marlow is the narrator for most of the story in Heart of Darkness. He is presented as a well-intentioned person, and along his travels he is shocked by the cruelties that he sees inflicted on the native people. Though he is seemingly benevolent and kindly, Marlow shows the racism and ignorance of Conrad and in fact of the majority of white people in his era, in a more subtle way. Marlow uses words to describe the blacks that, though generally accepted in his time, were slanderous and crude. He recalls that some of the first natives he saw in the Congo looked at him “with that complete, deathlike indifference of unhappy savages” (80; part 1). Marlow casually refers to the Africans with the most offensive of language: “Strings of dusty niggers arrived and departed…” (83; part 1). To Marlow, and thus to Conrad, the Africans are savages, dogs, devils, and criminals. Even the stories that Conrad creates for Marlow to narrate are twisted and false. The natives that Marlow deals with in the book are described as cannibals, and they are even given dialogue that affirms th...
Acclaimed Nigerian author, Chinua Achebe’s 1958 novel, Things Fall Apart, is a story about Okonkwo, a man from the fictional village of Umuofia. Okonkwo’s attempt to form an idealized self-identity and the stress he experiences in living up to its image wears his life, and eventually destroys the very identity he so desperately sought. Okonkwo’s end is analogous to the end of his tribe and its culture—Achebe refers to the Igbo peoples’ culture as the Ibo culture in his book. Furthermore, Okonkwo’s end shows the pain experienced by the change in power balances as the rulers became the ruled, with the white man colonizing Africa. The Heart of Darkness hardly needs an introduction; Joseph Conrad, its writer, wrote the novella based on his experiences as a captain on the Congo. The protagonist is Charles Marlow, whose impression of the colonized Congo basins along with its tribal inhabitants and the raiding white men amidst the deep, dark, disease-infested forests of Congo form the basis of the story. Things Fall Apart and Heart of Darkness are both based around situations that instigate the awe-inspiring, and yet horrifying confluence of races and cultures. However, while the former tells the story from the colonized peoples’ perspective, the latter tells it from the colonizers’ perspective. This paper attempts to highlight the differences and similarities in these novels by exploring the underlying themes and unusual circumstances portrayed in them.
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 novel, Things Fall Apart: an antithesis to Heart of Darkness and similar works by other European writers. In Things Fall Apart, Achebe tells the story of an Ibo man, Okonkwo, and the tragedies which he has to endure. Africans are represented as individuals capable of speech, not just one massive conglomerate of natives. Their customs are not regarded as eccentric or bizarre, but as the norm-functioning no differently than the variety of Western customs do. And the land itself is described as a mix of towns and farms, not a mysterious land which breeds insanity. In almost every respect, Things Fall Apart contradicts the stereotypes set up in Heart of Darkness.
Comparisons and contrasts are important devices which an author may use to help convey his thoughts and feelings about a situation or an event. Joseph Conrad makes use of these devices in his novel Heart of Darkness. Throughout the novel when he was trying to convey a deeper meaning about a situation or a place, he would us a comparison or contrast. The comparative and contrasting themes in the story help to develop Conrad's ideas and feelings in the Heart of Darkness. Light verses dark, the Thames verses the Congo, the Savages compared to the civilized people, and the darkness of both worlds are all contrasts and comparisons that are important to the meaning as well as the understanding of this novel.
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 Conrad’s “methods amount to no more than a steady, ponderous, fake-ritualistic repetition of two antithetical sentences.”
One interpretation of Marlow's relationship to colonialism is that he does not support it. Conrad writes, "They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now,-nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom" (p. 27-28). Marlow says this and is stressing that the so-called "savages", or Africans, are being treated and punished like they are criminals or enemies when in fact they never did anything. He observes the slow torture of these people and is disgusted with it. Marlow feels sympathy for the black people being slaved around by the Europeans but doesn't do anything to change it because that is the way things are. One can see the sympathy by the way that he gives a starving black man one of his biscuits. "To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe" (p. 54). This statement by Marlow conveys that he doesn't believe that the Europeans have a right to be stripping Africa of its riches. He views the Jungles of Africa as almost it's own living, breathing monster.
Heart of Darkness. That title rings with agony, loneliness, and the sense of evil. The words produce an image of a black heart entangled with unbreakable vines. To have a heart that is figuratively black and bounded to the ties of evil is a bitter and deathly symbol. Who could possibly have that heart? Joseph Conrad, for example, was a man with a heart of darkness. His life reeked with self deception and inner conflicts. Conrad’s book, Heart of Darkness is based upon imperialism and racism. Racism is cleverly hidden within the text, but imperialism is innocently depicted as the civilization of the Congolese people. Conrad’s writing can be interpreted two different ways. One approach is the reader might interpret his writing as an attack on the Europeans as the imperialists trying to help the Congolese, but the African people refuse their help. In contrast, the other approach might be that they feel sympathetic to the Congolese people. They see the Europeans has cruel and heartless. If we seek to understand the racism and the imperialism of that day and age, we can see racism in between the lines. I agree with many of Conrad’s critics when they say that he is completely racist, however I tend to see that no matter what race we are we all have a seed of darkness inside our hearts. Why are we infected with his powerful bug of a race overpowering any minority that is inferior to us due to any significant difference? In the case of Conrad’s book Heart of Darkness, it seems like Congolese people are nothing more than disposable and insignificant.
Constantly throughout the novel, Joseph Conrad was describing Africans by using words bearing a negative connotation. For example, he describes “Kurtz’s African mistress as “savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent.” (5; part 3). The term savage is frequently used when describing Africans in the novella. Conrad used Kurtz’s mistress to contrast with the European girl who loved Kurtz. He also used her to show that Africans who knew their place would receive “better” treatment from their masters. Achebe clams that Conrad uses a different tone in attitude when referring two these women, whereas the diction he uses when discussing Africans consists of nothing but racism. The word “savage” as well as many other racist words are constantly used...
By exhibiting the deeds of the Europeans, their portrayal becomes so negative that they become the savages. Conrad clearly is sympathetic to the plight of the Africans, and any racial epithets, if not accepted by progressives of the time, are not meant as attacks directed at the natives. It should be obvious that Conrad is on their side -- or is this "undermined by the mindlessness of its context and the pretty explicit
In the novel Heart of Darkness, there are several themes including Good versus Evil, Power, Femininity, and Fate. Two themes are further prevalent and significant. These themes are restraint and identity. They are the two most noteworthy themes in the book because both capitalize on the complexity and flaws of human nature.
Achebe, Chinua. "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness." Heart of Darkness: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Sources, Essays in Criticism. 3rd ed. Ed. Robert Kimbrough. New York: W.W. Norton, 1988. 251-262.