The Effect of an Ignorant Society on an Ignorant Novella
A ship, an ocean, and a courageous leader is all that is needed for a successful trip. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, penned in 1899, was the story of a such a trip. The novella, written in a distinctive frame tale, is the story of an imperialistic sailor Marlow, and his journey to find a mysterious genius in the Congo. The novella opens on the Thames River, with a group of freshwater sailors listening to Marlow disclose how he sailed to “the biggest, the most blank” (Conrad 6) space on the map, otherwise known as Africa, and his assignment in that job. Marlow is sent to the Congo in order to bring back Kurtz, a dangerous, but vital asset to the company, who has allegedly gone
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Conrad writes the natives as the complete antithesis of white people. Whenever he mentions black people or natives, Conrad writes with a very negative connotation and with racist undertones. Conrad is not openly racist; the reader has to read in between the lines of the text to see the racism. In “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness” by Chinua Achebe, Achebe calls Conrad a “through racist” (Achebe 7) and discloses several examples of the blatant racism. Achebe says the Conrad projects Africa as “the other world”. (Achebe 3) By doing so, Conrad is portraying Africa as the complete opposite of Europe. Therefore, for example, when Conrad comments on how uncivilized the natives are, he is also saying that Europeans and whites are the most civilized people. In the novel, when Conrad first describes how he feels when he sees the natives chained, those words were very negative. He writes, “Black rags were wound round their loins, and the short ends behind waggled to and fro like tails. I could see every rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking.” (Conrad 23) Reading this more deeply, the reader can see how Conrad is depicting that the black men were lesser than the white men as they wore cloths around their loins, while the white men are describer to have worn shirts and pants. The black men seemed unhealthy, while the white men were written to have impeccable health. Achebe further notes how Conrad subtly tries to convey the differences between native women and white women. Conrad writes that “she was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent” (Conrad 135) and that “she stood looking at us without a stir and like the wilderness
Joseph Conrad’s own experiences during his trip through the Congo helped him provide a foundation for the writing of Heart of Darkness. In 1890, Conrad took a job as a captain on the river steamer Kinshasa. Before Conrad took this job, he had worked for the French merchant navy as a way to escape Russian military service and also to escape the emotional troubles that had plagued him. Conrad had been in a financial crisis that was resolved with help from his uncle. After this series of events, Conrad joined the British merchant navy at the beckoning of his uncle and took the job as the captain of a steamboat in the Congo River. An important fact to remember is that Conrad was a young and inexperienced man when he was exposed to the harsh and dangerous life of a sailor. His experiences in the West Indies and especially in the Belgium Congo were eye opening and facilitated his strong outlooks that are reflected in the book Heart of Darkness. Conrad’s journey through the Belgian Congo gave him the experiences and knowledge to write about a place that most Europeans would never see in their lives.
Heart of Darkness is Joseph Conrad's tale of one man's journey, both mental and physical, into the depths of the wild African jungle and the human soul. The seaman, Marlow, tells his crew a startling tale of a man named Kurtz and his expedition that culminates in his encounter with the "voice" of Kurtz and ultimately, Kurtz's demise. The passage from Part I of the novel consists of Marlow's initial encounter with the natives of this place of immense darkness, directly relating to Conrad's use of imagery and metaphor to illustrate to the reader the contrast between light and dark. The passage, although occurring earlier on in the novel, is interspersed with Marlow's two opposing points of view: one of naïveté, which comes before Marlow's eventual epiphany after having met Kurtz, and the matured perspective he takes on after all of the events leading up to his and Kurtz's encounter.
In book one of Heart of Darkness, Conrad describes a mass of black bodies clinging to life in order to show the “horror” of colonialism in Africa. Conrad describes a scene of “black shapes crouched . . clinging to the earth . . . in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair.” Conrad uses the language of “pain, abandonment, and despair” to show the unjustifiable acts committed by the Europeans against the native Africans. The bodies “cling” to life because of the lack of empathy exhibited by the colonists. In addition, Conrad describes a man with a thread around his neck: “it looked startling round his black neck, this bit of white thread from beyond the seas.” The white thread symbolizes the act of white colonialism strangling the resources and life out of Africa. Furthermore, Conrad depicts the body’s “black neck” to emphasize the injustice the natives receive from the Europeans. Additionally, Conrad uses the mass of abandoned bodies to argue against any sympathy for colonialism. Moreover, Conrad uses the criticism of colonialism to explain the European attitude towards native Africans. Conrad uses imagery to describe the natives as animals in order to demonstrate the European perception of Africa. Conrad compares Marlow’s companions as a “hyena.” The animal imagery is used to compare the physical and mental bodies of the native Africans as less than “white people.”
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad is a novel about a man named Marlow and his journey into the depths of the African Congo. Marlow is in search of a man named Kurtz, an ivory trader. Though Marlow?s physical journey seems rather simple, it takes him further into his own heart and soul than into the Congo. The setting, symbols and characters each contain light and dark images, these images shape the central theme of the novel.
"I don't want to bother you much with what happened to me personally,' [Conrad] began, showing in this remark the weakness of many tellers of tales who seem so often unaware of what their audience would most like to hear" (Conrad, 9). Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad's best-known work, has been examined on many bases more than I can possibly list here, but including imperialism, colonialism, and racism. I would reason that all bases of analysis are perfectly acceptable through which to critique Conrad's novella, or any piece of writing. I would reason this, were some of these bases mainly, racism not taken to an extreme level. In arguing racism, many critics seem to take Heart of Darkness as Conrad's unwavering view on Africa, Africans, life, or whatever else one may please to take it as. I, therefore, propose that Heart of Darkness be taken for what it truly is: a work of fiction set in late 19th century Europe and Africa.
First off, Achebe believes that Conrad dehumanizes the African people, making them into objects rather than thinking and living human beings. He pointed out that Conrad depicts the Africans as “savages,” for example when Conrad says, “...and going up this river.. Sand banks, marshes, forests, savages, - precious little to eat fit for a civilized man,” it might seem as though Conrad is suggesting that these “savages” are far inferior...
Achebe, Chinua. "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness." The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: Norton, 2001. 1783-1794.
Heart of Darkness describes a voyage to Africa, common for the British still, despite the horrific treatment which was apparent of colonization. The chaotic, stream-of-consciousness style Conrad took on helped to display the confusion, and made the reader have to interpret for themselves what they thought the writer meant. Conrad experiments with this style, leaving some sentences without ending: "not a sentimental pretense but an idea;…something you can set up…and offer a sacrifice to…." (Conrad, Longman p. 2195), a very choppy form of literature and causes the reader to fill in the holes and interpret themselves, alone. Conrad skips about from talking of the "two women knitted black wool feverishly" at the gate of the city (of hell), to his aunt which he feels women are "out of touch with truth," to how the British are as "weak-eyed devil(s) of a rapacious and pitiless folly" (Conrad, Longman pp. 2198, 2199, & 2202). Conrad's mind moves about as ours do along a large duration of literary monologue to convey to the reader the author's ideas, as interpreted by the reader.
Kuchta, Todd. “Envisioning Africa: Racism and Imperialism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness.” Victorian Studies 44 (1 October, 2001): 159.
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.”
Imagine what it must be like to live in a world of darkness. Marlow, the main character in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness experiences this first hand. As he travels through Africa, Marlow lives in a world of darkness as he witnesses the effects of imperialism, drastically altering his view of human kind. In the beginning, Marlow desires to travel to Africa because it is unclaimed land, only to discover imperialism now casts darkness upon the land. As the story progresses, Marlow witnesses the dark treatment of the natives as a result of imperialism. Upon Kurtz’s death, both Kurtz and Marlow realize the detrimental effects of imperialism, casting a dark shadow on humanity. At the end of the novella, Marlow lies to Kurtz’s fiancé because the
Racism in Joseph Conrad’s Literary Work. In the article "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness," Chinua Achebe criticizes Joseph Conrad for his racist stereotypes towards the people of Africa. He claims that Conrad broadcasted the "dominant image of Africa in the Western imagination" rather than portraying the continent in its true form (Achebe 13). Africans were portrayed in Conrad's novel as inhuman savages with no language other than sound and with no "other occupations besides merging into the evil forest or materializing out of it simply to plague Marlow" (Achebe 7).
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
Heart of Darkness is a story in which racism presents itself so deliberately that, for many, the dilemma of race must be tackled before anything else in the book may be dealt with. Conrad used derogatory, outdated and offensive terminology to devaluate people’s color as savages. This use of language disturbs many readers who read this book. Although Conrad uses racist language in this book, it doesn’t mean that he is really racist. When we look at the language, we are just looking at the very surface of the story.
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.