King Leopold's Ghost Diction

While viewing the film King Leopold’s Ghost one could not ignore the fact that the filmmakers had a position that was critical to the idea of imperialism in the Congo as well as in the rest of the world. This is an understandable view as the depictions of the horrible atrocities in the Congo were beyond deplorable. The enslavement of the populace is unforgivable and the physical as well as emotional torture imposed on the population was truly disturbing. The film portrays Leopold as ruthless, he is fully aware of the conditions in his colony but the misery of the people has no effect on him. He is only concerned with the exploitation of the region and the profit that it will bring him. The film depicts the conditions that were inflicted on the native population during colonial rule as well as the exploitation of the Congo after independence had been won.

As the Scramble for Africa intensified, it became clear that certain fundamental rules had to be established; with this purpose in mind, Bismarck formed the Berlin Conference in November, 1884 (Hochschild, 84). Despite not being present at the conference, Leopold made out quite well. He gained the seaport Matadi and all the land required to build his railway from that port all the way around the rapids to Stanley Pool (Hochschild, 86). Leopold was able to gain so much because he successfully maintained the notion that this colony would be a free trade zone for Europeans; they still did not realize that he alone had a trade monopoly of the region (Hochschild, 86). The conference ended in February, 1885 and in May of that year, “the king named his new, privately controlled country the État indépendant du Congo, the Congo Free State” (Hochschild, 87).

By the last pages of Heart of Darkness, “the horror! the horror!” (Conrad 96) of the colonization and imperialism of the Congo creates a clear message against wrongful suppression of indigenous populations. Through interesting use of symbolism, motifs and foreshadowing, Conrad pleads against corruption of good intent for wealth and how absolute power ultimately leads to madness. The use of a framed narrative, multiple perspectives are offered which gives the reader more information and multiple points of view to have a better understanding of the text. The mix of Victorian values, and modernist ideals, such as multiple perspectives, combine to create a text that appeals to the modern writer and reader that demonstrates that the dangers of the Congo and its lure to the dark side of the jungle that prove that when one enters, it is impossible to leave unscathed.

In the present era of decolonization, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness presents one of fictions strongest accounts of British imperialism. Conrad’s attitude towards imperialism and race has been the subject of much literary and historical debate. Many literary critics view Conrad as accepting blindly the arrogant attitude of the white male European and condemn Conrad to be a racist and imperialists. The other side vehemently defends Conrad, perceiving the novel to be an attack on imperialism and the colonial experience. Understanding the two viewpoints side by side provides a unique understanding that leads to a commonality that both share; the novel simply presents a criticism of colonialists in Africa. The novel merely portrays a fictional account of British imperialism in the African jungle, where fiction offers maximum entertainment it lacks in focus. The novel is not a critique of European colonialism and imperialism, but rather a presentation of colonialism and the theme of darkness throughout the novel sheds a negative light on the selfishness of humanity and the system that was taking advantage of the native peoples. In Joseph Conrad’s novel, Heart of Darkness, Conrad presents a criticism of British imperial colonization not for the purpose of taking sides, but with aims of bettering the system that was in place during Conrad’s experience in the African Congo. Conrad uses the character of Marlow and his original justification of imperialism so long as it was efficient and unselfish that was later transformed when the reality of colonialism displayed the selfishness of man, to show that colonialism throughout history displaces the needs of the mother country over the colonized peoples and is thus always selfish.

...own about imperialism. Without being completely blatant Conrad suggest the regime of King Leopold II in the Congo. Conrad’s characters reveal the hypocrisy and madness caused by imperialism that he witnessed in the Congo. They reveal the different types of rulers in imperial power and suggest that either ruler, suppressing the natives of the other country, is participating in evil. Conrad’s novel is not only a narrative for Marlow’s experience, but also for his experience with imperialism first-hand.

Conrad begins his novel by confirming the stereotypical view of Africans, but then turning the public’s perception of them upside down. As Marlow travels down to the Congo in the French steamer, he sees a band of Africans rowing a boat along the shore of Africa. The men sang, shouted, and moved with a “wild vitality, an intense energy of movement, that was as natural and true as the surf along their coast” (11). Marlow watches these men with comfort, confirming his own beliefs and the European’s beliefs that Africans were savage and strong. Afterwards, Marlow arrives at the Congo and sees six black men trudging like starved prisoners; “they were dying slowly… nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation” (14). The chain gang also supports the preconceptions of an African. Before Marlow leaves for the Congo, he visits his aunt who praises him as a worker who will help the poor, starving savages of Africa. The image of the blacks, who were all connected together with a ch...

Hochschild, Adam. King Leopold’s Ghost, A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998.

Scarry informs us that “A great deal . . . is at stake in the attempt to invent linguistic structures that will reach and accommodate this area of experience normally so inaccessible to language; the human attempt to reverse the de-objectifying work of pain by forcing pain itself into avenues of objectification is a project laden with practical and ethical consequence” (6). She argues that because pain obliterates language and thought, the language people attempt to create to expresses the experience is often inadequate. But, genres such as the slave narrative and the neo-slave narrative problematize Scarry’s arguments by pointing to the fact that a usable language can be created from pain, and often this language takes form in the shape of metaphors, similes, and analogies. Though Scarry argues that language does not effectively articulate pain, slave narratives have done a remarkable job of articulating the experience of enslaved black people. Authors such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Ann Jacobs, who have written slave narratives, not only effectively created the language they needed to articulate their experiences, but they show how in their most intense moments of pain, knowledge can be born. For example, Frederick Douglass discusses how he was beaten daily under the care of one of his overseers, Covey. During these beatings, thought was not obliterated; instead, Douglass was able to establish a new epistemology about slavery. This pain created a clear knowledge of how violence and brutal workloads were used to break a human and make a willing and “mindless” slave, and he was to convey this knowledge later in his own slave

Conrad highlights the naïveté, idealism, and purity of Kurtz’s Intended to create a greater contrast against the fierceness, power, mystery, and allure of Kurtz’s African Mistress. This drastic contrast emphasizes the extreme difference in gender roles between Africa and England and their effects on African and English women’s lives. In the society Aka, the tribe that supplied the majority of the ivory to Europeans in the Congo River

A masterpiece of twentieth-century writing, Heart of Darkness exposes the tenuous fabric that holds "civilization" together and the brutal horror at the center of European colonialism. Joseph Conrad's novella, Heart of Darkness, describes a life-altering journey that the protagonist, Marlow, experiences in the African Congo.  The story explores the historical period of colonialism in Africa to exemplify Marlow's struggles. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is most often read as an attack upon colonialism.  Marlow, like other Europeans of his time, is brought up to believe certain things about colonialism, but his views change as he experiences the effects of colonialism first hand. This essay will look at Marlow's negative view of colonialism, which is shaped through his experiences and from his relation to Kurtz.  Marlow's understanding of Kurtz's experiences show him the effects colonialism can have on a man's soul.