Heart Of Darkness Racist Analysis

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is a testament to the evils expounded by European domination of Africa and African peoples in the nineteenth century. Hidden behind the veil of a story centered on a white man’s downward spiral, Conrad strategically frames the dehumanizing aspects of slavery against a backdrop of lustful greed and brutal tyranny. On a ship sailing along the Thames River, a meditative ship captain called Marlow recounts the tale of the so-called ‘darkness’ he experiences on an expedition to Africa. In his retelling, Marlow observes the ineffective and brutal treatment exhibited toward the captive native Africans by his European comrades, who, like himself, have traveled to Africa with the intention to exploit the land for the

Because of his use of degrading stereotypes, Conrad has been criticized, and thus, received considerable backlash. This is a controversial conflict of interest and raises the question of whether or not Conrad’s use of racist terms and behaviors makes Heart of Darkness a credible anti-imperialist novel, one that garners several different opinions. In this paper, I will focus on the well-known critique of Chinua Achebe and demonstrate why Conrad’s use of racist, demeaning language and his methods of decrying European imperialism are nonetheless

Though Conrad seems to disparage many of the few black characters in his novel, his position regarding the purposes of imperialism is staggeringly clear: he is against it. Although the novel seems to focus mainly on the struggles of a white man in Africa—Kurtz’s rapid mental and physical decline—Conrad paints him as a deplorable character—a figure representing the corruption of European conquest. Achebe seems unable to look past Conrad’s representation of Africans and focus explicitly on the deeper subtexts of his novel; for this reason, his position against Conrad may lack substance that does not rely solely on his own