Novels such as Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Achebe's Things Fall Apart both present the reader with different points of view on colonialism in Africa, challenging an active reader to base his or her own conclusions based on the texts. Conrad presents the European perspective on colonialism while Achebe offers the native African point of view; each author provides his readers radically different views on the same issue. Likewise, the novel White Teeth also presents different perspectives on racial issues. Learning how to be an active reader definitely provides insight to every aspect of life thus allowing the reader to formulate educated conclusions and decisions. The skills required being an active reader are also required of an active citizen in the real world. Whether in literature or the real world, one point of view is never fully reliable. Because points of view radically change depending upon racial background, upbringing, and cultural influences, readers of texts as well as members of society today must be active readers and thinkers in order to make conclusions for themselves.
The first perspective presented addresses the European view of Colonialism and native Africans. We first encounter Europe’s general view of Africans early in Conrad’s novel. Before beginning a trek to Africa, Marlow visits his aunt who tells her nephew that she hopes he will help aid in “weaning those ignorant millions of their horrid ways” (Conrad 786). Even though Marlow’s aunt has never even been to Africa to see the Native Africans first hand, she has a preconceived notion that Africans are ignorant savages. This notion is dominant among Europeans and is seemingly based solely on myths and stories told by others who have never even been to ...
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...texts challenge and compel an active to draw his or her own conclusion based on these texts and personally resolve how to deal with the issue of racism still present in the real world today. Learning how to be an active reader definitely provides insight to every aspect of life thus allowing the reader to formulate educated conclusions and decisions. Without these skills, most students would only search out one perspective and forego opposing knowledge. As a result, those readers would lack the ability to make educated judgments.
Works Cited
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. Portsmouth: African Writers Series, 2000. Print.
Conrad, Joseph. “Heart of Darkness.” Heart of Darkness: Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Paul B.
Armstrong. Fourth ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. Print.
Smith, Zadie. White Teeth. New York: Vintage International, 2000. Print.
As Marlow travels farther and farther into the Congo, he finds that the hypocrisy of his fellow Europeans is far greater than he first imagined. His fellow white men butcher elephants and Africans in order to get their precious ivory, which gives them all a massive economic boost. They justify their corrupt actions as moral by dehumanizing the Africans that they kill and claim that they are merely primitive versions of white people. There is no compassion or sense of regret in the imperialists, despite their preaching of Christianity's teachings. In fact, money and power is placed at such a higher priority than morals, that "You would think they were praying to it" (Conrad 89) as if it was a god. The Europeans describe what they do as a form of "trade," and that their treatment of native Africans is part of a benevolent project of "civilization," but the truth is that they take what they want through extreme cruelty, oppr...
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...
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.
... turmoil of feelings that cannot co-exist in harmony. Marlow's inablity to create a distinction between colors “ so dark-green as to be almost black” is a manifestation of his consideration for the continent. Furthermore, the following sentence compares the deep blue of the sea as “blurred by a creeping mist”, again leaving Africa an uninteresting and characterless ground. According to his syntax, Conrad considers the continent a cluster of nothingness. With colors that all merge together to create “black” he gives it a weary feel. An entity which stands alone, and which will never be understood by Europen imperialists. With such a closely compacted prose, with such contradictory elements the reader has a hard time creating an idea of Africa. Marlows struggle to physically and mentally penetrate it is a demonstration of the unclarity the author posseses of Africa.
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 ...
“ The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.” (Conrad 65) So stated Marlow as though this was his justification for ravaging the Congo in his search for ivory. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness shows the disparity between the European ideal of civilization and the reality of it as is evidenced by the domination, torture, exploitation and dehumanization of the African population. Heart of Darkness is indicative of the evil and greed in humanity as personified by Kurtz and Marlow.
"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.
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.
In the opening of his novel, Heart of Darkness, Conrad, through Marlow, establishes his thoughts on colonialism. He says that conquerors only use brute force, "nothing to boast of" because it arises, by accident, from another's weakness. Marlow compares his subsequent tale of colonialism with that of the Roman colonization of Northern Europe and the fascination associated with such an endeavor. However, Marlow challenges this viewpoint by painting a heinous picture of the horrors of colonialist ventures as we delve deeper into the recesses of the novel. Here we find that Marlow sees colonization as "robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind - as it is very proper for those who tackle darkness." Further, he sees such conquests as taking land and materials away from those people who "have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses." As he understands it, colonization is only successful if there lays within it a "devotion to efficiency" and a creation of civilization, not exploitation (Conrad, 4). In the novel, as seen through the eyes of his narrator Marlow, Conrad offers a frank critique of European imperial colonialism be alluding to the poignant differences between black and white and dark and light.
In “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness," Achebe takes note of the ways that Conrad degrades Africans by reducing their religious practices to misconceptions, belittling their complex geography to just a single mass of jungle, telling them to remain in their place, and taking away their capability of speaking. Achebe criticizes Joseph Conrad for his racist stereotypes towards the people of Africa. Achebe also sensibly labels these stereotypes and shows that Africa is, in fact, a rich land full of intelligent people who are, in fact, very human. Works Cited Achebe, Chinua. JSTOR.com - "The New York Times" Indiana University Press, 1978.
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
An Image of Africa Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad has been depicted as “among the half-dozen greatest short novels in the English language.” Chinua Achebe believes otherwise. In Chinua Achebe’s An Image of Africa: Racism is Conrad’s Heart of Darkness he simply states that, “Joseph Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist” [pg.5]. 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.
Marlow's idea that the English are capable of competently approaching imperialism has no supportive evidence. In any case, the savage and inefficient methods of the Belgians prove that the idealistic claims of European imperialism are far from true. In this, it is likely that Conrad's experience in the Congo changed his outlook on imperialism, just as it did Marlow.
Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness portrays an image of Africa that is dark and inhuman. Not only does he describe the actual, physical continent of Africa as "so hopeless and so dark, so impenetrable to human thought, so pitiless to human weakness" (Conrad 94), as though the continent could neither breed nor support any true human life, but he also manages to depict Africans as though they are not worthy of the respect commonly due to the white man. At one point the main character, Marlow, describes one of the paths he follows: "Can't say I saw any road or any upkeep, unless the body of a middle-aged negro, with a bullet-hole in the forehead, upon which I absolutely stumbled three miles farther on, may be considered as a permanent improvement" (48). Conrad's description of Africa and Africans served to misinform the Western world, and went uncontested for many years.
Modernism began as a movement in that late 19th, early 20th centuries. Artists started to feel restricted by the styles and conventions of the Renaissance period. Thusly came the dawn of Modernism in many different forms, ranging from Impressionism to Cubism.