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Symbolism of heart of darkness
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When reading The Heart of Darkness, I was under the impression that the author was a bit racist. Before I get into why I believe that he was being racist, I will give a summary of the story. The story starts off with Marlow sailing away from Europe on a French steamboat. He then goes from being on a ship sailed by the French, to a boat that is sailed by the Swedish. What he observes when the boat makes it to the company’s station, he is utterly appalled. The way that the blacks were being treated just sickened him. Black slaves were chained and starving and several of them were on the brink of death. He hears this man, by the name of Mr. Kurtz whom is a first-class ivory agent. Marlow leaves the station with a caravan of 60 slaves. At every
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...
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.
In recent years, the debate over the merits versus the racial shortcomings of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness has raged hot. Many, notably David Denby and Chinua Achebe, have come down on one side or another of the issue. I contend, with the help of the written opinions of Denby and Achebe, that Heart of Darkness, while racist in its views, is nonetheless a valuable and commendable work of art.
"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.
In the novel, Heart of Darkness, the author Joseph Conrad makes some comments, and he uses different terms to describe people of color that may offend some people. Also the readers can see how racist the Europeans were toward blacks not only because they were turned into slaves. We can see how the European people seem to think the Africans are not equal to them. There are many examples of discrimination towards woman in this story. Women were looked down and they were considered to be worth less then men, or even not as important. Racism and discrimination are all over in this novel.
Although the book is undeniably racist, was the author, Joseph Conrad, racist? Conrad was racist because he uses racial slurs, the slavery and unfair treatment of the native Africans in his book. The use of racist language is very prevalent in Heart of Darkness. Conrad, through Marlow, the main character, uses the word nigger when talking about native Africans on many occasions. "The fool-nigger had dropped everything to throw the shutter open and let off that Martini-Henry" (Conrad 46).
By far, Marlow is the most sympathetic and reliable character of Heart of Darkness - he even goes so far as to offer a native slave one of his biscuits, disturbed as he is by their suffering. Furthermore, he is not an apathetic character - his characterizations of the people around him, black or white, are apt and cutting, as when he describes a white companion as “too fleshy” (Conrad, 23) or the Company’s chief accountant as a “hairdresser’s dummy” (Conrad, 21). Clearly, he is observant, sensitive. A callousness begins in him, though, subtly, from tossing the dead native overboard when the other white men found a burial more suitable, to his time in the depths of Kurtz’s Congo. Upon seeing pikes adorned with severed heads, he is “not so shocked as you may think. The start back… was really nothing but a movement of surprise” (Conrad, 55). This Marlow is removed from the “horror-stuck” (Conrad, 21) individual that fed the starving native. His corruption could be the most implacable in Heart of Darkness, but it is, in fact, there when he loses his will in response to the trauma, the agony of the Congo. His experience with disgust in Chapter 3 is laced with weariness, with detachment. Like the hollow men’s response to the trauma of war, Marlow is made desensitized and corrupt. The hollow men “grope together and avoid speech,” and Marlow avoids speaking the truth, preferring to falsify Kurtz’s final words to his fiancee, to protect the identity of Kurtz when, perhaps, the Marlow that “hate[d], detest[ed], and [couldn’t] bear a lie” (Conrad, 29) would have been disgusted to do
he is forced to wait for them to pass. He even takes a separate path to
Seeing that this text shows how people react to and act towards people that are different from them this theory would be really good to use as a way to interpret this text. Critical race theory wants to challenge dominant contemporary understandings of race and the law, as well as other aspects of social structural inequalities and that is sort of what Kurtz was doing in “Heart of Darkness”. He took the side of the natives and when the company came for him he spoke out about it. The looked at him as if he were crazy and even talked about killing him, but he didn’t care, he knew what they were doing was wrong, just as Marlow did when he agreed with Kurtz and sided with the natives as well. (Bracey II, Glenn
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).
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.
While Heart of Darkness offers a powerful view into the hypocrisy of imperialism, it also delves into the morality of men. Darkness becomes a symbol of hatred, fear and symbol of the power of evil. Marlow begins his story believing that these elements exists within the jungle, then with the natives and finally makes the realization that darkness lives within the heart of each man, even himself. People must learn to restrain themselves from giving into the "darkness." Marlow discusses at one point how even suffering from starvation can lead a man to have "black" thoughts and restraining oneself from these thoughts would be almost impossible in such hardship.
In the novella, “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad, the journey taken to Africa reveals the true evils of European imperialism. Marlow, one of the travellers narrates the journey to the deep interior of Africa, taken by he and other Europeans to find Kurtz, the head of the ivory company. The natives of Africa can only be viewed as less than the Europeans, which adds to the evil they bring. Conrad displays this evil when the European men in the novella change as ivory consumes their own lives. Throughout the journey, the truth of Kurtz is also found, as he isn’t the man who he is thought to be by Marlow and the other Europeans.
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.
“ The Marxists hate imperialism and consider it as the highest stage, the peak of capitalism and coincidently Heart of Darkness has been considered as an anti-imperialist work, so the work invites a Marxist approach in itself.” (Sardar) The natives were basically stripped of their agency and were forced under the European influence to do hard labor with the ivory. “This imperial relationship between Europe and the underdeveloped world as defined by Lenin is certainly detectable in the historical setting of Heart of Darkness.” (Sardar) They weren’t given the same opportunities as the others. “European imperialism would suggest that this is a utopia considering they can exploit the African masses for maximum gain and they believe that they bring civilization and light to a dark and savage area…” (Rodarte101litcrit 1) And this is kind of topsy turvy because Marlow dreamed of having a utopia. Now that he has met Mr. Kurtz and has seen, and personally worked with his many wonders that he so powerfully possessed, he’s convinced that what he is doing is right. Marlow was naive and hopeless, and Mr. Kurtz seemed all powerful and glorified. Yet we see through the hands of Mr. Kurtz, power is not to be dealt with people who do not know how to control