Supremacist Ideologies in Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness colludes with the ethnocentric attitude of Europeans towards the native people of Africa. At the turn of the century, European imperialism was viewed as "a crusade worthy of this century of progress" by King Leopold of Belgium. Although Conrad was critical of imperialism, his novella reveals to the reader an undeniable Victorian provenance. It endorses cultural myths of the period and reinforces the dominant ideology of the British gentleman. Its Victorian provenance is revealed in the representation of race, which is constructed through the character Marlow. His powerful narrative viewpoint reinforces what Chinua Achebe called Europe's "comforting myths" about Africa and Africans.
The text consistently constructs black people as 'other'. This is achieved primarily by Marlow, who acts to construct the natives from the vantage point of the British gentleman. When he "looked at them", he searched not only for their "impulses, motives, capacities" but also for restraint, a value that he champions throughout the retelling of his story. When he can't find it, he remarks "Restraint? What possible restraint?" Marlow's first encounter with the natives is at the Outer Station, where his ambivalence towards them is foregrounded by his obsession with the miraculously efficient first-class agent. The natives are effectively dehumanised because they are presented as nothing more than "black shadows" and "acute angles"; and Marlow is far more interested in the fact that the accountant kept his books in "apple-pie order" than with the dying black men outside. Similarly, when Marlow stumbles across "a middle-aged negro, with a bullet-hole in the...
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...t inexorably associates the continent and its people with darkness. We have the natives described as "black shapes", "strings of dusty niggers" and "a whirl of black limbs". This imagery also often associates Africans with supernatural evil. Near the Inner Station:
"A black figure stood up, strode on long black legs, waving long black arms, across the glow. It had horns... some sorcerer, some witch-man, no doubt; it looked fiend-like enough"
The African landscape is not only culpable for Kurtz's wrongs, but it is also a place of darkness and of evil, a place of paganism, with "the throb of drums, the drone of weird incantations"; a place of "lurking death", cannibalism, disease and insanity - all of Marlow's reality is filtered through the European consciousness, and all of his narrative serves to endorse European supremacist ideologies.
The natives who attack the steamboat as the pilgrims near the Inner Station are seen only as ‘naked breasts, arms, legs, glaring eyes.’ The effect is to cause the reader to never picture the natives as fully human.” By emphasizing the barbaric nature of the natives, Marlow shows how inconsiderate humans can be toward other humans. We look down on people who are different than us, simply because they are distinguished from us. He regards them and describes them as if they are lower life forms than him, which simply isn’t true. But the important question is why does Marlow (and all of The Company) think that these natives are simply animals? It’s because the Company holds power that the natives do not have. This goes back to the original thesis of this paper: without God serving as a strong figure in our lives, we look to
Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness uses character development and character analysis to really tell the story of European colonization. Within Conrad's characters one can find both racist and colonialist views, and it is the opinion, and the interpretation of the reader which decides what Conrad is really trying to say in his work.
During the novella we see many quotes made by Marlow and others that relate to racism towards the native Africans. In the first section of the story we see some comments that relate
Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness shows the disparity between the European ideal of civilization and the reality of it, displayed by the domination, torture, exploitation and dehumanization of the African people. Conrad often emphasizes the idea of what is civilized versus what is primitive or savage. While reading the novel, the reader can picture how savage the Europeans seem. They are cruel and devious towards the very people they are supposed to be helping.
From the very moment Marlow speaks the reader is presented with light and dark imagery. It should be noted, however, that darkness seems to dominate. The light and dark, being binary oppositions, come to represent other binary oppositions, such as civilized and uncivilized, and of course good and evil. The primitive 'savages' are described as dark, both literally in regards to skin tone, but also in attitude and inwardly. Marlow calls the natives at the first station "black shadows of disease and starvation" (Conrad 20). A little further into the text, Marlow is horrified by what he is seeing, by the darkness he and the reader are being presented with. These are both excellent examples of the negativity towards the natives throughout the book. So, the darkness of the natives is a metaphor for their supposed incivility, evilness and primitiveness. However, if the reader looks a little deeper, they can see that this darkness also ...
“ 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.
Marlow then proceeds to head for the Congo, and when he finally reaches the company's lower station he begins to see how the white man has come to try and civilize and control the wildness of Africa and its inhabitants. The blacks were being used as slaves at the station to build railroads. The scene left Marlow feeling that the blacks "were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now,--nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation" (p. 2202). Marlow sees how the asserted superiority of the white man has led to the devastation of the black natives in both spirit and body.
In Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Charles Marlow relates to his listeners aboard the Nellie the story of his service with a European company operating in the African Congo. Arriving in this European country to interview for employment, Marlow recalls, "I arrived in a city that always makes me think of a white sepulchre. Prejudice no doubt" (73). But whose prejudice is he speaking of: his or that of the citizens of that commercial center? Either way, his image is prophetic. The white sepulchre contains the remains of the countless Africans slaughtered by these colonizers--not in the form of corpses, but in the wealth that has been stolen from the African continent. The significance of the sepulchre's whiteness (and that of the longed-for ivory) lies in the contrasting images of a piece of white worsted and the starched white collars that Marlow comes upon in the jungles of the Congo. While the collars represent the violence, oppression, and hatred that dominate the European's treatment of the African, the white worsted is an attempt by ...
Heart of Darkness is a novel based on European imperialism in the late nineteenth-early twentieth century. During the turn of the century in 1900, the more significant countries in Europe (i.e. England, France, Germany, et al.) had gotten to a point where expansion within Europe was no longer foreseeable, so for financial, political, and egotistical reasons, these countries looked south to their neighbor Africa, the "black continent." "God-forsaken wilderness." Marlow says of Africa. (Page 73) Trade routes were established and the home countries found reliable executive willing to travel and develop relations in the country. In Conrad's novel, Kurtz was this man. He started out with a noble goal, i.e. to modernize Africa, but suffered the effects of a deadly disease, greed. "It was reckless without hardihood, greedy without audacity, and cruel without courage." Said Marlow (of what Kurtz and the ivory company had done to Africa.) (Page 102.)
It is evident that Marlow is one of the few white men on the journey that questions the belief at the time that the natives of Africa are "inhu...
Apart from the discernable darkness depicted in England and Belgium, and the Congo, each places’ surface traits are not comparable. The civilized European cities are portrayed as refined, but also as a “whited supulchre,” with “prejudice no doubt” and a desire to “make no end of coin by trade” (Conrad 14). The term “whited supulchre” is a biblical allusion, referring to a person who is superficially pure, but categorically deceptive. In its literal sense, a supulchre is a coffin, and in being whited, it is beautiful on the outside but contains horrors on the inside. This bleak and inhumane place characterizes itself to be civilized, and there in lies the people who willingly welcome the burden of edifying the unfortunates in Africa. Alternatively, the primitive life along the African Congo strikes a glaring disparity to pristine European society. Not only are the riverbanks “rotting with mud” and “thickened with slime,” but also, a “general sense of vague and oppressive wonder” sets a sinister tone to the land and people of the Congo (Conrad 11). The notable absence of description of its inhabitants furthers Africa’s and Africans’ depiction as indistinguishable and incoherent to the European perception. Actual people living in this environ...
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad is very clearly critical of imperialism. This is abundantly evident from the first pages, to the last, and everywhere in between. Marlow’s begins the journey as naive as the rest of Europe in his time, but is shocked by the horrors of colonialism. Conrad gives the reader a very negative view of imperialism through the setting, and actions of his characters. However, he is not entirely sympathetic of the African people, as he tends to dehumanize them throughout the novella.
Throughout Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, a sense of imperialism is present. Imperialism is defined as “acquiring and holding colonies and dependencies”. Through the novel, many of the travels Marlow encounters contain imperialist ideas. The whole continent is used as a symbol for this theme. So therefore you can tell that imperialism is just as bad as the disease that many people get from the Congo, they become infected.
By the time Marlow and Kurtz meet, Marlow is already well aware of the similarities they share. Both are imperialists, and while Marlow detests the treatment of the natives by his employers (Belgian colonists), he also makes apparent his abhorrence toward the Africans. On the other hand, Kurtz abandons the pretense of helping the natives achieve civilization, as displayed by the Europeans. Instead, he adopts their customs and becomes their leader in the never-ending quest for ivory. "He began with the argument that we whites, from the point of development we had arrived at, 'must necessarily appear to them [savages] in the nature of the supernatural beings- we approach them with the might as of a deity' (Longman, 2000, p. 2226). Marlow also admired Kurtz' resourcefulness and survival skills, especially his perseverence through jungle fever. "The wilderness had patted him on the head....it had taken him, loved him, embraced him, got into his veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his soul to its own by the inconceivable ceremonies of some devilish initiation. He was its spoiled and pampered favorite." (Longman, 2000, p. 2225).