What Is Joseph Conrad's View Of Imperialism

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, published in 1899, has been and continues to be received as a literary classic, taught in thousands of schools every year as a critique on European imperialism. There are however individuals that do not share this degree of admiration for the work, some of whom, such as Chinua Achebe, well learned and well respected. Achebe asserts that the book is “offensive and deplorable” (Achebe 7) and cites a plethora of textual evidence supporting claims that the text is racist and indicative of Conrad’s own racist ideology. Though Heart of Darkness does indeed take a clearly negative stance towards imperialism, taking into account its dehumanizing and overgeneralized depiction of African characters, its lack of emphasis on the true horrors of colonialism, and its prolific parallels between Marlow and Conrad, the prejudices within the text are clear. One conspicuous aspect of the unique narration in this novel is the overgeneralized manner of speaking with regard to the African people. While whites such as Kurtz, the accountant, and the brickmaker get ample characterization, the blacks in the novel …show more content…
Even Achebe, one of the main critics of the novel, acknowledges the skill and fluidity with which Conrad presents his arguments, calling Conrad a “seductive” writer. (Chinua Achebe: ‘Heart of Darkness’) This proficiency in language does not however warrant the amount of recognition Heart of Darkness receives for being a groundbreaking anti-imperialist novel written from an egalitarian perspective. The fact remains that the books depiction of Africans is racist, and that the motivation behind the book is not the protection of these natives as people, but rather as a warning for fellow Europeans from being corrupted by the “dark continent”. The book is by no means written ironically either, as we can see from the extensive similarities between Marlow and