Racism and Imperialism Racism and imperialism often go hand in hand; imperialism cannot exist without some display of racism and power. In Hunt Hawkins’ essay “Heart of Darkness and Racism”, he suggests that Joseph Conrad attacks the colonization of Africa through racism in his novel Heart of Darkness. While most critical essays regarding race generally focus on whether or not Conrad is a racist, like Chinua Achebe’s “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness”, Hawkins neither agrees nor disagrees, stating that racism shouldn’t be the main focus when reading the novel. Instead, he claims that Conrad’s purpose for writing Heart of Darkness was to depict the Congo atrocities he witnessed while visiting the Congo, which were described
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He argues that Heart of Darkness cannot be called “a great work of art” because of Conrad’s blatant racism (Achebe 344), and he spends a majority of his essay pointing out specific instances where racism can be seen throughout the novel. One example of racism Achebe mentions is that it “[was] clearly not part of Conrad’s purpose to confer language on the ‘rudimentary souls’ of Africa” (Achebe 341), since Conrad primarily portrayed their language as various grunts and sounds. Hawkins will likely argue, however, that their language was omitted with purpose, so this can’t exactly be viewed as an act of racism. The European characters are the main focus of the novel, and the story is told from their perspective, so even if the Africans had been speaking in their own native language, the Europeans most likely would not have been able to comprehend it. Additionally, while Achebe does acknowledge Conrad’s attitude towards imperialism, he somewhat dismisses it by arguing that Conrad “was strangely unaware of the racism on which [imperialism] sharpened its iron tooth” (Achebe 349). Hawkins argues the complete opposite by stating that Conrad was completely aware of the racist attitudes exhibited by the Europeans in his novel, and that these attitudes were used to demonstrate the negative aspects of imperialism, which was actually the main focus of the
He argues that Heart of Darkness cannot be called “a great work of art” because of Conrad’s blatant racism (Achebe 344), and he spends a majority of his essay pointing out specific instances where racism can be seen throughout the novel. One example of racism Achebe mentions is that it “[was] clearly not part of Conrad’s purpose to confer language on the ‘rudimentary souls’ of Africa” (Achebe 341), since Conrad primarily portrayed their language as various grunts and sounds. Hawkins will likely argue, however, that their language was omitted with purpose, so this can’t exactly be viewed as an act of racism. The European characters are the main focus of the novel, and the story is told from their perspective, so even if the Africans had been speaking in their own native language, the Europeans most likely would not have been able to comprehend it. Additionally, while Achebe does acknowledge Conrad’s attitude towards imperialism, he somewhat dismisses it by arguing that Conrad “was strangely unaware of the racism on which [imperialism] sharpened its iron tooth” (Achebe 349). Hawkins argues the complete opposite by stating that Conrad was completely aware of the racist attitudes exhibited by the Europeans in his novel, and that these attitudes were used to demonstrate the negative aspects of imperialism, which was actually the main focus of the