In 1899, Joseph Conrad published a short novella called Heart Of Darkness. This work of fiction is written in such a way that it allows its readers to respond to it in varieties of different ways. Diverse form of criticism have been taken on the matters in the novella. Criticism from Feminists group on the way women are portrayed to, psycho-analytic approach of the criticism, all have something to say about the novella. But one criticism that has hovered the novella for a long time, is the issue of race. In the fall of 1975, Chinua Achebe gave his famous lecture, “An Image of Racism In Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness”. This lecture which tackles the issue of race and the racist lingo has become the foundation of criticism for Heart Of Darkness.
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Horrors that took place in Congo is directly related to the dehumanization of the natives in the novella. Beaten to be submissive, the natives who worked for the company were cuffed and lined up in chain gangs and forced to do labor for the Europeans. Conrad describes natives with negative connotation, “Black rags..wound round their loins, and the short ends behind wagged to and fro like tails”. The mention of tail symbolizes their dehumanization by reducing them from the status of human to that of an animal. In one of the paragraph in the novella, some natives are described as “ nothing but black shadows of disease” not humans and therefore not worthy of human pity. One of the ongoing theme in the essay written by Achebe is that he accuses Conrad of being racist and that’s one of the reason for why Achebe is against the claim that Heart Of Darkness should be looked at as a great art or permanent literature. The idea of Racism is very evident throughout the novella. One of the many examples of racism is when the African woman, Kurtz’s mistress appears from the jungle to look at the boat and ask the natives to leave. Conrad describes her as a “..savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent.” The only other time Conrad mentions a woman in the novella is when he describes Kurtz’s intended. She’s characterized as a woman “..all in black, with a pale head, floating towards me in the dusk.” The diction he uses to describe the this western woman is vastly drastic, in a way that the words he chooses for her opposite of that he chooses to describe compared to the way he describe the African woman. This adds to the context that everything African is seens as a foil to Europe. Even the characters in this
Horrors that took place in Congo is directly related to the dehumanization of the natives in the novella. Beaten to be submissive, the natives who worked for the company were cuffed and lined up in chain gangs and forced to do labor for the Europeans. Conrad describes natives with negative connotation, “Black rags..wound round their loins, and the short ends behind wagged to and fro like tails”. The mention of tail symbolizes their dehumanization by reducing them from the status of human to that of an animal. In one of the paragraph in the novella, some natives are described as “ nothing but black shadows of disease” not humans and therefore not worthy of human pity. One of the ongoing theme in the essay written by Achebe is that he accuses Conrad of being racist and that’s one of the reason for why Achebe is against the claim that Heart Of Darkness should be looked at as a great art or permanent literature. The idea of Racism is very evident throughout the novella. One of the many examples of racism is when the African woman, Kurtz’s mistress appears from the jungle to look at the boat and ask the natives to leave. Conrad describes her as a “..savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent.” The only other time Conrad mentions a woman in the novella is when he describes Kurtz’s intended. She’s characterized as a woman “..all in black, with a pale head, floating towards me in the dusk.” The diction he uses to describe the this western woman is vastly drastic, in a way that the words he chooses for her opposite of that he chooses to describe compared to the way he describe the African woman. This adds to the context that everything African is seens as a foil to Europe. Even the characters in this