Things Fall Apart Racial Disparity Essay

Racial disparity of today dates back centuries, as displayed in both Heart of Darkness and Things Fall Apart. Slavery dates back centuries to pre date the discovery of Africa. The need for work force people’s apathy and treating people as sub-human is centuries’ old practice. Heart of Darkness and Things Fall Apart illustrate the different ways of presenting Africa in literature. In Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad portrays Africans as savages through the viewpoint of the colonizing Europeans. Chinua Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart through the view point of the natives to show Africans, not as savages, but as members of a flourishing society in response to Conrad’s stereotypical portrayal of Africans. Things Fall Apart follows Okonkwo's life as he strives for respect in his community. Okonkwo’s clan attempts to protect the values that the European missionaries, that have invaded Umuofia, would destroy in order to “civilize” the natives. However the prolonging stereotype of Africans being savages in the eyes of the European readers is put into effect even more due to Okonkwo’s non open mindedness and violent behavior.
The prejudice of European civilization is clearly evident in Heart of Darkness. The protagonist, Marlow, talks of savages and associates them to animals or the jungle itself …show more content…
Although the clan defies the European stereotype, the protagonist, Okonkwo, does not confirming the European beliefs more than contradicting them. In Okonkwo’s final attempt to save Umuofia from the Christian Missionaries, he actually severs ties between himself and his clan. . Okonkwo does not see the wisdom in abstaining from action before knowing the full extent of the threat and so the only lesson he learns from the massacre is that, in dealing with missionaries, it is better to preventatively defend