Prejudice and Racism - No Racism in Heart of Darkness Essay -- HOD Jos

No Racism in Heart of phantasm Chinua Achebe challenges Joseph Conrads novella limning the looting of Africa, Heart of Darkness (1902) in his essay An Image of Africa (1975). Achebes is an indignant yet solidly rooted motive that brings the perspective of a celebrated African writer who chips away at the almost universal acceptance of the work as classic, and proclaims that Conrad had written a bloody racist book (Achebe 319). In her foundation in the Signet 1997 edition, Joyce Carol Oates writes, Conrads African natives argon dusty niggers, cannibals. Conrad ... painfully reveals himself in such passages, and numerous others, as an unquestioning heir of centuries of Caucasian bigotry (Oates 10). The argument seems to lie within a larger question is the main character Charlie Marlow racist, and is Marlow an extension of Conrads opinion? Achebe says yes to both notions. He points to Marlows speech about the Thames and the Congo as revealing his view of Africa as the other worl d, the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization, and notes the description of the Africans as limbs and rolling eyes, or, in Conrads words, ugly (315). When they are not incomprehensible savages or brutes, the Africans are farcical The fireman was an improved specimen he could fire up a vertical boiler. ... to look at him was as edifying as beholding a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat (109). Achebe discusses Conrads withholding the ability of speech from the majority of the African characters. The Africans are not humanized, as the whites are, having no dimension, no tone or color save an alien black. They are never personified Conrad refers to them as black shapes or mor... ...ifferent standpoint, the layer for the storys sake, much like Sir Arthur Conan Doyles mysteries which said nothing about society overtly at all. Unlike Mr. Doyle, Conrads attempts to make social commentary on the pillaging of Africa straightway thrust him into the shoes of his chara cter, and though he attempted to do good by shedding light on the matter, he made only a half-hearted attempt not racism, merely a lack of strength of conviction. Works Cited Achebe, Chinua. An Image of Africa, from Chant of Saints a gathering of Afro-American Literature, Art & Scholarship, Michael Harper, ed. University of Illinois Press, 1979 Conrad, Joseph Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer, 1902. Signet Classic, New York 1997. Oates, Joyce Carol. Introduction to Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer copyright The Ontario Review Inc., 1997.