Wednesday 29 September 2021

"Heart of Darkness" Joseph Conrad

The Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe has claimed that Heart of Darkness is an "offensive and deplorable book" saying that Conrad does not provide enough of an outside frame of reference to enable the book to be read as an ironic or critical statement against imperialism. Write an essay for or against Achebe's assertion based on the evidence of Conrad’s literary text. Make sure you do use quotes from Heart of Darkness to support your argument.


Not only the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe claimed “Heart of Darkness” is an “offensive and deplorable book” he also deemed Joseph Conrad as “bloody racist”, remarks against which I am about to defend as you might discover.

 

On no account can I understand how this novella is such a classic book. Notwithstanding all its fame, I utterly believe it does help the idea of colonialism regardless, with words that describe Africans as it follows: “a whirl of black limbs”, “the prehistoric man was cursing us”, “unhappy savages”, “footsore sulky niggers”, “the savagery, the utter savagery”, “the messenger, a lone negro”, “Exterminate all the brutes”, “What a row the brute makes”. In accordance with such harsh statements, we have the notion imperialism is right insofar as we perceive Africans to be primitive.

 

Likewise, when this story begins, it looks as if Europeans were embracing a romantic enterprise: “The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealth, the germs of empires”. However, we know imperialism brought far too much suffering.

 

Furthermore, when the story is finishing hence one suspects a development this is what is told of Kurtz: “The wilderness had patted him on the head, and behold, it was like a ball”. Indeed, what we perceive is not an attack on colonialism, yet a grim picture of Africa by contrast.

 

In my humble opinion, if this book was really critical of colonialism the same language would be used to talk about Europeans, nevertheless, this does not take place at all.


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