Well known to generations of readers and reaching almost a century of age, the novel Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad has not lost any of its ability to astonish and dismay. The novel continues to be, to many degrees, a significant starting point for discussions on modernity, coloniality, glorification of Western hypocrisy, and societal ambiguities. However, in more recent analyses of the novel, many have found that it offers a less than inclusive approach to racial issues and that it, along with its messages should be left in a time when this kind of philosophy was considered acceptable by society. While some people speculate that Conrad delegitimizes Heart of Darkness as an achievement on literary grounds due to it’s racism and oppression of the African natives, these events must be scrutinized with a historical, not a contemporary lens. Consequently, Conrad isn't being deliberately racist; he simply represents the popular views of that epoch, and thus Heart of Darkness should remain a valuable part of the world’s literature.
Within the long list of individuals who have come to believe that Conrad is a racist is Chinua Achebe, a distinguished Nigerian novelist and essayist who believes that Conrad’s main goal in writing Heart of Darkness was to comfort Europeans in their sense of superiority: “Heart of Darkness projects the image of Africa as ‘the other world,’ the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization, a place where man’s vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant bestiality,” (338). He also believes that Heart of Darkness is a strong perpetrator of the common Western habit of characterizing Africa “as a foil to Europe, a place of negations . . . in comparison with which Europe’s own state of spiritual grace will be manifest,” (Achebe 337). In his analysis, Achebe fails to recognize that although such comments are regarded as highly racist at the political level of today, the main intention of Conrad was not just to place one race above another-- it was to expose the ugly, true nature of people in general. He wanted to demonstrate that evil is a human entity that can become extremely degenerating without the need of ethical restraint, so long as it is free to do so. As he wrote: “‘It would be interesting for science to watch the mental changes of individuals, on the spot.’” (Conrad 162). In this particular instance, Conrad talked about how easily people can change their opinions and become thoughtless beasts, murdering innocents without seriously considering what they were doing for even a second. The fact that Conrad seemed to provide Europeans with a sense of superiority seems a bit unintentional and comes across as simply a translation error between two separate timelines more than anything. After looking into the points that Conrad tries to make most clear to the reader, it is almost obvious that his main intent was to showcase that the human race as a species is capable of evil.
Recently, Edward W. Said, one of Columbia's most prominent critics and writers, has also addressed aggressive and crippling concerns regarding Heart of Darkness. He believed that Conrad was limited to the mindset of colonial supremacy and therefore could not imagine anything outside it, as his characters Marlow and Kurtz suggested. “But Marlow and Kurtz are also creatures of their time and cannot take the next step, which would be to recognize that what they saw, disablingly and disparagingly, as a non-European “darkness” was in fact a non-European world resisting imperialism so as one day to regain sovereignty and independence, and not, as Conrad reductively says, to reestablish the darkness,” (Said 428). The assumption is made here that Conrad could therefore only presume that Africans could be governed by Europeans. While Heart of Darkness contains some wide-ranging and equivocal remarks which seem to praise the idea of British dominance, one must question how significant these findings are against the overwhelming pressure of everything else. The novel includes a series of scenes depicting a horrible feeling of desolation caused by physical turmoil, which induces death and destruction surrounding the entire plot- as described by Marlow: “It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind—as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness,”(Conrad 13). Through Marlow’s thoughts, Conrad is expressing that the darkness of humanity is what causes these terrible occurrences. Part of humanity’s darkness is indeed the “non-European world resisting imperialism” according to Conrad, however, simply stating that that is the entirety of his message is obstinate.
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Paul B. Armstrong claims that Conrad's portrayal of the novel is not an act of racism, as Achebe and Said allege, but an audacious and systematic search for the complexities of recognizing “cultural otherness”, “The novella has received these divergent responses because its enactment of the dilemmas entailed in understanding cultural otherness is inherently double and strategically ambiguous.” (Armstrong 431). Heart of Darkness offers an accurate picture of how people see other cultures by sticking with Marlow's subjective point of view. Yet, according to the critic, the pictures themselves are not actually any less offensive due to this. When describing black men at the station, Conrad recounts, “All their meager breasts panted together, the violently dilated nostrils quivered, the eyes stared stonily up-hill. They passed me within six inches, without a glance, with that complete, deathlike indifference of unhappy savages.' (Conrad 36). These definitions tend to be distinctly beliefs and biases at first glance. When you look closer to the precise word selection, however, it's clear that Marlow does not describe these men from a political point of view, he just portrays their appearances with a historical lens that doesn't fully disclose how to describe people politically correctly today. The way Marlow regards other cultures is a good example of how most white people look at separate cultures – simply by relying on social norms and on their general appearance.
C.P. Sarvan decided to adopt a more rational tone for the novel and found that some ideas could be considered racist, but that didn't mean it was the work in its entirety was prejudiced. In his words, 'This is not to claim that Conrad was free of all prejudice, nor to deny that he has wholly resisted the temptation to use physical appearance and setting as indicators of nonphysical qualities,' (Sarvan 284). While Conrad’s character, Marlow may have a bit of racism in his ideology, so did everyone from that time period. For centuries racism used to be ingrained in the very livelihoods of everyone from that epoch. Hence is why these issues of race are just now coming up about the novel Heart of Darkness. When it was written, most of these phrases and ways of describing other races were completely acceptable and normal. The reason that it may seem like even more than the average work of that time period is that Conrad’s main message was to bring out that true evil lies in everyone, in humanity itself. Something this heavy cannot bring out the best in anyone, let alone someone that was already viewed as lesser by the general public at that moment in time.
In the end, Conrad can be viewed as either a man of extreme prejudice or as a man of deep examination of the human race. Through careful analysis of Heart of Darkness, it can be justified that his racial prejudice is simply distinguished through the lens of his timeline, and the message he is attempting to portray to his audience. Since one of his main goals was to showcase that humanity is capable of evil, his reasoning and examples of showing so does not put anyone in the limelight. In general, without his involvement in imperialism's destructive energy, the incredible scope of Conrad's work is unthinkable. Achebe and Said have their own clear understandings of what Conrad’s intentions were, however with a novella as controversial and deep as this, the true goal of the author is up for the interpretation of each reader. Despite his translation errors between timelines, Conrad will never be dropped from the list of great literary authors. The mere fact that his work is still in debate and discussion almost a century later confirms his centrality to the modern age.
Works Cited
- Achebe, Chinua. “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.” Heart of Darkness: A Norton Critical Edition. 4 th ed. Ed. Paul B. Armstrong. New York: W.W Norton and Company, 2006. 336-349.
- Armstrong, Paul. “Reading, Race, and Representing Others.” Heart of Darkness: A Norton Critical Edition. 4 th ed. Ed. Paul B. Armstrong. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2006. 429-444.
- Conrad, Joseph, and Joyce Carol Oates. Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer. Signet Classics, 1997.
- Said, Edward. “Two Visions in Heart of Darkness.” Heart of Darkness: A Norton Critical Edition. 4 th ed. Ed. Paul B. Armstrong. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2006. 422-429.
- Sarvan, C.P. “Racism and the Heart of Darkness.” Heart of Darkness: A Norton Critical Edition. 3rd ed. Ed. Robert Kimbrough. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1988. 280-285.
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