HRT-OF-D

Joseph Conrad’s Racism
and Society’s Ignorance

(Heart of Darkness Evaluation Essay)
By: Joseph Penner


In the essay “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness” written by Chinua Achebe, Achebe culminates his argument regarding racism in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness by making a very radical and bold statement about one of literature’s most permanently renowned authors: Achebe says, “The point of my observations should be quite clear by now, namely that Joseph Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist”(257). While this may seem like an unduly rash conclusion for Achebe to make based almost solely on evidence from a book Conrad wrote, further examination into Achebe’s accusation reveals that he is not so far off from the truth as one might think.
Achebe’s perception of racism is far more acute than the average person’s. His apprehensions about Conrad’s novel, along with other works of its kind, were tipped off, he says, by two very trivial instances: a man who was curious of African Literature; and a boy who was happy to learn about the customs and superstitions of an African tribe. These cases are specific examples of what Achebe, near the end of his essay, deems a “reflex action.” In both cases Achebe feels disturbed by the assumptions that the person made about Africa: the man was curious of African Literature because he assumes that Africans do not have literature, and the boy was happy to learn about the African tribe because he assumes that there is something specially unique (or exotic) about the customs and superstitions of the African tribe in comparison to his own American community. What Achebe is claiming in his essay is that the comments these two people have made (which contain inadvertently racist assumptions) are reflex actions that reflect a history of commonly (but falsely) asserted beliefs and ideas which have inculcated into the general Western population a distorted image of what Africa really is, and that in Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad is one of the most obvious purveyors of this distorted image.
Though at first glance one can scarcely realize it, Achebe’s accusation is correct. Achebe soundly argues that Heart of Darkness is a book which dehumanizes Africans, reduces Africa to a setting for the disintegration of one European’s mind, and hypnotically induces a fallacious image of Africa into the reader’s mind.
The dehumanization of Africans in Heart of Darkness is one of the most serious qualms Achebe has about the book. In Heart of Darkness Conrad indeed conveys a dehumanized image of Africans; one of the most obvious ways in which he does so is through the language of the Africans. As Achebe points out, “It is clearly not part of Conrad’s purpose to confer language on the ‘rudimentary souls’ of Africa”(255). Conrad portrays Africans as being some sort of primitive species that can only communicate in “short grunting phrases”; this would put Africans into a class more similar to that of a gorilla than to an actual human being. As Achebe shows, the Africans make “a violent babble of uncouth sounds”(255); and then later in the book, “they shouted periodically together strings of amazing words that resembled no sound of human language”(114). Conrad also treats what ought to be a basic ubiquitous assumption, the idea of the white man sharing humanity with the Africans, as a terrifying and thrilling epiphany. In Heart of Darkness Conrad’s chief character Marlow says, “It was unearthly, and the men were--No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it--this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity--like yours--the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly”(253). When one reads this kind of passage it invokes into you, the reader, this same kind of fearful shock that Marlow feels at the thought of a remote kinship with these African savages, and it promotes the general feeling that it’s okay to consider our shared humanity with Africans as some sort of incredible, abstract concept.
But it is not just what is found in Heart of Darkness that concerns Achebe. According to Achebe it is also the age long attitude that our world fosters of dehumanizing Africans. It is because of these perennial images and ideas that our society has fostered about Africa that the obvious racism in Achebe’s two aforementioned experiences escapes us. This perpetual dehumanization of Africans allows the man to be surprised at the thought of Africans producing literature without it seeming racist to the average person, and in the same way, it makes it seem perfectly normal for a child to be fascinated by the idea of Africans to have “exotic” customs when in fact it should be a common understanding that everyone has different customs and none is more unique than any other. Probably the most crucial aspect of Achebe’s argument in found immediately after he makes his statement about Conrad being a racist, Achebe says, “That this simple truth is glossed over in criticisms of his work is due to the fact that white racism against Africa is such a normal way of thinking that its manifestations go completely unremarked”(257). Achebe is not merely attacking Conrad as a racist, he is attacking white society’s inability to recognize the manifestations of racism against Africa. Because of Achebe’s acute perception of racism, one must understand that it is with respect to that perception that Achebe makes most of his claims against Conrad, and for us to understand those claims we must permeate the very essence of our own thinking, to be sure that we have rid ourselves of today’s societal racism which Achebe is also attacking. In addition to Achebe’s examples of the inadvertent racism of the boy and the man, one can corroborate Achebe’s accusations against society by examining the contents of the webpage sparknotes.com. Sparknotes is an expansive online literary guide which gives summaries and character descriptions of many of history’s most prescribed literary works. In its character description of the cannibals in Heart of Darkness, Sparknotes describes them as “a surprisingly reasonable and well-tempered bunch.” The question is, why should such a cosmopolitan website (one that draws readers from such a large constituency) consider it a surprise that these Africans would be reasonable and well-tempered. This, again, demonstrates society’s inability to recognize its racism against Africa. In regard to Heart of Darkness and its role in today’s societal misunderstandings of Africans, Achebe says this, “The question is whether a novel which celebrates [the dehumanization of Africans], which depersonalizes a portion of the human race, can be called a great work of art”(257). Achebe’s answer is no, it cannot.
According to Achebe, many students of Heart of Darkness have argued that the book is concerned mainly with the deterioration of one European mind caused by solitude and sickness, and that Africa is merely a setting for the disintegration of the mind of Mr. Kurtz. To this Achebe responds, “Can nobody see the preposterous and perverse arrogance in thus reducing Africa to the role of props for the break-up of one petty European mind?”(257). Of course one might argue with Achebe that Conrad has to choose some place for the disintegration of the mind of Kurtz, and Africa is as good a place as any. But the fact remains that Conrad does not stop at merely making Africa a setting for which Kurtz’ solitude and sickness will deteriorate his mind, he conspicuously incorporates the African person into the role of deteriorator and disintegrator. From the hypnotic vigils that the “savages” hold for Kurtz to the mistress he has taken up among them, everything seems to intimately connect the evil of the forest with the Africans there as they work to devour Kurtz’ mind. When Kurtz is being taken away on the steamer and the natives gather along the bank, Marlow says, “...the deep murmers of the crowd, interrupted suddenly, were like the responses of some satanic litany”(114). The fact that Conrad molds these Africans (with their “satanic litany”) together with the depravity of the wilderness demonstrates a special care taken to pervert the conception one gets of the African people, a matter beyond a simple choice of setting. The subconscious effect that portraying Africa in this way has on the individual can be tremendous when accompanied by the already distorted image of Africa that one perceives from society.
Finally, one of the most fascinating observations that Achebe makes about racism in Heart of Darkness is the “hypnotic stupor” which Conrad induces in his readers. Achebe claims that Conrad’s methods in Heart of Darkness are mostly a steady repetition of two antithetical sentences, one about silence and the other about frenzy. This single method accounts for the much of the text in which Conrad is conveying a description of Africa. Africa thus becomes to the reader a confused blur of eery imagery, rather than a legitimate place of life and humanity. Early in the novel when Marlow is just entering the Congo River, he says, “A continuous noise hovered over this scene of inhabited devastation”(23). And then later, “We were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings; we glided past like phantoms, wondering and secretly appalled, as sane men would be before an enthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse”(59). Achebe says, “Normally readers are well armed to detect and resist such underhand activity. But Conrad chose his subject well (one which was guaranteed not to put him in conflict with the psychological pre-disposition of his readers or raise the need for him to contend with their resistance. He chose the role of purveyor of comforting myths.”(253).
By now it should be understood that Achebe’s central argument against Heart of Darkness is that it actively fosters an image of Africa that coincides with one of society’s most firmly and preposterously embedded prejudices. To fail to recognize this is to be a victim of the very racism that the boy and man are victim to; it is to be a victim to the very racism that our society has fostered for centuries against Africa. If we can recognize within ourselves that we too are subject to the subconscious feelings of superiority, then we can read Heart of Darkness with a discerning eye and pinpoint the moments when our prejudices get the best of us; then we can discover the rewards of the abandonment of unwholesome thoughts; then we can work to correct our vision of Africa and we can work to improve our ability to discern the validity of society’s most strongly asserted beliefs. If we fail, however, to see the racism in Heart of Darkness and cannot recognize the affect society has had on our view of Africa, then we have fallen victim to Conrad’s work and the fallacious image of Africa remains in us still. Ultimately Achebe’s concern is that the people of our society be armed with the tools of discernment, and that we not let any one person’s account or any of society’s common assumptions disturb our perception of humanity. Only then can we begin to truly be considered free from prejudice.