Summary Of Racism In Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness

During the period circa 1850 C.E. to 1890 C.E., the results of the encroachment on the British colonization led to countless victories for the British. This led to a lot of changes for African societies. Because of the tactics of social stratification, the destruction of balance of power, and a loss of land and valuable resources, the Africans experienced devastating deprivations. The effects during the period of Imperialism created a system of social class and stratification.

Until the early 1800’s the colonies of Africa were unknown to the people of Europe, but since the late 1800’s almost 90 percent of the African colonies were controlled by European countries, such as Spain, Britain, Germany according to the video about European imperialism we watched in class. The European in the 1900’s has done enormous amount of damage to Africa. The major point that the Africans lost during this time period was there sudden change in lifestyle. The changes included loss of someone close to them, forced to join the military, sold as a slave and many others.

With colonization comes colonists working the land; when people begin to work they want other people to work for them-for free. Unfortunately the colonists got what they wanted, slaves. This transfer of slaves from Africa to the Americas was brutal and caused many effects including the American Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement of the latter half of the twentieth century. Also, the colonist eventually became naturalized to the Americas, further population the New World.

Many Europeans did not treat the Africans well. Many colonists started colonizing in the New World for three main reasons: God, Gold, and Glory. Colonists met Native Americans there and wanted the Native Americans to work for the them, which led to bad treatment of the Native Americans and also led to slavery. The Industrial Revolution soon started and people needed more natural resources for all the resources being produced. During the 19th Century, many Boers made colonies, land controlled by another country, on the land lended to them by Africans; soon afterward the colonizers started deceiving the African.

European imperialism affected the economy of natives because they removed all the crops to replace them with cash crops beneficial for them. That angered the Native people of Africa. Their resources were being replaced, and it wasn't benefiting them. That lead to natives loosing their independence which made them feel oppressed and frustrated. Replacing their agriculture disrupted their village life.

So Europe invaded Africa, took possession of Africa, and divided Africa into colonies of Europe. The period of invasion, lasting some twenty years, was more or less completed by 1900. There followed a longer period, between sixty and ninety years, of direct European rule, called colonial rule. This was a time of profound upheaval for all of Africa’s peoples. It brought irreversible changes” (4).

Noha Amr Ali Elfeqi Professor Sahar Hamouda Comparative Literature 4 April 2016 The Racist Discourse in Lawrence Durrell’s Justine In his essay “An Image of Africa”, Chinua Achebe criticizes the white colonizer and his depiction of Africa as “"the other world," the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization” (783). Similar to the criticized white colonizer, Lawrence Durrell sees the beauty of Alexandria only in what is European. As Alexandria is becoming more Arab, gradually, Durrell laments the city as the “blacks” start “leaking into the European quarters” (59).

Into the Darkness: How and why is a social group presented in a particular way? Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness takes a multi-faceted approach to the issues that surrounded 19th century colonization and imperialism in Africa. Marlow’s journey into the heart of Africa serves to highlight the hypocrisy of this endeavor, and how this deceit followed the rhetoric utilized by the colonizers in order to justify their colonization of Africa and the treatment of the natives. As the novel progresses, Africa becomes more of a backdrop for Conrad to truly expose the depravity of European intervention in Africa. Through Marlow’s narrative, varying connotations of words and his own main character’s reactions,as well as copious amounts of descriptive imagery, Conrad casts Europeans in a negative light in order to criticize imperialism and colonists.

This passage is dark as it attempts to blind you into thinking something good is about to happen but, that’s just and illusion the author creates to ease you into the horror of what man can do and what is about to unfold. The detail of the torture is described with realistic visual detail which embodies and immerses the reader with the victim/torturer. With realistic detail the reader can sense the darkness, the wrongness of man and the cruelty that man can inflict on others. We may not have been a victim ourselves thus never truly feeling what the “victim” felt psychologically or physically. If after reading this passage you don’t feel an ache in your stomach, the sense that that’s just wrong, then you have bigger issues than diagnosing this book selection.

Ignorance of another's personal values or situation results in an impassable schism between the two parties. People fail to understand each other, and as such, they regard each other in lower lights. In “Heart of Darkness”, Joseph Conrad, through Marlow, writes his novella through a lense of ignorance and the perspective of the typical white person of the time in order to relate his story to the reader. Marlow and the accountant are contrasted with Kurtz to display the effects of evil on an individual.

In Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, the imperialism of Africa is described. Conrad tells the story of the cruel treatment of the natives and of the imperialism of the Congo region through the perspective through the main character, Marlow. Through the lens of New Criticism, it is evident that Conrad incorporates numerous literary devices in Heart of Darkness, including similes, imagery, personification, and antitheses to describe and exemplify the main idea of cruel imperialism in Africa discussed throughout the novella. Throughout Heart of Darkness, Kurtz and other men that are known as strong, greedy, European leaders of the movement to imperialize Africa, are mentioned multiple times.

Racism in Heart of Darkness Heart of Darkness is a novella written by Polish- British writer Joseph Conrad in 1899. Since it was written Heart of Darkness has been criticized as a colonial work. One of the critics who condemn Joseph Conrad and his work has been the Nigerian authors and critics Chinua Achebe in his work "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad 's 'Heart of Darkness". Achebe considers Conrad as “a thoroughgoing racist” (Achebe 5) for depicting Africa as "the other world" (Achebe 2). The aim of this study is to examine Heart of Darkness referring to the Achebe’s ideas in his 1977 essay.

Africa in this novella is portrayed as “the Heart of Darkness” the place where the men’s inner evil is exposed, this is done through their thoughts and actions. The contrast between the Thames River and the Congo River is also made evident in the novella. The Thames River is described as calm and peaceful. It is viewed as a city of light that is not mysterious.

From the beginning of life on Earth, social status has determined one’s quality of life. Early life on this planet were obsessed with social status as many are today. There are natural instincts in animals to try to be dominant so they may thrive over others. The animals that do end up proving their dominance over others are more likely to reproduce and have offspring compared to others. Over time, social status has slowly evolved and what makes one person dominant varies by culture and the specific time period.

“There is no future without a past, because what is to be cannot be imagined except as a form of repetition” (Hustvedt, 2011). Before the emergence of Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Hugh Trevor-Roper had claimed that African history did not exist (Achebe, 1997). As such, Things Fall Apart was Achebe’s way of historicizing Africa, proving to Trevor that the history of Africa did exist even before the arrival of the Europeans. However, Joseph Conrad had already attempted to achieve the same feat in Heart of Darkness, which condemns the evils of imperial exploitation in Africa. That notwithstanding, Achebe in “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’” pinpointed how indiscriminately Conrad embedded his narrative in a yarn of racism that craftily reinforces a damaging ideology of Africa as “"the other world," the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization” (Achebe, 1997).