Was Joseph Conrad a racist, more specifically does his novel Heart of Darkness reveal him as a racist? Below is an essay, written by me, very inadequately exploring that very question:
Joseph Conrad’s
Heart of Darkness is a product of the
experiences of Conrad’s six-month visit to the
Congo Free
State in 1890, which are related by Conrad through the character
of Marlow, who retraces Conrad’s footsteps. When
Heart of Darkness was first published, in 1902 “as a three- part
series in
Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine”
few actually spoke about it. Compared to the popularity Conrad received from
his story,
Youth, which fit into the
canon of Victorian adventure stories of the time, such as
Treasure Island. It wasn’t
until “the late 1950s and 1960s peaking in the late 1970s”
that
Heart of Darkness gained
attention. The novel is known for the notable attention it gained from Nigerian
novelist, Chinua Achebe who provoked many responses when he attacked the novel
for being racist. Thus this essay will look at how
Heart of Darkness explores and negotiates race and racism by
looking at the representations of both
Africa
and African people and whether these representations are in fact racist.
In some aspects it can be said that Conrad’s
portrayal of the Congolese people, in the novel, is indeed racist. This can be
seen in the imagery Conrad uses to describe them, as Marlow expresses, “It was
unearthly and the men were…No they were no inhuman. Well, you know, that was
the worst of it – the 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 the thought of their humanity – like yours – the thought of
your remote kinship to this wild and passionate uproar.”
This
quote clearly paints the African’s as primitive to the point that their
humanity is questioned, it perpetuates offensive image of
Africa
and the African people, as the “Other” separate and inferior from himself and
the civilized West.
Furthermore there is the arrogant,
underlying imperial ideology, in Conrad’s discourse, that the African’s are
indeed in need of racial improvement. This view can be seen in the description
of an African man, as “an improved specimen; [who] could fire up a vertical
boiler. He was there below me and, upon my word, to look at him was as edifying
as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat, walking on his hind
legs.” (p.51). This quote displays the “imperial[ist] ideology, which
encouraged colonial powers to take up the “white man’s burden” and raise up the
condition of the inferior races”
,
which is quite clearly derogatory and racist, as Conrad dehumanizes and
denigrates the African intellect.
Similarly, the language in
Heart of Darkness can also be seen as
racist, especially, as Achebe cited, through the noticeable repetition of
“darkness.” Achebe pronounced Conrad’s use of the word “darkness” is used derogatorily
to describe Africa, as
Europe’s “primordial
relative.”
I tend to agree that the repetition of the word is a form
of unconscious racism, which associates white with all things good and pure and
black with all things bad, uncivilized and demonic.
Furthermore, Heart of Darkness is not only racist but it also betrays
xenophobia, through Marlow and the pilgrims’, towards African cultures and
customs, as Conrad wrote, “The earth for us is a place to live in, where we
must put up with sights, with sounds, with smells, too, by Jove! - breathe dead
hippo, so to speak, and not be contaminated.” (p.69) Although he preaches
tolerance, he also suggests that contamination is possible through the
interaction of the dominant European culture, with different cultures. There is
also a sense of underlying fear that runs thought the novel of unexplained
practises by the African’s, such as re-occurrence of the “roll of drums”(p.49),
in the forest and the supposed witchcraft and cannibalism. These practices
scare Marlow and the pilgrims’ not only because they lack the cultural
knowledge to understand these practises but also because it is not in line with
their culture, which is the dominant culture.
This dominant culture relies not only on
the established of the notion of race, which involves the “classification for
human beings into physically, biologically and genetically distinct groups”
but it also involves looking at cultural practices which are not favourable and
imposing their dominant culture upon the inferior culture, with the perceived
notion their culture is superior. This can be seen happening in Heart of
Darkness, where they train an African man to fire up a boiler and also in their
failed attempt to build roads but also closer to home in Ireland as “the Irish
were initially seen to be physically much the same as the English, [but] Irish
culture was [seen as] alien and threatening.”
And where a culture is seen as unfavourable
it is usually squashed by the West through violence, as Samuel P. Huntington
said: “The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or
religion but rather by its superiority in applying organised violence.
Westerners often forget this fact, non-westerners never do.”
On the other hand Conrad’s Heart of Darkness can be seen a
deliberate racism with the intent to provide a critique on the western claim to
superiority. While some cite the racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as a direct result of Conrad being a product of
Western culture, which propagates the idea of the superiority of white culture
through books and even science, which is seen in the novel where the doctor
“measure[s] the crania of those going out [to the Congo]”.(p.15) Conrad could
be seen as contesting this assumed power by presenting all the West’s racially
prejudiced views in full and showing them that to take away land “from those
who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses is not a pretty thing
when you look into it too much.” (p.8) Conrad also shows this through Marlow’s
lack of answers from Kurt, as Marlow finds that there is no ‘redeemable idea’ (p.8)
that can justify the kind of behaviour occurring in the Congo.
This is further shown through the stories
attempt to challenge the savagery of the African culture, when Marlow reminds
us at the beginning that England must have seemed savage and barbaric to the Roman’s,
who saw it as nothing but a black space to be conquered. But also in Kurt’s
report that the whites themselves “must necessarily appear to them [savages].”(p.70)
Conrad shows the reader that culture is relative and in the end it is not
culture which makes people savage but the actions of people who try to exploit
and conquer those for their own ends, like Europe has done to Africa.
This idea is epitomized in the character of Kurtz, where it is not his
engagement with African culture that kills him but his fanatic obsession with
“[his] ivory” (p.68).
Alternatively, the use of the word
“darkness” can also be said not to carry racist implications, used to debase Africa and its people, as Achebe alleged. Since, the word
is used, not only when Marlow is in Africa but also used in the story to
describe England, at the
beginning and is also repeated at the end when Marlow is in London to see Kurt’s widow, where Marlow
comments, “The darkness deepened” (p.107). This ending is key to the
understanding the use of “darkness”, as the room becomes oppressive and “The
darkness deepen[s]” (p.107) Marlow has two choices, to either tell Kurt’s wife
the truth about his last words and tell her the whole story or to just lie and
leave. Although Feminists would argue that Marlow’s choice to lie, is patronizing
and perpetuates the fragile female stereotypes who are “out of touch with the
truth” (16) and should be protected. An alternative response is that, Marlow
choose the easy way out in an attempt to get away and leave behind the whole
dark corrupt business of taking people’s land, enslaving and killing them. Thus,
the darkness can be seen as a symbolic shadow that hangs over the whole
business of colonization and of the moral corruption Marlow has suffered from
witnessing this exploitation.
Additionally, Conrad can be seen to
sympathise with the “unrestrained grief” (p.60) African’s suffer under
imperialism, perhaps because as some post-colonialists suggest; Conrad himself
suffered from displacement, as a child, from his homeland,
Poland. Thus
post-colonialists attribute the ambiguity of the novel to Conrad’s own
ambiguous nationality. Then again, the ambiguity of the novel and in particular
its language could be credited to Conrad’s desire to relate the tale of his
journey faithfully, including the thoughts he had when he suffered from a
fever. Marlow relates, “I positively hoped, that my aspect was not so- what
shall we say?- so unappetizing” (p.58). This delirious admission shows that perhaps
at times Conrad, as Marlow, is an unreliable narrator, as Conrad “suffered
psychological, spiritual, even metaphysical shock in the Congo, and his
physical health was also damaged; for the rest of his life, he was racked by
recurrent fever and gout”
Thus perhaps his representation of events are skewered.
To conclude, although I agree that in some
cases Conrad shows a lack of care for the African plight and displays typical
western racism of that time. However I think that it is only a small part of
the picture and to focus on this feature would obscure the message. I believe
that Heart of Darkness is ultimately
not a novel that serves to degrade Africa but in fact it uses Africa, as a pawn,
to reflect back upon the west’s imperialist attitudes and behaviour towards the
colonized. As ultimately the prominent feeling after reading the novel is not
shock of the African’s behaviour but that of the West.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Texts
Conrad,
Joseph Heart of Darkness, London:
Vintage, 2007.
Secondary Sources
Achebe, Chinua. "An Image of Africa:
Racism in Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'" Massachusetts Review. 18. 1977. Rpt. in Heart of Darkness, An Authoritative Text,
background and Sources Criticism. 1961. 3rd ed. Ed. Robert Kimbrough, London: W. W Norton and
Co., 1988.
Ashcroft,
Bill. Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, Post-colonial
Studies: The Key Concepts. London:
Routledge, 2000.
Bloom,
Harold. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
Bloom’s Guides. New York:
InfoBase Publishing, 2009.
Young,
Robert J. C. Post-colonialism A Very
Short Introduction. Oxford University
Press, 2003.
Joseph Conrad, Heart
of Darkness (London:
Vintage, 2007), 69.
