The Presence of Racist Intent in The Heart of Darkness

In his lecture regarding Joseph Conrad’s Novella ‘Heart of Darkness’ in 1975, Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe states that whilst the novel has been discussed in great lengths over the years, that its ‘obvious racism has not, and that it is high time that it was’. The lecture that Achebe delivered in Massachusetts was to change the way in which ‘Heart of Darkness’ (1899) was read forever and it also had a major impact on postcolonial readings of Conrad. The intention of this essay is to discuss Achebe’s claim, whether it bears a degree of truth or not, and if indeed Joseph Conrad produced his works with an underlying racist intent. Writing his well-studied novella in 1899 at the height of Imperialism, Polish-British novelist Joseph Conrad tells a story via the narrator Marlow, a fictional English seaman, of his travels from ‘The greatest town on earth’ or how Achebe accuses Conrad of using this description to undermine Africa and name it a ‘place of darkness’.

Given the complexity and ambiguity of the text, alongside the vast amount of ongoing discussions that Achebe’s lecture instigated, this essay shall focus on three primary sources. Firstly, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Achebe’s scathing essay of 1975 and Said’s defense and contextualization of Conrad’s novella in 1992.

Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is one of the greats where English Literature is considered according to Conradian Owen Knowles (2007) as he discusses how Conrad’s mighty influence on English literature shaped the way for other English literary greats such as T.S Eliot with his use of fragments from Heart of Darkness as an epigraph to his poem ‘The Hollow Men’ (1925). Knowles further states that Conrad would have been ‘astonished by these contemporary reverberations’. However, this came under fire in 1975 when Chinua Achebe heavily criticized the novella in his essay ‘An Image of Africa’ and accused Conrad of being a ‘Thoroughgoing racist’.

Heart of Darkness was one of the novels that helped to perpetuate an offensive image of Africa, having been disturbed by the inhumanity and brutal behavior bestowed upon the African natives, Conrad was moved to present his anti-imperialist views aboard his vessel which is the Heart of Darkness (Okafore, 1988). Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is firmly rooted in imperialism and European conquests worldwide, while the colonizers deceitfully claimed that they sought only to civilize native populations by the spreading of the Christian lifestyle: their mindsets were built upon a notion that white Europeans epitomized civilization, whereas the indigenous people were ignorant and in some cases primitive. Moreover, Said argues that this is presented beautifully within Conrad’s extremely rich novella Heart of Darkness. He defends Conrad by stating that the interaction between Europe and America, on the one hand, imperialized the world, that these actions were animated and made explicit which he argues is ‘experienced by both sides’ and that Conrad should, therefore, be viewed as a ‘creature of his time’.

Robert Hampson, Professor of Modern Literature and Conradian editor of the Penguin edition of the novella, notes that the country Conrad had entered had, in its entirety been under the personal possession of King Leopold II of Belgium in 1885, under the guise of bringing ‘light to the dark continent’. Or however, how Conrad describes when he states that it was ‘the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience and geographical exploration’ (Conrad, 1946, p.17). Out of context, this quote shows straight away that Conrad was disturbed by what he was privy to during his maritime expeditions. However, Achebe argues that in this statement Conrad is merely projecting an image of Africa as ‘The other world, the antithesis of Europe and therefore, of civilization [...] mocked by triumphant bestiality’ (Achebe, p.252). However, Abdullatif Al-Khait states that Conrad’s exposure of the imperial west warrants merit and applause for displaying the horrors of the colonial mission, that it is in fact, not a period of ‘bringing light to the benighted savages, but perverts the West's own image of itself of light and civilization’. Achebe, however, pertains this to ‘Conrad’s residue of antipathy to black people’. If Conrad did indeed, have antipathy towards black people this is not displayed from the offset as his first description of said black people appear in the most gentle and caring tone.

Whilst describing his journey on board the French steamer, ‘featureless, as if still in the making’. Marlow describes his first encounter with the natives. It is fair to concur on Achebe’s argument of Marlow’s description as being derogatory when in doing so Marlow says: ‘You could see the whites of their eyeballs glistening, they shouted [...] their bodies streamed with perspiration; they had faces like grotesque masks’.

Herein, Conrad uses, according to Achebe, ‘a nice little vignette’ (Achebe, 1977, p.5) - ‘a descriptive explanation of how things ought to be - in their place’. However, what Achebe does not indicate or indeed acknowledge is that Marlow does not use derogatory words, he uses the words ‘Black fellows’. He further substantiates his awe of them in saying that ‘They were a great comfort to look at’. However, Guerric Debona accuses Conrad of masking his anti-semitic views, stating that ‘Heart of Darkness contains underlying racism and miscegenation’, furthermore, that there is a ‘darker more ambivalent side of modernism’ or what Fredric Johnson has called ‘schizophrenic writing’ where Conrad is concerned’. According to the OED, the definition of the word racism is a prejudice, discrimination or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior, if the belief is that Conrad was indeed a deceptive racist, after close examination of the text, attention should be drawn to the way in which Conrad describes the African peoples. As previously highlighted it is noticed that his first mention is ‘black fellows’. The next mention appears when Marlow describes the feeling of bewilderment between the two men glancing at one another when he uses the term ‘unhappy savages’, after such, the next mention comes with the description ‘black men’. It is also presented that Marlow moves more into keen thoughts of the natives when he describes them as ‘helpers’.

Heart of Darkness was first published as a three-part serial story printed in Blackwood’s magazine, during which time the British Empire was especially focused on African colonization and trade, or, as E.D. Morel states when he writes that the ‘paramount object of European rule in the Congo was the pillaging of its natural wealth’. One argument of this essay is that Conrad, who was at this time an expatriate, trying to gain citizenship, approached his writings with circumspection. Conrad uses the characters Kurtz and Marlow as vessels to voice his anti-imperialist views discreetly. Conrad centers Heart of Darkness around the ivory trade in the Congo free state, which is the heart of Africa - or how Conrad depicts in his title ‘Heart of Darkness’. Said comments that with the aid of Kurtz and Marlow Conrad wants us to see ‘Europeans performing acts of imperial mastery and will in (or about) Africa. The story Conrad wrote according to Jonah Raskin, was intended to be a criticism of colonialists in Africa, many of Conrad’s friends agreed. Hugh Clifford, writer and colonial administrator called it a ‘Study of the Congo’ while Edward Garnet described the novella as an ‘Impression taken from life of the conquest by the European whites of a certain portion in Africa, an impression in particular of civilizing methods of a certain great European trading company. Achebe also raises a concern that Conrad reduced the people to the status of creatures when he describes his sightings of them, initially we listen to Marlow describe the Black man:

One, with his chin propped [...] stared at nothing, in an intolerable and appalling manner [...] While I stood horror-struck, one of these creatures rose to his hands [...] went off on all-fours towards the river to drink [...] he lapped out of his hand, then sat [...] and after a time let his wooly head fall.

From this statement the argument can be presented that Achebe is justified in his offense to the descriptions given by Marlow when he uses the grim words ‘creature and wooly’ however, one notes that intertwined within these descriptions Marlow also states that

‘his brother [...] rested its forehead, as if overcome with a great weariness [...] and all about others were scattered in every pose of contorted collapse’ (p20). One simply feels that Conrad is not using his description in a derogatory tone but indeed, one of melancholy to the fellows that he witnesses as being exploited and it is one of many ways in which Conrad is using his novella as an expose. Furthermore, Said defends Marlow and argues that Marlow ‘acknowledges the tragic predicament of all speech'.

‘The man who is not able to develop and use his mind is bound to be the slave of the other man who uses his mind’ (Garvey, 1937).

The aforementioned statement draws attention to the Black man’s long and continuing burden, signifying the importance of emancipation and escaping slavery, or as Morel describes it within his poem ‘The Black Man’s Burden’ (1903) in response to Rudyard Kipling’s ‘White man’s burden’ (1899). ‘The white man has massacred the African in heaps [...] The African has survived, and it is well for the white settlers that he has’. Herein Morel surmises that it is not the White European who has sacrificed his life, it has always been the black man, Morel also writes an extremely poignant statement for writings created in 1903 when he writes ‘thus the African is really helpless against the gods of the white man’, he further notes within his poem that King Leopold II’s colony was exploitative and relied on slave labor, or as he states that ‘from 1891 until 1912, the paramount object of European rule in the Congo was the pillaging of its natural wealth to enrich private interests in Belgium’. Something that is wholeheartedly presented discreetly within Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Revisionist studies such as those by Edward Said and Chinua Achebe have linked Conrad’s Heart of Darkness to a historicized nineteenth century in which the white European regarded the Africans as ‘the other’. Due to the nature of these studies, Conrad’s work has been reviewed to that of ambiguous status, or as literary critic Perry Meisel states that the novella has ‘provided as many advantages as it has restrictions, due to its modernist nature’ (DeBona, 1994, p.17). In the words of Joseph Conrad, ‘my task which I am trying to achieve is by the power of the written word, to make you hear, make you feel [...] to make you see’.

Therefore the conclusion is reached that whilst Achebe’s writings do absolutely deserve a degree of merit, that Joseph Conrad is not a thoroughgoing racist and that he merely wished to expose the actual case of the facts, moreover to ‘bring it home to the minds and bosoms of the readers’ (Conrad, 1917). According to Eagleton, thoroughfares like Joseph Conrad were subjected to the redraw of scrutiny advising that, ‘Scrutiny redrew the map of English literature in ways from which criticism has never quite recovered.