Literature has been used for ages as a vehicle for expressing emotions and questioning social values. In the case of a country like the United Kingdom, it is not unusual to find footprints of its diverse multicultural background through many fiction works created by non-native English writers. One of them is Heart of Darkness, written by the Polish-British Joseph Conrad. However, 120 years after its publication, this novel still sparkles criticism about its treatment of racism.
Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, better known by his pen name Joseph Conrad, was born on December 3, 1857, in the Polish Ukraine. When Conrad was only 4 years old, his family was arrested and sent to live in the Russian province of Vologda for plotting against the Russian government. When Conrad’s parents died several years later, he was raised by an uncle in Krákow. He travelled to Marseilles when he was seventeen, where he spent 20 years working as a sailor. He signed on to the English merchant marine in 1878, and eight years later he became a British citizen. This job led him to travel to former British colonies like India, where he lived experiences that would later be reflected in his works of fiction. In 1890, he took command of a steamship in the Belgian Congo. This event was the main source of inspiration of his best well-known novels, Heart of Darkness.
The book tells the story of Marlow, a seaman and wanderer, who is in search of the successful ivory trader Kurtz. Travelling upriver to the heart of the African continent, Marlow eventually discovers how Kurtz has gained his position of power over the local people. This triggers the seaman to questioning the nature and values of Western civilisation. At first, the plot appears to introduce the readers to an insightful novel that denounces the devils of imperialism. Some passages are written in such a way that highlights Kurtz’s delusions of grandeur: ‘He [Kurtz] began with the argument that we whites, from the point of development we had arrived at, “must necessarily appear to them in the nature of supernatural beings – we approach them with the might of a deity”.’ The trader is therefore portrayed as the antagonist of the novel, who does not respect and dehumanises natives.
On the opposite side of the critics to this work, we found the response of Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe. In his lecture An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1975), he described this novel as ‘an offensive and deplorable book’ for his portrayal of Africans. Even Marlow, the intended admirable character, fails indeed in his descriptions: ‘…they shouted periodically together strings of amazing words that resembled no sounds of human language; and the deep murmurs of the crowd, interrupted suddenly, were like the responses of some satanic litany.’ This statement compares African languages to Satanism and non-human languages, while dehumanising natives again.
Marlow and Kurtz attitudes towards race can be seen as two sides of the same coin – while their views on imperialism differ, they both consider Africans as ‘savages’. In this sense, the novel is considered problematic for continuing spreading stereotypes. However, one must be aware of the historical context and time in which this novel was written. Nowadays people is usually more educated about what is culturally offensive. In conclusion, readers should be aware of the use of unacceptable terminology while focusing on the main aim of the writer: making a pioneering questioning of the Western role on imperialism.
Cristina Reguera Gomez
European London 