Achebe’s critique on Conrad’s book Heart of Darkness really made me think differently about the story.
One of the biggest problems Achebe finds in Conrad’s writing is his prejudice
against people who are not from a western background. Achebe claims that Conrad
shows Africa in a light that is the antithesis or opposite of Europe. Basically,
that Europe is at the top when it comes to elegance, intelligence, and
refinement while Africa is a place for beasts. By portraying the Africans as
savages Conrad is most definitely helping to perpetuate stereotypes and
racism. Conrad definitely shows racism in his
writing but that was a common attitude to have during the time period in which
Conrad writes. This is important because it helps to show the backward attitudes
of the past in which we once lived. Simply, Conrad thought that his race was
superior and by portraying Africans as uncivilized people he would be
dehumanizing them. This dehumanization is vital when it comes to waging war. It
helps give soldiers an attitude that they are not killing actual people but
they are doing the world a favor by ridding it of these sub humans. Their
actions are justified if they are killing these people that are so completely
different from them. We see this in English attitudes towards Africans in Heart of Darkness and we also see this
in American attitudes towards the Vietnamese in Apocalypse Now. But, Achebe notes that one of Conrad’s biggest
worries is he may be related to these Africans because after all they are people. Hopefully, modern readers of
this book realize that we are all people and there is no need for dehumanizing
anybody. What the reader should take out of it, is that one can easily succumb to
greed and power like Colonial Kurtz and that morality connects all people regardless
of skin color.
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