The denunciation of human privileges in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness

The denunciation of human privileges in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness

Mr. P. Balamurugan, Research Scholar, PG Dept. and Research Centre in English,

 Alagappa Govt. Arts College, Karaikudi.

Mr.I.Lenin, Assistant Professor, Alagappa University College of Education,  Karaikudi.

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is considered one of the greatest works in English literature. This novel dealt with theme of racism and negligence of human rights. The whole novel is about the Congo peoples’ sufferings and their miserable life. This paper aims to bring the details of how the Congo people were crushed by the white and how they had run their life by facing many problems like without getting enough food. They worked day and night in the mines under the custody of whites but they did not get any wages instead of losing their breath. The Congas were treaded like animals and their dead bodies were thrown in the hills. They were absolutely exploited. This is exactly against the human law, thus the people of Congo were not given any rights, since they were also human beings.  

More importantly, Heart of Darkness is not the only artistic work where the critics completely missed the racial context. A similar example can be seen in the early responses to the painting J M W Turner’s The Slave Ship. As Paul Gilroy has shown, the famous art-critic John Ruskin did not acknowledge the 'racial' content of the painting. Gilroy writes:

Thinking about England is being conducted through the 'racial' symbolism that artistic images of black suffering provide. These images were not an alien or unnatural presences that had somehow intruded into English life from the outside. They were an integral means with which England was able to make sense of itself and its destiny (Gilroy 84).

It should be noted that the early responses to the painting are from the 1840s and not exactly the same time-period as when Heart of Darkness was written. The responses, nevertheless, exemplify the same logic. Because racialism is seen as something natural, the critics do not think about it. Instead they read the novella for its aesthetic value, and spend a longer time discussing the literary qualities of the novella.

In the early responses to the novella Heart of Darkness no one even comments on the racism and “race” is completely ignored. Rather, the critics focus on the form of the novella. Some have commented on the adventure experience and how it is a philosophic presentation of the human character. It is also interesting to note that one even commented that there is no prejudice in it. This is not surprising considering that racism was not even a word and it shows that ‘race-thinking’ was seen as something so normal that no one even noticed it in the novella.

In his famous critique, “An Image of Africa”, Chinua Achebe takes a strong stand against Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. He claims that Conrad was a racist and that a novella which so depersonalizes a potion of the human race should not be considered a great work of art (Achebe 176). The following quote from Achebe is a good demonstration of his opinion:

The point of my observations should be quite clear by now, namely that Joseph Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist. That this simple truth is glossed over in criticisms of his work is due to the fact that white racism against Africa is such a normal way of thinking that its manifestations go completely unremarked (Achebe 176).

It was criticized for putting focus on the skin colour and blackness and upholding separatist binary oppositions. It was also criticised for not questioning the negative associations with 'blackness' (ibid. 81-82). More than ever it seemed important to create an African identity. Achebe was also part of the Pan-Africanism movement which aim was to unify native Africans and eliminate colonialism (Appiah 73). Interestingly enough Achebe begins his critique with a story of something he experienced one day as he was on his way home from the University of Massachusetts.

Then he asked me if I was a student too. I said no, I was a teacher. What did I teach? African Literature. Now that was funny, he said, because he knew a fellow who taught the same thing, or perhaps it was African history, in a certain Community College not far from here. It always surprised him, he went on to say, because he never had thought of Africa as having that kind of stuff, you know. By this time I was walking much faster (Achebe 169).

This is obviously something Achebe feels very strongly against. Achebe wants to change 10 the way Western psychology has “set Africa up as a foil to Europe” (Achebe 170). Creating an African identity is important to Achebe and he finds it to be one of his most important roles as a writer. Often in his life he has been asked the question “are you from Africa”, and has found that Africa seems to mean something to people. “Each of these tags has a meaning, and a penalty and a responsibility. All these tags, unfortunately for the black man, are tags of disability” (Appiah 74). Achebe asks the question “When you see an African what does it mean to a white man?” (ibid. 71). The European gaze is what created the African identity (ibid. 71). This might be why Achebe thinks that identity is something we must continue to reshape (ibid. 177). Achebe has claimed that:

I'm an Ibo writer, because this is my basic culture; Nigerian, Africa and writer . . . no, black first, then a writer. (…) I must see what it is to be black – and this means being sufficiently intelligent to know how the world is moving and how the black people fare in the world. This is what it means to be black. Or an African – the same (Appiah 73).

 Clearly, identity is an important aspect here. Contemporary African cultural life has been highly influenced by colonialism. Achebe wants to move past this situation and create a strong African identity. What Achebe seems to miss is the fact that he just like Conrad is highly influenced by the political influences, social and cultural norms of his time. This point brings us to the next critic Edward Said.

Conrad also wants to give the reader a sense of disorientation. What appears secure might not be secure at all (Said 29). An example of this is:

The policeman in the corner, for instance – is only slightly more secure than the white men in the jungle, and requires the same continuous (but precarious) triumph over an all-pervading darkness, which by the end of the tale is shown to be the same in London and in Africa (Said 29).

To Said, Conrad realized that “darkness” could be colonized or illuminated. Conrad's limitation is that even though he understood that colonialism in one way was just dominance and land-grabbing. He still could not understand that imperialism had to come to an end, so that the natives could live their lives free from European domination. “As a creature of his time, Conrad could not grant the natives their freedom, despite his severe critique of the imperialism that enslaved them” (Said 30). As Parry demonstrates in this quote:

although Said recognized “the scrupulously ethnocentric nature” of Faucault's undertaking, Hulme argues that he chose to emphasize the inherent possibilities of this work in the interests of extending to a global terrain the concept of discourse with the constant implication of textuality within networks of history, power, knowledge, and society (Parry 69).

However, that quote is not about Heart of Darkness. It demonstrates how Said historicizes and contextualizes texts. He looks at when the novella was written and problematizes it by stating that Conrad probably could not have presented anything other than an imperialistic world-view. One should not completely disregard the early critics who praised the novella's writing and prose. The beautiful language is without question an important reason why it is considered such a masterpiece today and why it was so praised when it was originally published.

I began to sense certain incomprehension in Achebe’s analysis of the pressures of form that engaged Conrad’s imagination to transform biases grounded in homogeneous premises. By form I mean the novel form as a medium of ,consciousness that has its deepest roots in an intuitive and much, much older self than the historical ego or the historical conditions of ego dignity that bind us to a particular decade or generation or century (Harris 86).

Conrad describes Africa as a very mean rough, underdeveloped and dangerous place. However there are also times where Conrad describes Africa as a beautiful place (though he does not explicitly state that he thinks it is beautiful), how then land is glistening and the sea is glittering. But even in these descriptions there are usually traces of evil or danger lurking such as a creeping mist and the jungle being so dark green it is almost black. However, it should be noted that even the stereotypes of Africa as a paradise belong to the same discourse of exoticism.

Conrad also shows a strong disdain for colonialism calling them conquerors and claiming that they just took what they wanted like violent robbers conducting murder on a great scale. “The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves” (Conrad10). Thus Joseph Conrad proved in many ways that the Gongo people’s life was completely smashed and exploited by the white. This novel may be dealt with racism; on the other hand it is exactly based on the violation of human rights. 

Works Cited:

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness: A Norton Critical Edition. 4th ed. Editor Armstong.

New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. Print.

Achebe, Chinua. “An Image of Africa” in Things Fall Apart: A Norton Critical Edition.

Ed Francis

Agatucci, Cora eds. African Timelines. Central Oregon Community College. 02 January

2010. Web 27 May 2010.

Armstrong, Paul B. Heart of Darkness: A Norton Critical Edition. 4th ed. New York: W.

W. Norton, 2006. Print.