IAN WAIT
HEART OF DARKNESS AND RACISM
herent properties, and they have a structural, rather than a merely
presence?
And
, I'k
b
'
f what are we to make of a "goo d" entIty
ecommg, 0 all things, a controlling part of a "bad"
I ~ a heart
ness? Heart of DaTkness was a fateful event in th h' one lIke darkand t.o announce it Conrad hit upon as hauntin e thlstory of fictionj
g, o~gh not as obstruslve, an oxymoron as Baudelaire h d f
du Mal,6
a or poetry WIth Les Fleurs
364
I'
illustrative, function.
The analogy is equally close as regards subject matter. Heart of
Darkness shares many of the characteristic preoccupations and
themes of the French Symbolists: the spiritual voyage of discovery,
especially through an exotic jungle landscape, which was a common symbolist theme, in Baudelaire's "Le Voyage" and Rimbaud's
365
• • •
"Bateau ivre/' for instancej the pervasive atmosphere of dream,
nightmare, and hallucination, again typical of Rimhaud; and the
very subject of Kurtz also recalls, not only Rimbaud's own spectacular career, but the typical symbolist fondness for the lawless, the
depraved, and the extreme modes of experience.
,
More generally, we surely sense in Heart of Darkness Conrad's
supreme effort to reveal, in Baudelaire's phrase about Delacroix,
"the infinite in the finite."4 This intention is suggested in Conrad's
title, The Symbolist poets often used titles which suggested a much
larger and more mysterious range of implication than their work's
overt subject apparently justified-one thinks of the expanding effect of T, S, Eliot's The Waste Land, for example, or of The Sacred
Wood. This centrifugal suggestion was sometimes produced by an
obtrusive semantic gap-a coupling of incongruous words or images that forced us to look beyond our habitual expectations; there
is, for instance, the initial puzzling shock of the titles of two of the
great precursive works of symbolism which appeared in 1873, Rimbaud's Une Saison en enfer, and Tristan Corbiere's "Les Amours
,
II
III
I
'
I
I
III
1'1
I
I'
!
I
1,1 ,
, I,
II
jaunes."5
Compared with the particularity of Conrad's earlier and more
traditional titles, such as Almayer's Folly or The Nigger of the "Narcissus", Heart of Darkness strikes a very special note; we are somehow impelled to see the title as much more than a combination of
two stock metaphors for referring to "the centre of the Dark Continent" and ((a diabolically evil person." Both of Conrad's nouns are
densely charged with physical and moral suggestions; freed from
the restrictions of the article, they combine to generate a sense of
puzzlement which prepares us for something beyond our usual expectation: if the words do not name what we know, they must be
asking us to know what has, as yet, no name. The more concrete of
the two terms, "heart," is attributed a strategic centrality within a
formless and infinite abstraction, "darlmess"; the combination defies both visualisation and logic: How can something inorganic like
darkness have an organic centre of life and feeling? How can a '
shapeless absence of light compact itself into a shaped and pulsing
4. Oeuvres completes, ed. Ruff (Paris, 1968), p. 404.
5. A Season i.n Hell and "The Yellow Loves" (both French). [Editor]
HUNT HAWKINS
Heart of Darkness and Racismt
In 1975 in a speech at the Uni
'
f
Image of Africa" Ch'
A h bvemty 0 Massachusetts titled "An
. "
, m u a c e e declared Conrad
H
raCIst. He has repeated this c h '
"
was a bloody
S
1
arge m an artIcle m the T
L
ary upp ement in 1980, a lecture in London' 19
tmes iterthe University of Texas in 1998
d .
. m
90, a speech at
.
.
' an m passmg reference .
I
IDte~e:vs. The original speech was ublished i s m severa
RemetV m 1977 and in a revised
~ . 1988n The Massachusetts
tion of essays Hopes and Imped' vertslOn m II h in Achebe's collectmensaswe t eth' d d"
Norton Heart of Darkness Since th
't h bITe IlIon of the
,
f'
.
en I as een reprinted
times, 0 ten m conjunction with C
d'
many
novel Things Fall Apart is also now f~~ra s lnovella. Ac.hebe's own
sti!~~n~; ~~~:~:'gI~ed
Heart of Darkness. The controversy
lnext. to
gone on for three decades and shows no signs of a~ /c ~at~on
a standard topic for school assi nments
d a mg. t as
impression that racism is the main orgeven th ann! ~as fostfe~ed
pOItarlce' C
d'
k
'
e 0 y, Issue 0 Iffistudi:~ wh~~r~e sd:vort' Ironically, it has given new life to Conh
"
n mg 0 narrow tern.
An Image
"Ac h e b e comes close to saying that Heart
h of
ld Africa,.
(,s ou cease bemg taught. Mter noting that it has been
s
literature-read
and taught and constantIy
.•'''aluatead
,
bypermanent
seriou
d
·" h
"TSonalizes
~ aca femhlcs, e asks whether a novel "which de...
a portion? t e human race, can be called a eat
of art.
My answer
gr
IItod
h IS: No, it cannot"
. FinallvJ' he ob'Jec ts agamst
ay p~r aps the most commonly prescribed novel in
WellIA:ielhh"bcelou;ri literature courses." In his later interviews how200~ ~ e 'd b clear he isn't calling for censorship. For e~ample
e sal a out Heart of Darkness, "I am not Ayatollah KhoTh.e .flowers of evil (French). [Editor]
Ongmal version published
"Th I
14.3 (1982): 163-71; u da~;d and :x~ue ~f RaCIS~ in Heart of Darkness," Conradiana
Norton Critical Edition PRe rinted b ensl~elJ.' reVIsed by the author especia:Jly for this
, are the author's.
.
p
y penOlSSlOn of Texas Tech University Press. Notes
366
HUNT HAWKINS
HEART OF DARKNESS AND RACISM
367
.
books , but they should be read
·
d 'bl'vein b annmg
meinl. I on t e Ie
b
d I t
h it "I Indeed
t'
the
novel
anne,
eac.
,
carefully. Far fr om wan Inhg
t'
that readers are passive re~
h'
eds on t e assump IOn
. ,
censors Ip proce
d
h'
h O uld stimulate active, cntIcal
ceptacles whereas goo teac ~nDg s k ess such reading is especially
I the case of Heart DJ ar n
.
d·
rea mg. n
..
h a dense complex text. On many tOPICS,
important beca~se It IS s~c
h t ar'e multiple, ambiguous, ambiva~
including race, It offers ~ews t a ultimately incoherent.
lent, confli~ting: an~ per ~ps :"::h of Heart of Darkness dehuman~
Achebe IS qUIte rIght t at
M I w often uses frankly deroga~
Afrj
Conrad's narrator, ar 0 ,
h
h
izes
cans..
.'
them At various points in t e story e
and ((rudimentary souls." He
tory language III descnbIll~,
th
as "savages
mggers,
b h .
f
re ers to em
'.
t their appearance or e aVlOr:
applies the following ~~jeci t~;~~fi °d' h" and "satanic." Achebe's
i<
))
"horrid" ug y
en IS ,
h
h
grotesque,
,
,
"t ems with Africans w ose u1980 article notes that the stbory e
dermined by the mind· . d 'tted in theory ut totally un
.
mamty IS a ~I
d the retty explicit animal Imagery
P
lessness of Its contexlt ~n
I' 't nimal comparisons are with
d'
't"2 Marows explCi a
,
f
surroun mg 1 .
d b
Thus the image Conrad projects 0
ants, hyenas, horses, an _ ees.
.
African life can hardly be called flattenng.
(I'
*
•
))
•
*
.
h b observes that Africans are barely presIn a related pomt, Ac e e C
d' stOl"V none of the African
· H rt if Darkness In onra s
~ j)
ent m ea 0
vVtth the exception of Kurtz's mistress_: no
characters has a name.
h We do not go mto
African appears for more than a futhll P~:~~~~n 'from their point of
. d f ny Africans to see e SI
f
'd
h
t e mm s 0 a l b ' g limited to a total of our pi _
view. In fact, they barely sPbea <., 'demth t Conrad failed to portray
,
It might e sal
a
I
gm sentences.
little of their culture, having spent ess
Africans because he knew
tl in the company of white
.
ths in the Congo, mos Y
I
h
t an SIX m~n
I d
f
African language. In his nove s
men, and WIthout know e ge 0 any
.
s he does give int in the Far East where he spent some SIX ye~r , h
"
se
h'IS 1896 story set
,Ill
ki m t e
.
dividual portraits. ,StiII'
)) Conrad does have spea ng,
p
Outpost 0 f rogr~ss,
d
of such characters in
,
And he imaginatIvel~ crea~es ~zer:s here he spent less than
tromo, his novel set III ~atm d e~lCa w d neglect of Africans '
k So his comparatIVe re uction an
wee .
h
b en deliberate.
Heart of Darkness r:n~st a:r; he
t his Things Fall Apart as a
Achebe has exphcltl~ SaI
e WIO e b t it also answers Heart
I t Joyce Cary's Mtster Jo hnson, u
f
lb'
P
Y 0
A c h eb e )s nove1 about the British takeover
a an o.
Darkness.
.
"
lage at the end of the nineteenth century gIVes a
h Pro fil e 0 f Chinua Achebe,
. M aYd Jaggl,'''Stonlteller
of the Savanna:
1. Quoted In
'}Guardian (18 November 20~,O)..
L't
Supplement 1 February 1980, 113.
2. ChinuaAchebe, "Viewpoint, Tunes ~ erary
,
carefully balanced picture of an African culture. Moreover, it provides a context for, if it does not exactly condone, some practices
that Conrad presents as savage and disturbing. The human sacrifice of Ikemefuna is dictated by the Oracle. And Okonkwo has
brought home five human heads from war, drinking from one on
great occasions. For many years Conrad's Heart of Darkness may
well have been the only book set in Africa that students were assigned. Thus it is important that they read Things Fall Apart and
other works to get a fuller, more accurate portrayal.
It would be a mistake, nonetheless, to read Achebe, any more
than Conrad, as representing all of the cultures and situations on
the continent. Achebe's Ibo live at approximately the same time but
more than a thousand miles from the upper Congo depicted by
Conrad. Therefore, it would be wrong simply to see Things Fall
Apart as the truth concealed behind Heart of Darkness, When Conrad visited the upper Congo in 1890, it had been devastated by both
Belgian exploitation and thirteen years of Arab slaving run by Tippo
rib, a coastal trader whom Henry M. Stanley had transported to
Stanley Falls (Conrad's ((Inner Station"). Thus the tribes of the
region-specifically, the Bangala, the Balolo, the Wangata, the
Ngombe, the Bapoto, and the Babango-were a great deal more disordered and violent than tribes in other parts of Africa. When
George Washington Williams visited in the same year as Conrad, he
was appalled by the Belgians and became the first total opponent
of King Leopold's regime. But at the same time he was shocked by
the Africans. In an open letter of protest to Leopold, Williams rethat ((Cruelties of the most astounding character are pracby the natives, such as burying the slaves alive in the grave of
dead chief." He also said, "Between 800 and 1,000 slaves are sold
be eaten by the natives of the Congo State annually.)J Thus, alWilliams denounced the cruelty of Leopold's soldiers, one
complaints against the regime was, ironically, that it was "dein the moral, military, and financial strength necessary to
"3
is uncertain to what extent Conrad may have witnessed any
practices. He made no mention of them in his Congo diaries,
he did later tell Arthur Symons, "I sawall those sacrilegious
"4 Unlike most other Europeans, however, Conrad did not
such rites, even conceived at their worst, as a justification for
subjugation. In a protest letter sent to Roger Casement in
Washington Williams, "An Open Letter to His Serene Majesty Leopold II," in
of Chicago
248 [see thc selection in this Norton Critical Edition].
"A Set of Six" in A Conrad Memorial Library· The Collection of George
City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, 1929), p, 170,
I,h" U", Franklin, George Washil1gton Williams: A Biography (Chicago: U
368
HUNT HAWKINS
1903 as a contribution to the fledgling Congo refonn movement)
Conrad declared,
Barbarism per se is no crime deserving of a heavy visitation;
and the Belgians are worse than the seven plagues of Egypt in~
somuch that in that case it was punishment sent for a definite
transgression; but in this the Upato man is not aware of any
transgression, and therefore can see no end to the infliction. It
must appear to him very awful and mysterious; and I confess
that it appears so to me too. 5
Conrad became a staunch, if complicated, opponent of European
expansion. Heart of Darkness offers a powerful indictment of imperialism, hoth explicitly for the case of King Leopold and implicitly
(despite Marlow's comments on the patches of red) for all other
European powers. As Marlow says, HAll Europe contributed to the
making of Kurtz." He declares, '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, is not a pretty
thing." His story graphically demonstrates how ugly it could get.
In his 1975 speech Achebe did not mention Conrad's antiimperialism, but in his 1988 revised version, he concluded, "Conrad saw and condemned the evil of imperial exploitation." Conrad
criticized imperialism on many grounds, one being the hypocrisy of
the "civilizing mission." In liThe White Man's Burden," published
in 1899, the same year as Heart of Darkness, Rudyard Kipling
posited that colonizers selflessly and thanklessly better the lives of
their "new-caught, sullen peoples,/Half devil and half child," coaxing them from the bondage of their "loved Egyptian night." The
trope here is temporal, conceiving Europeans (and the Americans
Kipling was encouraging to take over the Philippines) as adults
advanced while non-Europeans were children and primitive. This
trope, which provided the chief ideological support for late
teenth-century imperialism, derived largely from Charles n"rwin',
theory of evolution. Darwin did not take up the question of
tion of human societies in his Origin of Species in 1859, but in
Descent of Man in 1871, he concluded, ({There can hardly be
doubt that we are descended from barbarians. The astortisl'ID<'"
which I felt on first seeing a party of Fuegians on a wild and
shore will never be forgotten by me, for the reflection at
rushed into my mind-such were our ancestors."6 The co-found.
of evolutionary theory, Alfred Russel Wallace, was more explicit.
5. The Collected LetteT~; of Joseph Conrad, eds. Fredenck Karl and Laurence Dayjes
bridge: Cambridge UP, 1988),3:96.
6. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (New York.
pleton, 1896), 618.
HEART OF DARKNE{;JS
n .
, AND .llACISM
369
· artIe
. Ie "T h e Origin of H
hIS
R
published in 1864 W. 11 uman aces and the Antiquity of M "
. I
, a ace argues that 0 .
h
an
surVlva and natural selection I!the b
wmg .to t e struggle for
race would therefore iner'
~tter and hIgher specimens of
would give way and successlealsed~n spread, the lower and brutal
ve y Ie out and th
.
ment 0 f mental organization WOUld
'
at rapId advance_
lowest races of man so far h
h ochcur, which has raised the very
.h
a ave t e rutes
d .
WIt scarcely perceptible m difi'
... an ,m conjunction
.
0
catIOns of fo
h d
wond erf u I mtellect of th G
.
rm, as eveloped the
.
h
e ermamc races"7 B th
d
nmeteent century this view f h
.
Y e en of the
had become firmly entrenche: uman social and racial evolution
.
There is no doubt that Conr'ad .
tionary trope in Hearl 0.( D k mcorporated the temporal evolu~
•
I
:J
ar ness. Marlow d
'b d h· .
upnver as 'traveling back to the earl'
. es~n e
IS Journey
and the Africans as'.:" t he
h'
. lest begmmngs of the world"
.
pre Istonc man" B t
h
h
C
.
u rat er t an using
t hIS trope to support imp . I·
ena Ism
onrad
.
d
site. First of all, he points out th ' E
uses It to 0 the oppoown ideals as civilizers In I tt at ur~peans don't live up to their
.
a e er to hI
hI· h
wood, Conrad said of his p .
"Th s p~ IS er, William Black~
d
I
roJect,
e cnminal'ty f· ffi
an pure se fishness when tacklin th
....
lOme ciency
justifiable idea."8 In the st
h g e cl\'lhzmg work in Africa is a
When Marlow's aunt app~ryud e. sugg~stli~ the)deals are mere sham.
s Impena sm for II
.
h
mi IIions from their horrid wa s J!
"
weanmg t ose igCompany was run for profit" ThY' hIe I ventured to hint that
e on y 'impro d
.
.
see, suc h as the firem
.
ve speCImens"
'oxplc)it'LticlTI
an,
are
parodIes.
Oth'
.
,~
and violence. Conrad
I I erwlse, we Just see
h·
very c ear y expr
of E uropean cruelty.
esses IS con~
ship firing blindly into :~ such ~emorable scenes as the
assumed to have started :h co~tment, the beating of the
carriers found dead i h e r e at the Central Station
n arness on the c
I
'
a bullet-hole in his for h d
aravan trai, the man
Ipil:grilns" sho f
fr
e. ea as a part of road "upkeep" th
o mg am theIr steamer the c
.'
e
chain-gang bUilding th
'1'
rew not bemg given
Imlluishiing in the "g
f d ehral way; and the contract-laborers
rove 0 eat "
addition to pointing out th
!Icivilizing mission"
e ypocnsy WIth whIch the ideals of
were espoused ConI' d
h
h
a may ave quest e validity of those ideals th~
report, written while Kurtz was Sti~:elves .. Marlow says of
Th
.
n emIssary of progress
e opemng paragraph h ever . h
'
, In t e light of later informa~
tion, strikes me now as'
th
ommous He beg
.h h
at We whites, from th
.
d
an Wit t e argument
e pomt 0 evelopment we had arrived
aUf
h
0:v
.
. .
.
f
Wallace, "The Origin of Human Races d h
"
of Natural Selection' "Journal if ~t ~ e AntiqUIty of Man Deduced
.
,
'
0
nt Topological Society of London
Conrad,2:139_40.
370
HUNT HAWKINS
at, "must necessarily appear to them [savages] in the nature of
supernatural beings-we approach them -with the might as of a
deity. . . . By the simple exercise of our will we can exert a
power for good practically unbounded."
The ideals themselves carried a hubristic arrogance. Edward Said,
and before him Wilson Harris, have observed that Conrad's very
style with its first~person narrators, framed narratives, time jumps,
fractured sentences, and addiction to adjectives upsets the notion
of absolute truths assumed by the ((civilizing mission."9 Both fault
Conrad, probably correctly, for not shovving non~European resistance and not imagining an alternative to imperialism, but both applaud him for attacking European domination. Conrad likely didn't
show more of the Africans because he wanted to focus on the Eu~
ropeans. As Abdul JanMohamed notes, iiDespite what writers like
Chinua Achebe say about the denigration of Africans in Heart of
Darkness, Africans are an incidental part, and not the main objects
of representation, in the novena." l
Conrad also used the trope of evolution in Heart of Darkness to
attack imperialism by suggesting that Europeans in colonies could
slide backwards on the evolutionary scale. Kurtz is the main exam~
pIe. In Africa the wilderness whispers to Kurtz ((things about himself that he did not know." His "forgotten and brutal instincts" are
awakened. And he passes beyond '(the bounds of permitted aspira~
tions," indulging his greed and lust, placing the heads of iirebels"
on posts around his house, presiding at "midnight dances ending
with unspeakable rites" (probably human sacrifices), and committing the hubris of setting himself up as a god, Marlow himself feels
the temptation to go ashore for iia howl and a dance" though he re~
sists it. And while no match for Kurtz, the other Europeans have
become animalistic. The uncle of the manager has a ((short flipper
of an arm" and the members of the Eldorado Exploring Expedition
are "less valuable animals" than their donkeys.
Conrad's effective use of the evolutionary trope against imperialism, however, can still be described as racist since it continues to
assume Africans are at the low end of the scale. Thus Achebe finishes his sentence, iiConrad saw and condemned the evil of imperialist exploitation but was strangely unaware of the racism on which
it sharpened its iron tooth." Similarly, Patrick Brantlinger observes,
«Heart of Darkness offers a powerful critique of at least some mani9 See Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York Knopf, 1993), and Wilson Harris,
"The Frontier on Which Heart of Darkness Stands," Research in African Literatures, 12:1
(Spring 1981), 86-93.
I. Abdul JanMohamed, "The Economy of Manichean Allegory: The Function of Racial D~'
ference in Colonialist Literature" in Race, Writing, and Difference, ed, Henry LowS
Gates Jr. (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1986), p, 90,
HEART OF DARKNESS AND RACISM
371
festations
of
imperialism
d
'
,
..
an raCIsm as It si
It
I
that cntIque in ways that
b h
mu aneous y presents
can e c aracte' d
I
and racist."2 In a number f
nze on y as imperialist
get beyond the evolutiona; tassaged however, Conrad reaches to
tainly and ambiguously,
rope an racism, though often uncer~
Fran~es B, Singh has argued that Co
d'
.
and theIr evil is what has co
t d K nra Viewed Afncans as evil
"
. rrup e
urtz She
'
,
h
' '
mamtams Heart of
D arkness carries suggestio th
is to be associated with Afr,ns atht e evIl which the title refers to
lcans t eir custom
d h '
Af'
s, an t elr rites" and
t h at Conrad would have us b I"
e leve ncans ((have th
·
t h e w h Ite man's heart black "3 F
h
e power to tum
makes clear that Kurtz's c'
o,r t e most part, however, Conrad
orruptlOn comes not f
Afr'
rom
lcans but
fr o~ E urope and from Kurtz himself. K
stramts provided in Euro e b
.
uru no longer has the rep
Since he is Ilhollow at t~ coy p~hlcemkien and gossiping neighbors.
'b
re, ac ng intern I
.
susceptl Ie to the whisper f th
'Id
a restramts, he is
M I
0
e WI erness The d I 'Id
as ar ow realizes by the end 0 f th
.'
. at( W1 erness,
lurking in the streets of Bru 1
dehstory, IS not Just in Africa but
overing
h Th
sse s an
deed , it is cosmic as shown in a
,over t e
ames, In ~
Earth suddenly seemed shru k t senhten,ce m the manuscript: ({The
h
f
.
n ot eSlzeofape
..
,
eart 0 an Immense darkness." It is K"
a spmnmg III the
lake tribe rather than the oth
urtz who has corrupted his
does suggest the Africans w e~.waYdaro~nd, At one point Conrad
He says Kurtz took a seat I' ors lppe evIl prior to this corruption
amongst th d 'I f h
'
only time Conrad appll'es th
d '( e eVl sot e land." But the
e wor satan'" t Afri
nection with their chanting
K
' b IC 0
cans is in con~
I
I
as urtz IS eing take
C
arge y resis ts the lead of Ki I'
h
n away. onrad
devil" H t k
. P 109, W 0 called non~ Europeans 'Ih If
,
e a es care to dIstinguish b t
h
a ~
what the Africans do and h'I h fie ween w at Kurtz does and
mer, he finds little ~th th: ~ ~t e ~d,s great fault with the forwhen he wrote: ilBa b '
a e~,
lO his letter to Casement
r ansm per se IS no crime J! C d '
Darkness exonerates the Africans b h '
,onra lO Heart of
seemed at one bound to h
b y aVlng Marlow say of Kurtz iiI
ave een transported . t
I'
region of subtle horrors wh
lO 0 some ightless
I' ,
, e r e pure, uncomplicated
,us.lv__inre Ief, being something that had
. h sava~ery was a
the
sunshine,"
a ng t to eXlst-obvi~
a
Still, while resisting the comma
Conrad continues t
n conte~porary demonization of
and "barbarian" H
0 pl~ce them m the category of ((save
text where he pr'aise: t1: Afris
sl.lghtlYffurthhe.r in several places in
, K
'
cans or t elI ener
'tal'
d
urtz s mistress is liSUp b
'
gy, VI lty, an
er '" magmficent ... stately." The
Patrick Brantlinger R l if D 1m
1~8~)op, ;~7 ess,' British Literature and Imperialism 1830-1914
(Ithaca' Cornell
Pranees Singh "Th C I '
J,
'
44,
, e 0 oniallst Bias of Heart of Darknes~'"
, Co nrad'tana 10 ( 1978): 43,
UP,
I
I
I
I
,I
372
HUNT HAWKINS
black paddlers off the coast have "a wild vitality, an intense energy
of movement." And Conrad has Marlow commend the cannibals in
his crew as i'fine fellows ... men one could work with." Moreover,
the cannibals possess a mysterious inner restraint in not eating the
whites on board even though they are starving. Thus, in a novel
that is a relentless, skeptical inquiry into the basis of moral behavior, one that questions morality founded on principles or providence, the cannibals with their f'inborn strength" provide one of
the few signs of hope. All of these examples, however, are undercut by phrases that continue to associate Africans with the uncivilized. The mistress mirrors the wilderness. The paddlers are
«natural." The honor of the cannibals is ((primitive." Nonetheless,
Conrad does accord them a certain respect. In contrast -with the
hypocrisies of Europe, they are "true" and «wanted no excuse for
being there."
Conrad goes even further in a number of passages where he has
Marlow recognize, or almost recognize, or struggle to recognize the
humanity of the Africans. Unlike Kurtz, Marlow resists the temptation to exploit Africans. Instead he does what little he can to help
by giving his biscuit to the man in the "grove of death" and by
pulling his whistle so' the "pilgrims" cannot slaughter Kurtz's followers. As a result of his experience, Marlow seems to overcome his
prejudices enough to acknowledge the IIclaim of distant kinship')
put upon him by his helmsman through their shared work and
shared mortality. Getting to Kurtz, he says, was not worth the loss
of this life. Marlow urges his audience to recognize IItheir humanity-like yours." But these examples are also ambiguous. Marlow
can't say whether the person he hands the biscuit is a man or boy
because II-with them it's hard to tell." The sentence after IItheir humanity-like yours" consists of a single word: CiUgly." And Marlow
quickly throws the body of his helmsman overboard because,
amongst the cannibals, a "second-rate helmsman" might become a
"first-class temptation." This wavering may be a sign of inner struggle or simply indicate ongoing ambivalence.
The most impressive steps Marlow takes toward recognition,
ones overlooked by Achebe, are when he turns the tables. He imagines that Englishmen would soon clear out the road between Deal
and Gravesend if African colonizers started catching them to carry
heavy loads. And he realizes that in Africa drums may have "as
found a meaning as the sound of bells in a Christian country."
where drums represent savagery, and Marlow!s excited re';pame
tells him he's kin to Africans because he also contains primal
but in this passage he sees they are kin to him because they
have reverence.
Achebe dismisses Conrad's expressions of sympathy for su,ffeJring
HEART OF DARKNESS AND RACISM
373
AFricans as "bleeding heart sentiments" S
.
as I'liberalism" Marlow's react"
th· II peclfically, he describes
Marlow doesn't fully recognize l~~ ~ e .grove of dea~h." Perhaps
ingAfricans, though his statemen~ J::::~:~;,,~nd equalIty ~,f the dyrage at the waste of the Belgian
.
orror-struck and his
s seem SIncere en
h And
h aps one can fault Marlow for th·nl .
f
oug .
perhand over a biscuit and to tell h' lung 0 nothing better to do than
boat on the Thames 0
lIS story years later to four men on a
f I C
. ne can a so perh
t
d
aps au t onrad for not doing more himself when h
e re ume to Engla d f
.
.
horrors of the Congo Arth C
n a ter wltnessmg the
.
ur onan Doyle and M k" . b
.c
ar .twam
oth
became actively involved in the C ongo R elOrm
As
..
wrote books condemning Leo old A a
. SOCIation and
Casement, which Conrad anO\~ed t·o b~ : from hIS 1903 .letter to
tributed, he declined to becom f th prolduced and WIdely dish
e ur er mvoved C
d'
. asement, owever, forgave him because he
fighting an almost incapacitatin~a~ ee~ I~ work o~ Nostromo and
the C.R.A., Edmund Dene Mo espan. asement s co-founder of
1909 after the Congo h d breI, . also forgave Conrad and in
that Heart of Darkness, W~ich ;:~c~~~pped fr~~ Leopol~, declared
a
Marlow's, was the IImost 0
f I h. muc arger audIence than
ject."4
p wer u t mg ever ""Titten on the sub-
RaCIsm in Conrad's time was end
. .& p
.
was so assumed that the word dId :::c. S ~te~ Flrchow notes, it
sensitIvity to raCIsm came fro h
. yet eXI.st. Part of Conrad's
the end of his life, he spoke E~ li:~ be~~ subject to it hImself To
g
t
~u.ch a heavy accent that
he was dIfficult to understand
g
glophIle, Conrad's sense of extr~me
/n many ways an Anstory IIAmy Foster" In which
E
~ lena IOn IS suggested by his
southern England after a sht:re~~ ~opean IS washed ashore in
of his stran elan ua
~
.an presumed msane because
lected him;s IIno~ ofg:~rEr~~~~h(2Vl2s)It?'lrskto Cponlrahd In Kent recol.
, lea OIS jew"(40) "h
conventIOnal stage Hebrew" (67) "s· " "( )" .
' t e
isms" (104)"
0 .
' Imlan 96, onental manner
, very nental indeed" (109) "
I I
'(113)"
0
' spectacu ar y a for
, an nental face" (lIS) ((
M
"like a monkey" (138) 6 Whil c' seml- ongolian" (126),
..
.
e onrad may ha
d
racIst attItudes himself, he aCIdly attacked h' ve :xpr:sse
Alt:f.u
p~~~aps ~ost c1~arlY In his Malayan nove';: ~~::~~: Sl~O~:
basisc~~ ~::~: s~{~nw:~tl:r~~n:~~i%~m :uperion~ solely
in An Outcast of the Islands Wh
g. xample IS Peter
.
en WIllems falls in love
E~mund Dene Morel, HIS/OJ)' of the Con 0 R efr:
1968
) mn Movement, ed. William Roger Louis
~n Je~ Stengers (London: OxforJ UP
et~~ Flrcho w, Envisioning Africa. Racism a ,p. 2050.. .
n::
"Qess (~exington. U of Kentucky P, 2000)
Imperlaltsm tn Conrad)s "Heart of DarkUotations taken from To> h C
diP ..
(Iowa City' U of Iowa P,
anra: Inte11lwws and Hecollecfions, ed. Martin Ray
·19§b).
374
HUNT HAWKINS
HEART OF DARKNESS AND RACISM
with Omar's daughter, Aissa, he feels he is "surrendering. to ,a .,:ild
creature the unstained purity of his life, of his race, of hIs cI~hz~~
tion." Later, after the love is gone, Willems cannot stand A'issa s
staring at him. He calls her eyes lithe eyes of a savage; of a damned
I half-Arab half-Malay. They hurt me! I . am white!
swear
mongre"
b' I 1"7
to you I can't stand this! Take me away. I am w~~te! All W lte" .
~en Achebe revised ilAn Image of Mrica, he de-AnghcIzed
"bloody racist" to "thoroughgoing racist." We must ask, though,
how thoroughgoing Conrad was. And we must distinguish de~ees
and kinds of racism. Whatever may be said of Conrad, he certamly
did not share the most extreme racism of his time. He did not ~sh
the annihilation of all non-Europeans. But Achebe seems to thmk
so. In his original version Achebe compared Conrad to. iiAlI th.ose
men in Nazi Germany who lent their talent to the servIce of.~ru~
lent racism." Achebe removed this sentence in his 1988 reVIsIOn,
but in his interview in 2000 when again denying the value of Con~
rad's work, he said, i'I've not encountered any good art that promotes genocide."g
..
The almost inevitable trajectory of Social DarWInISm was genocide. Darwin himself concluded in The Descent of Man: "At some
future period not very distant as measured by centuries, the civi~
lized races of'man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the
savage races throughout the world'· (156). Alfred Russel Wallace
end e d h I·s 1864 article by saving
)~ , "the higher-the more
d mtellecd
JJ
tual and moral-must displace the lower and more degra e races
(clxvix). Eduard von Hartmann in his 1869 Philosophy of the Unconscious, a book Conrad read, wrote that it wasn't humane to pro~
long Hthe death struggles of savages who are on the verge of
extinction .... The true philanthropist, if he has comprehended the
natural law of anthropological evolution, cannot avoid desiring an
acceleration of the last convulsion, and labor for that end."9 And in
1894 in Social Evolution Benjamin Kidd observed, (The AngloSaxon has exterminated the less developed peoples with which he
has come into competition."l
The man in Heart of Darkness who writes UExterminate all the
brutes!" is of course Kurtz. He may only be referring to his la~e
tribe, but pretty clearly he's referring, in the spirit of the ~ocl.al
Darwinists to all Africans. His statement echoes that of Carh~r In
uAn Outpo~t of Progress," who voiced "the necessity of extermmat-
ing all the nigg~rs before the country could be made habitable."2,
Kurtz .scrawls h.Is statement at the bottom of his report for the In~
ternatIOnal S~clety for the Suppression of Savage Customs as if it
were the logIcal outcome of that proTect the 'ieYTlosition of
h d JJ I '
I
J,
"Lr
a
met ~. t s unc ear how much Conrad was warning against actual
geno~l~e. He Was certainly familiar with the theories of the Social
DarWll1lsts, but they had not yet been put deliberately in practice,
although Europeans had already wiped out several native popula~
tions through disease and displacement. In the Congo somewhere
between hvo and ten million Africans were killed during the
twenty-th~ee ~ears of King Leopold's rule but not through a policy
of extermmatlOn. They died through the brutality of forced labor
reprisals, and privation. But in October 1904, when the Herer~
tribe in Southwest Africa resisted German colonization, General
Adolf von Trotha gave orders for all eighty thousand of them to be
killed. ~ver t~e next two years the Germans succeeded nearly com~
pletely 111 .doll1g so and a new word entered their vocabulary:
Konzentratwnslager or concentration camp. In his 19 I 5 essay
IiPoland Revisited," Conrad observed that the Germans were "with
a consciousness of superiority freeing their hands from all moral
bonds, anxious to take up, if I may express myself so the 'perfect
• b d '''3 H·IS words now seem prescient, but ' they weren't
man s ur en.
really. The 'iperfect man's burden" was simply an extension of the
liwhite man's burden," and the genocides of the twentieth century
had already begun.
The las.ting polit~cal legacy of Heart of Darkness, more than any
confirmatIOn o~ raCIsm, has been its alarm over atrocity. Its title has
entered our leXIc.on as code for extreme human rights abuses, usu~
ally those commItted by whites in non Western countries but also
those committed by non~whites and those committed in Europe.
for example the titles of just three recent books: Jacques
In~o th~ Ifeart of Darkness: Confessions of Apartheid's Assas~
Tuntzs Confronting the Heart of Darkness: An Interna~
Symposium on Torture in Guatemala, and Ferida Durakovic's
of poems titled simply Heart of Darkness about the Serbian
of Sarejevo and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. Durakovic thanks
Conrad, who realized long before others that darkness had
and the heart had darkness."4 Far from condoning genoConrad clearly saw humanity's horrific capacity and gave it a
L
7. Joseph Conrad, An Outcast of the Islands (Ncw York Doubleday; Page, 1924), pp 80,
271.
h"
8. Quoted by Jaggi in "Storyteller of the Savanna..
.
.
9. Eduard von Hartmann, Philosophy of the UnconscfOus (1869, London.
1893),2.12.
kG P P
• S ,
1. Benjamin Kidd, Social Evolution (1894; rpt. New Yor:
. . utnams on,
p.49.
375
{~~f)h,p.Conrad,
lOS. "An Outpost of Progress" in Tales of Unresi (New Yorlc Doubleday, Page,
{~~f)h' p.Conrad,
147. "Poland Revisited" in Notes on Life and Letters (London: John Grant,
Ferida DurakoviC, Heart of Darkness (Fredonia, NY: VVhite Pine Press, 199B), p. 109
CHINUA ACHEBE
AN IMAGE OF AFRICA
. h an empty water gourd and his
the long grass near the path, VVlt
2
336
long staff lying by his side." I d
d s not make up an ordinary
'
must acknow e ge, oe
b 9
All t h IS,
one
1"
the letter of Novem er ,
light travelogue. T~ere is no li~~ e lIon~i~: after returning from the
1891, Conrad recelV~d ~ro~ ~ g~trd and seriously depressed: ((I
Congo, and while P YSlca y 1 s~ ~ t mperament you ought to
am sure tha: w~th you~ me :~~o 0 :ssi~istic conclusions. I advise
avoid all medItatIOns w~lch ~ef h P
and to cultivate cheerful
you to lead a more actwe h e t an ev~r
d lacking ''The
"2 U
' I guage on certam pages, an
habits.
ne~~n In anm '(Heart of Darkness" nevertheless reSecret Sharer s econa dY' k
dit tions in literature, and one of
mains one of the great ar me a
t
the purest expressions of a melancholy temperamen .
CHINUA ACHEBE
An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's
Heart of Darknesst
lki one day from the English DeIn the fall of 1974 I was wa ng
ki g lot. It was
'ty
of
Massachusetts
to a par n
'
partment at th e U mvers} h
d friendliness to passing
. suc as encourage
a fine autumn mornmg
h'
in all directions, many of
strangers .. Brisk youngster.s w~:~r fi~~:~h of enthusiasm. An older
them o~vlOusly freshmen m I turned and remarked to me how very
man gomg the same way as
d Th n he asked me if I was a
e
young they came these days, I agree , Wh t d'd I teach? African
I 'd 0 I was a teac h er.
a I
II
student too. Sal n,
h ' d because he knew a fe ow
literature. Now that was funny, e ~al "t was Mrican history, in a
who taught the same thing, or pefr afPs 1 here It always surprised
C
'ty College not ar r o m ·
Af
certain ommum
h
had thought of rica as
him, he went on to say, becaus~ e n~v;r this time I was walking
having that kind of stuff, you h' ow,
II behind me: "I guess
I heard 1m say na y,
ter "Oh well"
muc h f as.
,
fi d
"
I have to take your course to dn out. touching letters from high
A few weeks later I receive tw~ v~ry h -bless their teacherschool children in Yonkers, New or , w 0
l
h
ad Lifo a nd Letters (1927),1:148.
k
2. G. Jean-Aubry, Josep hC~19'88' Ih'·'d Norton Critical Editlon of Heart ()f Df"'M""",hPP
..
Revised version for t e
IT
,
e at the University 0
assa .
t 251-62. Originally delivered as a Chancehllors Lbefth:d under the title "An Image of
Febmanr 1975 ten pu IS
b"
of the au,
LJ.
'
1977)' 782-94 Used ypemussIOn
setts, Am h erst, o n18.
Africa" in The Mas.~achu5eU.s Retn~, 1.~ ( t th 1977 v~rsion IS given in the noteS. Un~
thor.VVhenAchebc'srcvisionsareSlglll. cah " e
.
less indicated, the other not~sdabe the .~u~eoh:d never thought of Africa as having that
1 "Now that was funny, he sal, ecaus
. lund of stuff, you know" [1977].
337
had just read Things Fall Apart. One of them was particularly
happy to learn about the customs and superstitions of an African
tribe,
I propose to draw from these rather trivial encounters rather
heavy conclusions which at first sight might seem somewhat out of
proportion to them. But only, I hope, at first sight.
The young fellow from Yonkers, perhaps partly on accollnt of his
age but I believe also for much deeper and more serious reasons, is
obviously unaware that the life of his uwn tribesmen in Yonkers,
New York, is full of odd cllstoms and superstitions and, like everybody else in his culture, imagines that he needs a trip to Africa to
encounter those things.
The other person being fully my own age could not be excused
on the grounds of his years. Ignorance might be a more likely reason; but here again I believe that something more willful than a
mere lack of information was at work For did not that erudite
British historian and Regius Professor at Oxford, Hugh Trevor
Roper, also pronounce that African history did not exist?
If there is something in these utterances more than youthful inexperience, more than a lack of factual knowledge, what is it?
Quite simply it is the desire-one might indeed say the need-in
Western psychology to set Africa up as a foil to Europe, as a place
of negations at once remote and vaguely familiar, in comparison
with which Europe's own state of spiritual grace will be manifest.
This need is not new; which should relieve us all of considerable
responsibility and perhaps make us even willing to look at this phenomenon dispassionately. I have neither the wish nor the competence to embark on the exercise with the tools of the social and
biological sciences but more simply in the manner of a novelist responding to one famous book of European fiction: Joseph Conrad's
Heart of Darkness, which better than any other work that I know
displays that Western desire and need which I have just referred to.
Of course there are whole libraries of books devoted to the same
purpose but most of them are so obvious and so crude that few
people worry about them today. Conrad, on the other hand, is undoubtedly one of the great stylists of modem fiction and a good
story-teller into the bargain. His contribution therefore falls auto, matically into a different class-permanent literature--:-read and
taught and constantly evaluated by serious academics. Heart of
Darkness is indeed so secure today that a leading Conrad scholar
, has numbered it "among the half-dozen greatest short novels in the
English language."3 I will return to this critical opinion in due
Achebe's great novel of Africa (1959). [Editor]
Albert J. Guerard, Introduction to Heart of Darkness (New York: New American Library,
1950), p. 9.
338
CHINUA ACHEBE
course because it may seriously modify my earlier suppositions
about who mayor may not be guilty in some of the matters I will
now raise.
Heart of Darkness projects the image of Mrica as "the other
world/' the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization, a
place where man's vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally
mocked by triumphant bestiality. The book opens on the River
Thames, tranquil, resting peacefully "at the decline of day after
ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks." But
the actual story will take place on the River Congo, the very an~
tithesis of the Thames. The River Congo is quite decidedly not a
River Emeritus. It has rendered no service and enjoys no old-age
pension. We are told that "Going up that river was like travelling
back to the earliest beginnings of the world."
Is Conrad saying then that these two rivers are very different, one
good, the other had? Yes, but that is not the real point. It is not the
differentness that worries Conrad but the lurking hint of kinship, of
common ancestry. For the Thames too ilhas been one of the dark
places of the earth." It conquered its darkness, of course, and is now
in daylight and at peace. But if it were to visit its primordial relative,
the Congo, it would run the terrible risk of hearing grotesque echoes
of its own forgotten darkness, and falling victim to an avenging recrudescence of the mindless frenzy of the first beginnings.
These suggestive echoes comprise Conrad's famed evocation of
the Mrican atmosphere in Heart of Darkness. In the final consideration his method amounts to no more than a steady, ponderous,
fake-ritualistic repetition of two antithetical sentences, one about
silence and the other about frenzy. We can inspect samples of this
on pages 34 and 35 of the present edition: a) It was the stillness of
an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention and b)
The steamer toiled along slowly on the edge of a black and incomprehensible frenzy. Of course there is a judicious change of adjective
nom time to time, so that instead of inscrutable, for example, you
might have unspeakable, even plain mysterious, etc., etc.
The eagle-eyed English critic F. R. Leavis drew attention long ago
to Conrad's iladjectival insistence upon inexpressible and incomprehensible mystery." That insistence must not be dismissed lighdy, as
many Conrad critics have tended to do, as a mere stylistic flaw; for
it raises serious questions of artistic good faith. When a \iVrlter while
pretending to record scenes, incidents and their impact is in reality
engaged in inducing hypnotic stupor in his readers through a bombardment of emotive words and other forms of trickery much more
has to be at stake than stylistic felicity. Generally normal readers are
well armed to detect and resist such underhand activity. But Conrad
chose his subject well-one which was guaranteed not to put him in
AN IMAGE OF AFRICA
339
conflict with the P syc h
I
'
I
'
0 oglca pre-disposition f h·
d
th e need for him to contend ·th th.
.
0
IS rea ers or raise
WI
elr reSlS tance H h
h
of purveyor ~f comforting myths.
. e c ose t e role
The most mteresting and reveal·
are, however about people I 109 passages in Heart of Darkness
reader to qu~te almost a who I must fcrave the indulgence of my
oe page rom about th
'ddl f
. e fil
e 0 the
story wh en representatives of E
Congo encounter the denizens o~rz~:~ a steamer going down the
We were wanderers on a reh·
.
wore the aspect of an unknPownlS\~~C earth, on an earth that
ourselves the first of men takin p et. e could have fancied
heritance to be subdued t th g posseSSIOn of an accursed in'
a
e cost of profou d
. h
o f excessive toil. But suddenl
n angms and
there would be a glimpse of ru\as ~t struggled round a bend
burst of yells, a whirl of black ;im~: s, of peaked grass-roofs, a
of feet stamping, of bodies sw . ' a mass of h~nds clapping,
droop of heavy and mot' I aytnfg'l. o eyes roIlIng under the
I
IOn ess 0 lage The st
·1 d
.
earner to~ e
a ong slowly on the edge of a black·
frenzy. The prehistoric man wa
. and mcomprehensible
.
s curslOg us pravin t
I
commg us-who could tell? V\li
'l~ g 0 us, we hension of our surround.
e were. cut off from the comprewondering and secretly a;;:l;~;e glIded past like phantoms,
an enthusiastic outbreak in a rn~;~ sane men would be before
stand because we were too f
douse. We could not undercause we were travellin in th ar ~n could not remember, bethat are gone leaving h~rdl e ~lght of first ages, of those ages
The earth 'seemed unea:t~l sIgn-and no memories.
upon the shackled £;
f
y. We are accustomed to look
there you could looko~a ~hi: conquered monster, but thereearthly and th
g monstrous and free. It was une men were
No th
Well, you know that was th' . . .
. ey ~ere not inhuman.
not being inhuman. It wou~:~:.t o~ltlthls suspicion of their
and leaped and spun and
d he s .ow y to one, They howled
you was just the thought mfa the . orr
hId fac~s, but what thrilled
0
elf umamty-like
h
th ough t of your remote kinshi with t h . .
your~-t e
uproar. Ugly. Yes it was
I P h I S mId and paSSIOnate
enough you would admit tug y eno~g , but if you were man
th~ faintest trace of a resp~:S~~~~het~at ~~er~ waks in you just
nOIse, a dim suspicion of th
b. errl e ran ness of that
ere elOg a meaning in .t h· h
you-you so remote from the ni h f fi
I W IC
prehend.
g t 0
rst ages-could corn-
':V
Herein lies the meaning of He
fD k
holds over the Western min;.rt((~ ar nes.s and the fascination it
thought of their humanit
I'k'
at thnlled you was just the
H '
y-l e yours, , , , Ugly."
avmg shown us Mrica in the mass, Conrad then zeros in, half a
340
CHINUA ACHEBE
page later, on a specific example, giving us one of his rare descriptions of an Mrican who is not just limbs or rolling eyes:
And between whiles I had to look after the savage who was
fireman. He was an improved specimen; he 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. A few
months of training had done for that really fine chap. He
squinted at the steam-gauge and at the water-gauge with an
evident effort of intrepidity-and he had filed his teeth too, the
poor devil, and the wool of his pate shaved into queer patterns,
and three ornamental scars on each of his cheeks. He ought to
have been clapping his hands and stamping his feet on the
bank) instead of which he was hard at work) a thrall to strange
witchcraft, full of improving knowledge.
As everybody knows, Conrad is a romantic on the side, He might
not exactly admire savages clapping their hands and stamping their
feet but they have at least the merit of being in their place, unlike
this dog in a parody of breeches. For Conrad things 4 being in their
place is of the utmost importance.
hEne fellows-cannibals-in their place/' he tells us pointedly.
Tragedy begins when things leave their accustomed place, like Europe leaving its safe stronghold between the policeman and the
baker to take a peep into the heart of darkness.
Before the story takes us into the Congo basin proper we are
given this nice little vignette as an example of things in their place:
Now and then a boat from the shore gave one a momentary
contact with reality. It was paddled by black fellows. You could
see from afar the white of their eyeballs glistening. They
shouted) sang; their bodies streamed with perspiration; they
had faces like grotesque masks-these chaps; but they had
bone, muscle) a wild vitality) an intense energy of movement
that was as natural and true as the surf along their coast. They
wanted no excuse for being there. They were a great comfort
to look at.
Towards the end of the story Conrad lavishes a whole page 5 quite
unexpectedly on an African woman who has obviously been some
kind of mistress to Mr. Kurtz and now presides (if I may be permitted a little liberty)6 like a formidable mystery over the inexorable
imminence of his departure:
4. "(and persons)" [1977]. The next two paragraphs (£rom "Fine fellows" to "a great comfort to look at") were added in 1988.
5. "great attention" [1977].
6. "a little imitation of Conrad" [1977].
AN
IMAGE OF AFRICA
341
She was savage and s
b
'ld
She stood looking at u~P~tho: -e~ed and. magnificent. . . .
itself, with an air of bro d'
a Stl~ and like the wilderness
,
0 mg over an Inscrutable purpose.
TIns Amazon is dr
.
.d
dictable nature for ~wnoreIan conspI , erablhe detail) albeit of a pre,
sons. lrst s e is' h I d
can win Conrad's special brand f
'
I
m er p ace an so
a structural requirement of th 0 t ap~rova and second) she fulfills
e s ory. a savage counterp rt t h
d E uropean woman who 'II t f h
re fi ne,
a
0 t e
VVl s ep ort
to end the story:
She came forward all in black with a I
.
me in the dusk Sh
.
, pa e head, floatmg toward
.
e was In mourmng
She t k b h
hands in hers and murmured III h d h' . 'd'
00
ot my
Sh h d
1
a
ear you were com'
"
i~~. e a a mature capacity for fidelity, for belief, for su~~~-
The difference in the attitude of the
Ii
h
is conveyed in too many direct and b~ove st to t ese two women
But perhaps the most significa t d,u e way~ to need elaboration.
'
n Ifference IS the one'
l' d .
th e author s bestowal of h u m '
Imp Ie In
holding of it hom the other aIn ~xprlessllOn to the one and the with. t IS C ear y not part of C
d'
pose to confer language on th " d'
onra s pure ru lmentary
I" f Afr'
place of speech they made "a violent babbl /ou s °h
lca. In
They I<exchanged short runti
" eo uncout sounds."7
themselves.
But most of the time the;
two occasions in the book h
Y
C Ir frenzy. There are
) owever w h en onrad d
what from his practice and conf
'
h
eparts someers speec ,even English s
h
'b I'
peec ,on
th e savages. The first occurs whe
them:
n canm a Ism gets the better of
wer;~o~t::e~~~~~e~mong_
(Ie
t
h"
ot
"h
an~ ~ fl~~
sSh::~:e~th '~:tl~~~~hot ;de~ing of his eyes
eh)" I k d " h
1m. Ive 1m to us," uTo
Y "d'
as e j w at would you do with them)" liE- t!' II!
.
a 1m.
h e sm curtly....
OU
The other occasion was the famous announcement:
"Mistah Kurtz-he dead."
At first sight these instances mIght be mIstaken"
d
of gene 't f
C
wr unexpecte
raSl y rom onrad. In reality th
.
f
ey constitute some of
best assaults I th
that had ~h n f e case ~ the cannibals the incomprehensible
adequate f
us , ar serve them for speech suddenly proved inr
nnsp<,ak:ab1°e Con:ad s. purpose of letting the European glimpse the
:cravmg In their hearts ,{Xl' h'
h
. vvelg mg t e neceSSIty for
torlsis,tellcy , h
ad
~n t e 10rtrayal of the dumb brutes against the sensa
van ages 0 securing their conviction by clear) unambigu~
. Sentence added in 1988.
,
I
I
,
'I
',I
,!
.,
'I
, :1
342
----------------....
CHlNUAAcHEBE
evidence issuing out of their own mouth Conrad chose the
latter. As for the announcement of Mr. Kurtz's death by the iiinsolent black head in the doorway" what better or more appropriate finis could be written to the horror story of that wayvvard child of
civilization who willfully had given his soul to the powers of darkness and "taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land" than the
proclamation of his physical death by the forces he had joined?
It might be contended, of course, that the attitude to the African
in Heart of Darkness is not Conrad's but that of his fictional narrator, Marlow, and that far from endorsing it Conrad might indeed be
holding it up to irony and criticism. Certainly Conrad appears to go
to considerable pains to set up layers of insulation between himself
and the mor~l universe of his history. He has, for example, a narrator behind a narrator. The primary narrator is Marlow but his account is given to us through the filter of a second, shadowy person.
But if Conrad's intention is to draw a cordon sanitaire 8 between
himself and the moral and psychological malaise of his narrator his
care seems to me totally wasted because he neglects to hint however subtly or tentatively at an alternative frame of reference by
which we may judge the actions and opinions of his characters. It
would not have been beyond Conrad's power to make that provision
if he had thought it necessary. Marlow seems to me to enjoy Conrad's complete confidence-a feeling reinforced by the close similarities between their two careers.
Marlow comes through to us not only as a witness of truth, but
one holding. those advanced and humane views appropriate to the
English liberal tradition which required all Englishmen of decency
to be deeply shocked by atrocities in Bulgaria or the Congo of King
Leopold of the Belgians or wherever.
Thus Marlow is able to toss out such bleeding-heart sentiments
as these:
AN
The kind of liberalism espoused here by Marlow/Conrad touched
all the best minds of the age in England, Europe and America. It
took different forms in the minds of different people but almost always managed to sidestep the ultimate question of equality be8. Quarantine barrier (French). [Editor]
343
tween white peo~le and black people. That extraordina missiona;;, ~ber~ S~hweltzer, who sacrificed brilliant careers in;:lUSic and
t eo ogy m urope for a life of service to Mricans in much th
same areta ashCohnrhad writes about, epitomizes the ambivalence In:
coromen w IC
as often been
t d S h
.
Afr'
.. d d
quo e
c weitzer says' "The
Ican IS III ee my brother but my junior brother)) And
ceedc~~o blli~d ad hospital ~ppropriate to the needs' of jun~~r ~r~~~~
e~s;t ~t~n ar hS of hygIene reminiscent of medical practice in
t l~ ~s be ore t e germ theory of disease came into being. Natura y e ecame a sensation in Europe and America P'I .
flocked, and I believe still flock even after h h
d' I gnms
ess the
d·'
e as passe on, to wit~
n .
pro IglOUS miracle in Lamberence on the ed
f h
pnmeval forest.
, g e ate
OilS
They were dying slowly-it was very clear. They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now,
nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation lying confusedly in the greenish gloom. Brought from all the recesses of
the coast in all the legality of time contracts, lost in uncongenial surtoundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away and
rest.
IMAGE OF AFRICA
it
Conrad's liberalism would not tak h'
.
f
.
h e l m qUIte as ar as
c weltzer s, tough. He would not use the word brother how
qu~lified; the farthest he would go was kinship, When Marl~:;:
AfrICan
helmsman falls down with a spear III
. h'IS h eart h e gIVes
.
h'
his
w Ite master one final disquieting look.
Sh
j
And thde ih;ntimate profundity of that look he gave me when he
receIve
s hurt remains to this d y .
.
claim of distant kinship affirmed in aa III my memory-hke a
supreme moment,
Itd is .important to note that Conrad ,careful as ever wIth
.
his
war s, IS co~cerned not so much about distant kinshi as ab
P
I
I ,
out
someone lay.mg a claim on it The blacl
h'
"
.
(man ays a c 31m on the
~ Ite n;,a\tIC: IS well-nigh intolerable. It is the laying of this
calm w IC, Ig tens and at the same time fascinates Conrad ({
the thought of their humanity-like yours
I "
' '"
Th
.
f
.... Ugy.
e pomt a my observations should be quite clear b
d
h
Y now,
namely that Joseph C
oura was a t oroughgoing9 racist. That this
.
.
~lmpI~ truth. IS glo.ssed over in criticisms of his work is due to the
. act t at ,whIte r~clsm against Africa is such a normal way of think~;a~a~
~ ~amfest.~ltiO~S go completely unremarked. Students of
0
so mu h a:thn~~ 0 te~ tell you that Conrad is concerned not
.
c WI
lca as WIth the deterioration of one Euro ean
nnnd caused by solitude and sickness They '11
. t
p
th t e d ' .
, W I pom out to you
a ~nra IS,. If anything, less charitable to the Europeans in the
.
an he I,S t~ .t?~ natives, that the point of the story is to
Eu~ope s Cl\'IhZIllg mission in Africa,) A Conrad student iu~
me
"e!:ration III Sco~land that Africa is merely a setting for the disin,of the mmd of Mr. Kurtz.
,
teliminaltesiS partly.the point, Mrica as setting and backdrop which
the Afncan as human factor. Africa as a metaphysical
"bloody" [1977].
The last clause (beginnmg ('that the pO'nt of . ")
,
.. was added
In
198B.
a
344
CHINUAAcHEBE
battlefield devoid of all recognizable humanity, into which the wandering European enters at his peril. Can nobody see the preposterous and perverse arrogance in thus reducing Mrica to the role of
props for the break-up of one petty European mind? But that is not
even the point. The real question is the dehumanization of Mrica
and Mricans which this age-long attitude has fostered and continues to foster in the world. And the question is whether a novel
which celebrates this dehumanization, which depersonalizes a portion of the human race, can be called a great work of art. My answer is: No, it cannot. 2 I do not doubt Conrad's great talents. Even
Heart of Darkness has its memorably good passages and moments:
The reaches opened before us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to bar the way for
our return.
Its exploration of the minds of the European characters is often
penetrating and full of insight. But all that has been more than
fully discussed in the last fifty years. His obvious racism has, however, not been addressed. And it is high time it was!
Conrad was born in 1857, the very year in which the first Anglican missionaries were arriving among my own people in Nigeria. It
was certainly not his fault that he lived his life at a time when the
reputation of the black man was at a particularly low level. But
even after due allowances have been made for all the influences of
contemporary prejudice on his sensibility there remains still in
Conrad's attitude a residue of antipathy to black people which his
peculiar psychology alone can explain. His own account of his first
encounter vvith a black man is very revealing:
A certain enormous bu'(:k nigger encountered in Haiti fixed my
conception of blind, furious, unreasoning rage, as manifested
in the human animal to the end of my days. Of the nigger I
used to dream for years afterwards. 3
2. The rest of this paragraph was added m 1988, replacing the original version: "I would
not call that man an artist, for example, who composes an eloquent instigation to one
people to fall upon another and destroy them. No matter how striking his imagery or
how beautiful hIS cadences fall such a man is no more a great artist than another may be
called a pnest who reads the mass backwards or a physician who poisons his patients. All
those men in Nazi Germany who lent their talent to the service of virulent racism
whether in science, philosophy or the arts have generally and rightly been condemned
for their perversions. The hme is long overdue for taking a hard look at the work of creative artists who apply their talents, alas often considerable as in the case of Conrad, to
set people against people. This, I take it, is what Yevtushenko is after when he tells us
that a poet cannot be a slave trader at the same time, and gives the striking example of
Arthur Rimbaud who was fortunately honest enough to give up any pretenses to poetry
when he opted for slave trading. For poetry surely can only be on the side of man's deliverance and not his enslavement, for the brotherhood and unity of all mankind and
against the doctrines of Hitler's master races or Conrad's 'rudimentary souls.' "
3 Jonah Raslan, The Mythology of Imperialism (New York: Random House, 1971), p. 143
AN
IMAGE OF AFRICA
345
Certainly Conra~ had a problem "With niggers. His inordinate
love of that word Itself should be of interest to ps h
I
S
'
h' fi '
yc oana ysts,
om.etlmes I~ x~tlOn on blackness is equally interesting as when
he gIVes us thIS bnef description:
Abl bllack figure stood up, strode on long black legs waving long
ac (arms. . . .
'
as though we might expect a black figure striding along on black
legs
'
Asto wave whIte
f . arms! But so unrelenting I'S Conrad's 0 b seSSIOn.
a matter 0 mterest Conrad gives us in A Personal Record what
amount~ to a companion piece to the buck nigger of Haiti. At the
age of SIXteen Conrad encountered his first Englishma . E
H
II h' 'i
f
b
n m urope.
e ca s .1m my un orgetta Ie Englishman" and describes him in
the followmg manner:
"(his) calves exposed to the public gaze, , , dazzled the be-
~older by the splendor of their marble-like condition and their
DC? ton~ of y?ung ivory. ... The light of a headlong, exalted
sahsfactlOn
WIth the world of men . .. 1' Iumme
I ' d h'IS f ace ...
d .
a.n . triumphan~ eyes. In passing he cast a glance of kindly cunO~lty and a fr~endly gleam of big, sound, shiny teeth ... his
whIte calves twmkled sturdily."4
Irrational love and irrational hate J'ostling t oge th ermt
' h e h eartof
th at ta Iented, tormented
all
·man
' But whereas irratio nove
may at
worst engen d· er f 00I Ish acts of indiscretion , l'rratl'ona I h a t e can endanger th e hfe
d 'IS a d ream "lor
" of the
. communi h~J', Naturally C
onra
psyc h oanalytIc cntlCS. Perhaps the most detailed st d
f h'
,
'b
u Y0
1m m
' d'
,
th IS
lrectlOn IS y Bernard C, Meyer, M .D. I nlsengtyooDr.
h' I
h b k
M eyer fll
0 ows every conceivable lead (and sometimes inconceivab~e. ~nes) to explain Conrad. As an example he gives us long disqUISitIOns on the significance of hair and hair-cutting in Conrad.
d yet not even one word is spared for his attitude to black peop e. Not even. the discussion of Conrad's antisemitism was enou h
to spark off l~ Dr. Meyer's mind those other dark and explosi~e
thoughts. \Vhlch only leads one to surmise that Western psychoanalysts must regard the kind of racism displayed by Conrad as absolutely norm~l despite the profoundly important work done b
Frantz Fanon m the psychiatric hospitals of French Algeria
y
Whatever Conrad's problems were, you might say he' is now
~afel~ldead" Quite true, Unfortunately his heart of darkness plagues
s ~~l • WhIch ~s why an offensive and 5 deplorable book can be desen ed by a senous scholar as "among the half dozen greatest short
t
"
4. Bernard C. Meyer M D Jose h C
d A
~on UP, 1967), p.
p
onra: Psyclwanalytic Biography (Pnnceton; Pnnce5. totally" [1977].
30.'"
i,I
346
H
CHINUA ACHEBE
novels in the English language." And why it is today per~aps the
most commonly prescribed novel in t~entieth~cen~~ry !Iterature
courses in English Departments of Amencan UnIVersItIes. .
There are two probable grounds on which what I have saId. so far
may be contested. The first is that it is no. concern of fi:tion to
please people about whom it is ~itten. I wIll go alon? wIth that.
But I am not talking about pleasmg people. I am talking about a
book which parades in the most vulgar fashion prejudices and ~n­
suIts from which a section of mankind has suffered untold agomes
and atrocities in the past and continues to do so in many ways and
many places today. I am talking about a story in which the very humanity of black people is called in question. 7
Secondly, I may be challenged on the grounds of actuality. Conrad, after all, did sail down the Congo in 1890 when my own father
was still a babe in arms. How could I stand up more than ~fty years
after his death and purport to contradict him? My answer IS that as
a sensible man I will not accept just any traveller's tales solely on
the grounds that I have not made the journey myself. I will not
trust the evidence even of a man's very eyes when I suspect them to
be as jaundiced as Conrad's. And we also happen to know th,~t Co~­
rad was in the words of his biographer, Bernard C. Meyer, noton,
ously -inaccurate
in the rendering 0 fh'IS o~n h'ISt~ry. "8
But more important by far is the abundant testlmo~y a?out Conrad's savages which we could gather if we were so mclmed from
other sources and which might lead us to think that these people
must have had other occupations besides merging into the evil fo~­
est or materializing out of it simply to plague Marlow an~ hIs
dispirited band. For as it happened, soon after Conrad had wntten
his book an event of far greater consequence was taking place in
the art world of Europe. This is how Frank Willett, a British art historian, describes it:
Gaugin had gone to Tahiti, the most e~travagant indivi~ual a~t
of turning to a non-European culture m the dec~des Imme~I­
ately before and after 1900, wh~n European artIsts were aVId
for new artistic experiences, but It was only about 1904--:5 th~t
African art began to make its distinctive impact. One plec~ 15
still identifiable' it is a mask that had been given to Maunce
Vlaminckin 1905. He records that Derain was 'speechless' and
'stunned' when he saw it, bought it from Vlaminck and in turn
showed it to Picasso and _Matisse, who were also greatly af6. The 1977 version reprinting the Chancellor's Lecture, limited its reference to "iliUI ~wn
English Departm~nt here" and ended the pamgraph with this sentence. "Indeed e tIme
is long overdue for a hard look at tMngs."
'bl
'de
7. "It seems to me totally inconceivable that great art or even good art could pOSSI y reSl
in such unwholesome surroundings" [1977J.
8. Meyer, p. 30.
AN
IMAGE OF AFRICA
347
fected by it. Ambroise Vollard then borrowed it and had it cast
in bronze .... The revolution of twentieth century art was under way!9
The mask in question was made by other savages living just north
of Conrad's River Congo. They have a name too: the Fang people,
and are without a doubt among the world's greatest masters of the
sculptured form. The event Frank Willett is referring to marked the
beginning of cubism and the infusion of new life into European art,
which had run completely out of strength.
The point of all this is to suggest that Conrad's picture of the
peoples of the Congo seems grossly inadequate even at the height
of their subjection to the ravages of King Leopold's Interriational
Association for the Civilization of Central Africa.
Travellers with closed minds can tell us little except about themselves. But even those not blinkered, like Conrad with xenophobia,
can be astonishing blind. Let me digress a little here. One of the
greatest and most intrepid travellers of all time, Marco Polo, journeyed to the Far East from the Mediterranean in the thirteenth
century and spent twenty years in the court of Kublai Khan in
China. On his return to Venice he set down in his book entitled Description of the World his impressions of the peoples and places and
customs he had seen. But there were at least two extraordinary
omissions in his account. He said nothing about the art of printing,
unknmV11 as yet in Europe but in full flower in China. He either did
not notice it at all or if he did, failed to see what use Europe could
possibly have for it. ~atever the reason, Europe had to wait another hundred years for Gutenberg. But even more spectacular was
Marco Polo's omission of any reference to the Great Wall of China
nearly 4,000 miles long and already more than 1,000 years old at
the time of his visit. Again, he may not have seen it; but the Great
Wall of China is the only structure built by man which is visible
from the moonP Indeed travellers can be blind.
As I said earlier Conrad did not originate the image of Mrica
which we find in his book. It was and is the dominant image of
Africa in the Western imagination and Conrad merely brought the
peculiar gifts of his own mind to bear on it. For reasons which can
certainly use close psychological inquiry the West seems to suffer
deep anxieties about the precariousness of its civilization and to
have a need for constant reassurance by comparison with Africa. If
Europe, advancing in civilization, could cast a backward glance periodically at Mrica trapped in primordial barbarity it could say with
9. Frank Willet, African Art (New York Praeger, 1971), pp. 35-36,
1. For the omission of the Great Wall of China, I am indebted to The Journey of Marco Pow
as recreated by artist Michael Foreman, published by Pegasus Magaztne, 1974.
II
I
.1
II':
I
I
,.,,1
I
I
'i,'
,I
I,
1'" :
,III I
,:',,'
IIII
Q
348
CHINUA ACHEBE
faith and feeling: There go I but for the grace of God" Africa is to
Europe as the picture is to Dorian Graf-a carrier onto whom the
master unloads his physical and moral deformities so that he may
go forward, erect and immaculate. Consequently Africa is something to be avoided just as the picture has to be hidden away to
safeguard the man's jeopardous integrity. Keep away from Africa, or
else! Mr. Kurtz of Heart of Darkness should have heeded that warning and the prowling horror in his heart would have kept its place,
chained to its lair. But he foolishly exposed himself to the wild irresistible allure of the jungle and lo! the darkness found him out.
In my original conception of this essay I had thought to conclude
it nicely on an appropriately positive note in which I would suggest
from my privileged-position in African and Western cultures some
advantages the West might derive from Africa once it rid its mind of
old prejudices and began to look at Africa not through a haze of distortions and cheap mystifications but quite simply as a continent of
people-not angels, but not rudimentary souls either~just people,
often highly gifted people and often strikingly successful in their
enterprise with life and society. But as I thought more about the
stereotype image, about its grip and pervasiveness, about the willful
tenacity with which the West holds it to its heart; when I thought
of the West's television and cinema and newspapers, about books
read in its schools and out of school, of churches preaching to
empty pews about the need to send help to the heathen in Africa, I
realized that no easy optimism was possible. And there was, in any
case, something totally wrong in offering bribes to the West in return for its good opinion of Africa. Ultimately the abandonment of
unwholesome thoughts must be its own and only reward. Although
I have used the word willful a few times here to characterize the
West's view of Africa, it may well be that what is happening at this
stage is more akin to reflex action than calculated malice. W'hich
does not make the situation more but less hopeful.
The Christian Science Monitor, a paper more enlightened than
most, once carried an interesting article written by its Education
Editor on the serious psychological and learning problems faced by
little children who speak one language at home and then go to
school where something else is spoken. It was a wide-ranging article taking in Spanish-speaking children in America, the children of
migrant Italian workers in Germany, the quadrilingual phenomenon in Malaysia, and so on. And all this while the article speaks unequivocally about language. But then out of the blue sky comes
this:
2. The morally degenerate protagonist in Oscar Wilde's story (1891), who remains youthful
and beautiful as his portrait turns old and ugly, reflecting the consequences of his licentiolls behavior. [Editor]
[IMPRESSIONISM AND SYMBOLISM IN HEART OF DARKNESS]
349
In L~ndo~ there is an enormous immigration of children who
spea IndIan or Nigerian dialects, or some other native language.
I belie~e that the introduction of dialects which is technicallyerroneous m the context is almost a reflex actio
db"
" " d"
f h
n cause
y an mstinctlVe eSIre a t e writer to downgrade th d"
"
h
I f Af ' .
e ISCUSSlOn to t e
le:-e a . nca and IndIa. And this is quite comparable to Conrad's
WIthholdmg of language from his rudimentary souls. Language is
too grand ~or these chaps; let's give them dialects!
In, all thIS f business
. a lot of violence is l"neVl"ta bly d one not onIy to
the ~mage 0 de~plsed peoples but even to words, the very tools of
pOSSIble
"the S ctence
"
. redress. Look at the phrase native language III
Mon~tor excerpt. Sur~ly the only native language possible in London IS ~od:ney E~ghsh. But our writer means something else~
somethmg appropnate to the sounds Indians and Africans make!4
Although the. work of redreSSing which needs to be done mayappear too dauntmg, I believe it is not one day too soon to begin.
Conrad saw and condemned the evil of imperial exploitation but
was strangely u~a,:are of the racism on which it sharpened its iron
But the.
VIctIms of racist slander who lor
C
tooth.
"
cen t"
unes h ave h a d
to Ilye bWIth the mhumanity it makes them h"
t
elr a h ave a Iways
known etter than any casual visitor even when h I d d
e comes oa e
with the gifts of a Conrad.
i
IAN WAIT
,
.1
,;,.1
[Impressionism and Symbolism in Heart of Darknesslt
I
In .the tradition of what we are still calling modem literature, the
claSSIC status of Heart of Darkness probably depends less on the
'.,'1
3. "In all this busmess a lot of . I
'"
bl d
[1977].
"
VlO enee IS meVlta y
one to words and their meaning"
4, "something Indians and Afn
k" 119771 Th
with the followin t
"nhs spea
.
e original versIOn then concludes
"
g wo paragrup s:
Perhaps a change will come P h
th"
h .
engendered by the
em
There is jU" hthe possibility that West:
papers the other da a
.
e ac levements 0 f ot er people. I read in the
bring back the exte%dedf:~Iti~1h;t wh~t Ameri~a ?eeds at this time is somehow to
w In my mmd s eye future African Peace Corps
Volunteers coming to help y y. t
"Seriousl althou h th ou se ~p e system.
heve that itY;s not o!e da e work whIch ne~ds to be done may appear too daunting, I bed y too soon to begm. And where better than at a University?"
From Ian W tt C
1
pp, 168, 16;-75, 0;;:_7 ; ' tlh;3~~~et~e:s~8~e~~u8ry (Berkeley:.U of California P, 1979),
Reprinted 'th th
'.
'
,-200. Copynght © 1979 by Ian Watt
rad in the Mnetee e theCIIll~slOn of t~e University of California Press. Extract from Con~
of the publIsher. ;;nlesse~dt?~tPUdbllshted by Chhatt° & ~Indus. Reprinted by permission
e ,noesaret eau th ors.
, ,I
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~a~ ~:;t;;~~ ~~ t:{~:r~~u:l;~~~hfllsihn.
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