Essay #2

“Conrad Was a Bloody Racist”: How Effective Is This Statement?

            Chinua Achebe’s article “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness” was the first to identify the racism in Conrad’s novella.  He states that Westerners seem to use Africa to make themselves look better.  According to Achebe, Heart of Darkness portrays this mindset better than any other book that is or has ever been in print.  Achebe is convinced that Conrad was a “bloody racist” (Achebe 343).  A big question he poses is that whether or not Heart of Darkness should be thought of as a great work of art or read and taught in so many institutions.  He sums up his answer simply by saying, “No, it cannot” (Achebe 344).  Quoting specific passages from the novella, Achebe makes an adequate argument.  He also brings up potential counter-arguments before defacing them, which is a crucial element to any contention.  Now, while Achebe does at first seem to make an indisputable point by doing these things, when one delves deeper into the text, his flaws become quite apparent.

            To most readers, Achebe makes it clear that Conrad was a racist.  One thought-provoking statement Achebe makes is, “Conrad then zeros in . . . on a specific example, giving us one of his rare descriptions of an African who is not just limbs or rolling eyes” (Achebe 340).  Thinking about the novella, one realizes that it is true that Conrad rarely describes the natives as more than a flurry of movement or a pair of eyes.  Later on in the article, Achebe brings up one of his most convincing arguments.  He points out that Conrad, except in two instances, never allows the natives to speak.  The most they can do is make incomprehensible noise.  Yet, that is actually less offensive than when the natives do talk.  At first, Achebe says that the phrases the natives utter could be perceived as a generous grant of intelligence from Conrad.  However, Achebe continues to say that “in reality they constitute as some of his best assaults” (Achebe 341).  The language that Conrad uses when the Africans speak actually makes them seem even more dimwitted than when they do not speak at all (Achebe 341-42).  Not only does Achebe make these good points, he also brings up counter-arguments that he then challenges.  For example, he says that the views in the book could be seen solely as those of Marlow, but then goes on to say that Conrad is merely hiding behind the two narrators of the story.  By layering the narration, Conrad seems to detach himself from the opinions expressed in the novella.  This guise is pointless in Achebe’s mind because Conrad fails to provide a separate point of view that could be used to form a different opinion of Marlow and the other Europeans’ actions (Achebe 342).  Mentioning and then tearing down potential problems with his argument, Achebe reinforces it even more.

            Achebe brings attention to a serious issue; however, by seeming overly biased and by contradicting himself, many may ignore his essay.  From the very beginning, he is already making wild claims about Westerners as a whole.  He introduces his essay with two personal stories that he believes to be examples of racism.  The second of these stories is one of a high school student who sent Achebe a letter of praise on Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart.  Within the letter, the student mentioned that he was excited to learn the different customs and beliefs of a particular tribe in Africa (Achebe 337).  This seems innocent enough, right?  Well, Achebe does not think so.  He says, “The young fellow from Yonkers . . . is obviously unaware that the life of his own tribesmen in Yonkers, New York, is full of customs and superstitions and, like everybody else in his culture, imagines that he needs a trip to Africa to encounter those things” (Achebe 337).  First of all, the customs in Yonkers are far different from those of an African tribe.  The student showing interest in learning about people different from himself is certainly not racist.  Also, the accusation that everyone in the student’s culture–most likely Achebe specifically means middle-class Caucasians–believes the same thing is a reckless claim to make.  No doubt Achebe has already lost a good audience because of this statement, and the essay has not even reached a full page yet.

            Achebe demonstrates further bias at the end of his article.  He cites an essay that investigates the problems children face when they speak a different language in school than they do at home.  From the article by the Education Editor of The Christian Science Monitor he pulls this particular sentence: “In London there is an enormous immigration of children who speak Indian or Nigerian dialects, or some other native language” (qtd. in Achebe 349).  Achebe is offended by the use of the word “dialects”, declaring that it demotes the debate “to the level of Africa and India” (Achebe 349).  Frankly, that is a bit too hasty of a statement.  Achebe automatically jumps to the assumption of racism, but would a writing style concern not be more appropriate here?  Perhaps the author simply did not want to use the word “language” twice in the same sentence.  Redundancy is something writers often attempt to avoid.  If Achebe wanted his argument to seem more scholarly and factually driven, he should have avoided making wild accusations towards the entire Western population.

             The downfall of any argument is contradiction, and Achebe does this a few times throughout his essay.  The first instance is when Achebe points out Conrad’s overuse of adjectives and lengthy sentence structure.  He specifically says, “When a writer 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” (Achebe 338).  What Achebe means by this is that Conrad hides his racism behind heavily worded phrases.  The reader is less likely to notice underlying meanings when the sentences are so complex he or she can barely understand them on a surface level.  Quoting Achebe directly here is important because it shows an almost humorous contradiction.  That contradiction is that Achebe himself seems to use the same difficult writing style that Conrad uses.  One could potentially argue that Achebe did this to be ironic, thus strengthening his point further.  However, Achebe uses this literary style throughout the entire essay.  Achebe is not being sardonic, he is being a hypocrite.  This hypocrisy could cause many readers to disregard the case Achebe makes as a serious issue.

            The next serious inconsistency in Achebe’s article is when he asserts that Conrad dehumanizes the Africans (Achebe 344).  However, just five pages before he says this, he quotes a passage in which Conrad directly mentions the Africans humanity (Achebe 339).  Funny enough, when Achebe mentions this, he uses it to illustrate Conrad’s racism.  Does it make sense that he then turns it around by saying the dehumanization of the Africans is why Conrad is racist?  Which is it, the claim of humanity or the lack thereof?  Conrad cannot be doing both at the same time with the same intention; it does not correlate.  Perhaps Achebe did not realize that he made this error, but certainly others have recognized it.

            Finally, Achebe takes the time to writes a series of paragraphs that at first seem to be making a good point until he ends with a sentence that completely makes it inconsequential.  Achebe begins with a story from a historian who described artwork from a tribe that did not live far from where Marlow travelled.  Once he finishes citing the historian, he says, “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 subjugation to the ravages of King Leopold’s International Association for the Civilization of Central Africa” (Achebe 347).  This is all well and good, except for the fact that Achebe seemingly fails to realize that Marlow spent the majority of his time in already established European stations and on a boat.  Obviously Marlow would not have seen the great things the tribes did because he never visited the tribes.  That is not even the main issue here, though, even if it is a large hole in Achebe’s debate.  The real fault Achebe makes is by ending with the words, “Indeed travelers can be blind” (Achebe 347).  In saying this, Achebe himself gives Conrad the excuse to why he failed to note the contributions Africans make to society.  By mentioning this, Achebe actually makes Conrad seems less racist.  This undoubtedly does not help Achebe make his allegation.

            While Achebe makes a valuable point, he could have done a better job of arguing it.  If he wanted to convince others that Conrad was a racist, he should have tried to be less obvious of his bias towards racism and Westerners.  Racism is a serious issue and should not be ignored, so it was good that someone finally brought up the fact that Conrad did have racist tendencies in his writing.  However, maybe someone else should have been the first to say it.  By being so contradictory and by using so many convoluted sentences, he surely lost a large audience.  Even people who believe that Conrad was a racist could see the flaws in Achebe’s argument and be convinced by those problems that Achebe’s main point is actually wrong.  Achebe tried to shine light on Joseph Conrad’s heart of darkness, but he really just gave those who would disagree more grounds to do so.

Works Cited

Achebe, Chinua. "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness." Paul

            B. Armstrong. 336-49.

Armstrong, Paul B, ed. Heart of Darkness. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 

            2005.