Racism in Heart of Darkness

Chenua Achebe, a Nigerian writer, criticises Heart of Darkness as being an inherently racist novella, accuses the author, Joseph Conrad, of ‘clearly having a problem with n****rs’ that ‘would be of interest to psychoanalysts’. Throughout the novella, the main character, Marlow, displays on several occasions his racism and passive disdain towards the native Africans, one such occasion where, upon losing a native African crew member, dismisses it as though he was ‘just another grain of sand in a black Sahara’. His comparison of the deceased crew member to a ‘black Sahara’ implies that he views the Africans as expendable and is of the opinion that they are easily replaceable.

 

However, something that must be taken into account is the possibility that Marlow is a passive, or inadvertent racist. Frequently Marlow will make an insightful or sympathetic comment about the Africans, only to spoil it by adding a racist comment afterwards. One such example would be when he says that ‘The man seemed young – almost a boy..’ only to ruin the moment by saying ‘but you know with them its hard to tell’. This offhanded racism suggests a degree of passive, ingrained racism that is typical of many people of the time, or inadvertent racism, that suggests that racism is the norm and Marlow sees nothing wrong with the comments that he makes.

 

A final point to consider is the contextual setting of the colonial period. Many people were inherently racist in this time as becomes of a society build upon the subjugation of others. In many ways, it is characteristic of the English as a people especially to be inherently nationalistic and offhanded about outsiders; the historian Adrian Hastings writing that ‘One can find historians to date ‘the dawn of English national consciousness’ in almost every century from the eighth to the nineteenth’. As such, the character of Marlow can be seen as representative of English nationalism and offhandedness against outsiders, a theory that is especially credible given that the author, Joseph Conrad, is not actually English and so would have been able to see this characteristic for himself and build the character of Marlow around it.

Imperialism and Capitalism in Heart of Darkness

Something that is important to remember is that Imperialism is a kind of early form of Capitalism. Both feature the inherent exploitation of resources, be it human resources or physical resources, in order to benefit the implementer of the system. In Heart of Darkness, Imperialism is obviously a key theme, given that most of the novel takes place in Belgian Imperial Congo, ‘owned’ by King Leopold. The most visual representation of Imperialism comes on page 11, where Marlow views a map of Imperial Africa.

‘There was a vast amount of red – good to see at any time, because one knows that some real work is done in there, a deuce of a lot of blue, a little green, smears of orange, and, on the East Coast, a purple patch, to show where the jolly pioneers of progress drink the jolly lager-beer. However, I wasn’t going into any of these, I was going into the yellow. Dead in the centre. And the river was there – fascinating – deadly – like a snake.”

The empires in question are:

• Red – British Empire
• Blue – French Empire
• Green – Spanish Empire
• Orange – Portuguese or Italian Empires
• Purple – German Empire
• Yellow – Belgian Empire (The Congo)

The river that Marlow mentions is the Congo River, the deepest river in the world and the ninth longest.

 

Exploitation of human resources plays a huge part in Heart of Darkness. The novel portrays the native Africans as being cruelly worked by their European overlords and forced to extract the precious resources of the Congo. This portrayal is fairly close to the truth, as the Belgians were notorious for their brutality towards the natives, even by colonial standards. In fact, natives in other Colonial countries were much better treated than those in the Congo, and Belgian brutality shocked even other colonials. The reason that this was the case was because the country was run by King Leopold himself rather than by the Belgian government, and so there was no control over the European colonials who were in the Congo, essentially allowing them to do whatever they wanted.

 

Capitalism in Heart of Darkness is quite straightforward:

The Stations (E.g. The Station that Kurtz is at) exploit the natural wealth of their areas, in Kurtz’s case, ivory. This ivory is sent back the the central stations like the one that Marlow is at at the end of chapter 1, and then sent back to Belgium to be sold by the trading company. In this way, the trading company benefits from the sale of ivory, the Europeans in the Congo have their wages paid by the trading company, and the natives lose out, becoming slaves and receiving no reward for their work.

With Extreme Prejudice…

The overlying theme to part one of Heart of Darkness is the mysterious and enigmatic figure of Kurtz. Throughout part one, Kurtz is referenced and alluded to on a number of occasions and foreshadowed through a variety of techniques. Part one is much like the scene in the 1979 film Apocalypse Now where Willard (the equivalent of Marlow), is looking at ‘Colonel’ Kurtz’s dossier and learns that he was one a promising model special forces officer in that the characters that Marlow meets when he arrives in the Congo all seem to hold some sort of reverence for Kurtz, and he is portrayed as being the ‘golden boy’ of the company.

 

‘He is a very remarkable person’, is one of the ways that ivory trader Kurtz is described, and it would seem that people are eager to appeal and ‘suck up’ to him, as the chief agent asks Marlow to ‘tell him from me that everything here is very satisfactory’, suggesting that people are willing to adopt a sycophantic nature in order to please Kurtz. Despite not actually seeing or meeting Kurtz in the first section, he is heavily foreshadowed, with key themes such as madness recurring again and again. One such example of this is before Marlow’s departure from Belgium to the Congo where the doctor examines him. The doctor displays a heavy interest in madness, and alludes to the idea that those who go out either never come back, and if they do, they are touched by madness. This view is supported by the brevity of Marlow’s meeting with the executives of the company, almost as if they meet with him for as little amount of time as possible as they know he won’t be coming back.

 

Contextually and historically, there is a very good book by Adam Hochschild called ‘King Leopold’s Ghost’. King Leopold was the Belgian king at about the time of when Heart of Darkness was written, and a little known fact is that the Congo was Leopold’s personal ‘playground’, and all the wealth from it came indirectly to him. As such, being the king, nobody was like to question him and the treatment of the natives was especially poor, even by colonial standards, and they were forced to work the land and exploit the Congo’s resources for his benefit. To put it in perspective, there was a severe population drop among the natives during the time when it was Leopold’s personal province – and as Hochschild explains, this was due to people just like Kurtz, who ‘went native’ and became prone to unrelenting bouts of aggressive madness.

‘The sea and the sky were welded together…’

The artwork for Apocalypse Now gives a good visual representation of what the ‘offing’ described in the opening of Heart of Darkness might look like. The scene portrayed above can be seen as a good representation of the start of the novel, albeit minus the helicopters and featuring several boats moored at a harbour. The sunset is symbolic of an ending – e.g. the end of the day, and it could be used in this case to symbolise the decline of empires and the fact that they are going to the ‘very end’ of the world.

This brings me on to the idea of imagery in the introductory few pages to Heart of Darkness. One such key image is the Accountant and his dominoes, ‘toying architecturally with the bones’. The dominoes are most likely made out of ivory, as was custom in the time that this novel is set, providing a foreshadow of Kurtz’s ivory trade. The narrator likens their voyage to other famous navigators such as Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Franklin and their ship the Nellie to Drake’s Golden Hind and other famous ships like Erebus and Terror. Comparing themselves to these famous people and those famous ships makes it seem as though their journey is similarly epic and characterful as those of Drake and Franklin, and that their ship is as great as Golden Hind, Terror and Erebus.

Marlow’s line of ‘This also has been one of the dark places of the earth’ is in reference to London being Londinium in Roman times. In the Roman empire, Britain was in the far reaches of the empire and so would have been regarded as a backwater and as ‘the end of the earth’. This is emphatic as it is similar to how the Congo is currently seen as a backwater and as the ‘end of the earth’ by Europeans in much the same way as the Romans saw Britain. This brings up the idea of cycles and the passage of empires – In the same way as the Roman Empire had it’s rise under Romulus, it’s zenith under Augustus, and it’s fall at the hands of the barbarians, so too will the British Empire inevitably fall in the same way as the Romans did.

 

 

I love the look of this new book…. Looks to me like… Joseph Conrad

Ok, excuse the cliche title, but the first thing that comes into my mind whenever I look at Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is the 1979 film adaption Apocalypse Now. Right from the start, I could begin to see the parallels the film drew from the book, four main characters for example, a Navy PBR boat to represent the Nellie, and, something else I noticed, the offing where the ‘sea and the sky were welded’ promotes imagery very similar to that seen in the iconic helicopter scene in the film (see below). From a less cinephilic point of view, the opening to Heart of Darkness is a rather bleak one, set against the backdrop of heavily industrialised London on one side, and the grim, foggy Essex marshes on the other. Right from the very beginning, a reader can begin to judge the four characters and their personalities based upon the descriptions of them and of what they are doing. For example, the Captain appears to be much respected as well as highly skilled, demonstrated by the use of words and phrases such as ‘trustworthiness’, ‘affectionately watched’, and ‘nothing that looked half so nautical’.

 

By contrast, the Accountant is only spared one line of description; ‘The Accountant had already brought out his box of dominoes, and was toying architecturally with the bones’. The use of the word ‘already’, rather than ‘The Accountant had brought out his box of dominoes’ suggests that the others may find either him or his dominoes irritating, else he would not be commenting on how soon the dominoes were brought out. ‘Architecturally’ on the other hand suggests a close attention to detail, due to the fact that architecture requires precision and meticulousness. Finally, a sense of foreshadowing is seen in the fact that the dominoes are made from ‘bone’ – referring to ivory, the same material that the villain, Kurtz, trades in.

 

The Lawyer comes across as a rather privileged member of the group, being the only member with a cushion and a rug. This suggests that perhaps he may be funding or paying for this group of people to go on their journey. Finally, the main character, Marlow comes across in an almost religious manner, described as being cross-legged with arms outstretched, almost as though he is meditating. One observation I have made is that the characters are all seemingly from different professions and walks of life, whilst Marlow’s occupation remains a mystery – Much in the same way as all the characters from Apocalypse Now field a variety of different personalities and backgrounds, whilst the main character, Willard’s background remains a mystery. This is most likely done in order to half-reveal the characters, as Marlow is so far the only named character, but with little of his personality revealed, whilst the other three characters, whilst being so far nameless, all have aspects of their personality revealed…