Analyse Conrad’s depiction of Africa and Africans in ‘Heart of
Darkness’
Coming from a relatively wealthy European background, Conrad struggled to see the humanity in
Africa because it didn’t look like his own. The unfamiliar terrain and civilisation unlike that in Europe,
made Conrad see Africa and Africans as exotic, otherworldly and primitive. This depiction of the
landscape and people is not authentic to the local Africans that Marlow meets on his journey and
describes Africa in a dark light, in other words referred to as the ‘Heart of Darkness.’ Conrad’s
depiction of Africa and Africans has often been criticised for not willing to understand the culture
and a general disregard for all things African.
Conrad disregards the African people as human. Often calling African natives anything but people;
only recognising their humanity when mentioning European superiority. Marlow calls African people
“black shadows” and “black shapes” and thus reduces the entire African race to the colour of the
skin, which in turn dictates the amount of respect Marlow is willing to give to the people that he
meets in the novel. For instance, Marlow would treat the Russian trader with equal respect but
would neglect to recognise the slaves as human, and thereby wouldn’t treat them as such. This habit
of refusing to call African locals anything but people is a form of othering. A good example is when
Marlow spots a young man and notes: “the man seemed young – almost a boy – but you know with
it’s hard to tell.” Marlow therefore distances himself from the natives by calling Africans “them” but
he is also expressing his integral sense that he is superior as Marlow doesn’t want to recognise that
he is just like the natives. Conrad’s depiction of Africans in ‘Heart of Darkness’ is a refusal to
recognise Europeans and Africans as equal as well as, treating the native Africans as subhuman.
In the late 19th century, in the midst of African colonialism, the theory of evolution by Charles Darwin
was thought to detail that people of black skin colour were less evolved than people descended from
white skin colour. Therefore, the Europeans held a firm belief that they were superior because of
their white skin; reasoning that Europeans were more advanced than the black Africans. Marlow
sees the African people as primitive and prehistoric and the landscape is also viewed in a similar
way. When Marlow is walking in the Congo, he fancied himself and his team as “wanderers on a
prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet”. This perhaps being a
more extreme example of othering, so extreme that it is out of this world different. This suggests
that Marlow views Africans as alien and unearthly. However, at one-point Marlow suggests a
viewpoint that recognises his similarity to Africans but also puts forward a bewilderment as he finds
the extent of Europeans progress both intellectually and scientifically impressive. In other words,
Conrad uses the native Africans lifestyle to emphasise the superiority and vast advancement of the
European/white progress. By doing so he assumes that because the Africans haven’t made the same
advancements as the white man that they’re less intellectual and underdeveloped and that the
Europeans deserve the land and the power more than the locals due to their so-called superior race
and heritage.
A major criticism that Achebe had for Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ is that the novella is “devoid of all
recognisable humanity” and that Conrad “eliminated the African as human factor”. Although Marlow
admits that “they’re not inhuman”, the double negative makes it sound reluctant and not
convincing. And further distances Marlow from the natives as he is somewhat repulsed by being
associated as one of kind. In this sense Conrad depicts Africans as otherworldly and inferior. Achebe
again criticises Conrad’s depiction of Africa for using the setting of Africa as a cause for “the
deterioration of one European mind”. There is an underlying theme that Africa corrupts the
European, for instance, Kurtz’s insanity is blamed on the African landscape, disease, isolation and the
supposed brutality of the natives, which is the actual Belgian cruelty inflicted on the natives.
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