LITR / CRCL 5734: Colonial & Postcolonial Literature

Sample Student Midterm 2003

Kristy Pawlak
Midterm LITR 5734
06/10/03        

Challenging Achebe: How Conrad’s Intent Changes Things

            In Chinua Achebe’s article, “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness,” he asserts that “Joseph Conrad is a thoroughgoing racist”(257).  He bases this assertion largely on the following interpretations of Heart of Darkness.  First, that Conrad, through his use of emotive language, deliberately tricks his audience and chooses, “the role of purveyor of comforting myths” (253).  Second, that Conrad dehumanizes the native Africans by the withholding of human expression and language in his representations of them.  Lastly, he seems to believe that Conrad is intentionally and willfully parading, “in the most vulgar fashion prejudices and insults” (259).  While there is no question that Conrad’s book contains language, sentiments, and biases that are most certainly considered racism by society looking back on the work, many of Achebe’s assertions are at worst completely false and at best overstated when the author’s purpose as well as the  historical and cultural climate in which the book was written are taken into consideration.

            When Achebe set out to write Things Fall Apart he had the benefit of a clearly defined purpose–to respond to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.  Or, as Dale Taylor quotes Andre Lefevere in her July 11, 2001, presentation, “to counteract the cultural claims of the colonizers.”  Not only did he have the benefit of shaping every word that he wrote to suit the purpose for which it was to be read, but he has also enjoyed the ability to guide discussions and critique of his work in relationship to its purpose.  Now one might easily argue that every author has the ability to determine his purpose when writing a novel and this is true.  However, what most authors cannot control is interpretations and critiques of their work however off the mark.  Achebe’s criticism of Conrad is based largely on accusations against Conrad’s intent.  Achebe fails to take into consideration Conrad’s cultural situation, his stated purpose, and his very opinions on the nature of his work and its subjects.                                                                           

            Writing specifically about Heart of Darkness, Conrad said that the story is, “mainly a vehicle for conveying a batch of personal impressions” (211).  This could be the single most important reason why Achebe’s criticisms are unfounded.  Conrad was not an anthropologist; he was a seaman turned writer.  Primarily through the words of Marlow, Conrad sought to record his impressions of his trip into the Congo.  The key word here is impressions.  No one can tell another person that his impressions are falsely related.  They may not be impressions which accurately reveal the truth of a situation, but that is not the point.  Conrad never declares that he has researched the tribes in Africa and therefore is an expert in their ways.  Rather, by framing his novel as a travel account told by a seaman with no knowledge of the area and by not providing any sort of omniscient narrator to balance the story, Conrad obviously intended to emphasize that these were his impressions.   As a first person narrator, Marlow can only tell the reader what he knows.  The framing narrator who introduces Marlow plays no role in the story and provides no information to the reader.  By keeping this in mind one can begin to see that Conrad’s use of extremely emotive and descriptive language, his treatment of the natives, and the sentiments he expressed were products of his genuine impressions of his travels.

            Conrad wrote, “My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel–it is, before all, to make you see” (225). In his article, Achebe quotes F.R. Leavis’s assertion that Conrad has an “adjectival insistence upon inexpressible and incomprehensible mystery” (253).  Achebe feels that this is an attempt on Conrad’s part to basically hypnotize his readers so that they will not realize that he is maliciously advancing the racist agenda of Europe.  This assertion is partly true in that Conrad was devoted to evoking emotions in his audience.  Conrad wrote that,

Fiction–if it at all aspires to be art–appeals to the temperament...All art, therefore, appeals primarily to the senses, and the artistic aim when expressing itself in written words must also make its appeal through the senses, if its high desire is to reach the secret spring of responsive emotions (224).

Conrad was profoundly changed and challenged by his journey to the Congo.  Marlow is the primary vehicle through which Conrad chose to relay his impressions to his readers.  His emotive language, particularly that about the incomprehensible mystery reflects the struggles and feelings that Conrad wanted his readers to feel.  It would have been unfaithful to his impressions to have Marlow carefully describe each scene and each person he encountered strictly by the facts of the case.  These would not have been “impressions.”  Achebe’s criticism would only be valid if Conrad had said that this story was, “mainly a vehicle for conveying the cultural customs of native Africans and their relations with European colonizers.”

            Admittedly, Conrad’s treatment of the natives through Marlow’s words does seem blatantly racist to modern readers.  However, this goes back to the fact that Conrad is recording impressions, not facts.  Take the question of language being given or as Achebe asserts withheld from the natives.  On the contrary, it is only when Marlow is recording his direct impressions that he withholds speech from the natives.  It was his impression that they made, “a violent babble of uncouth sounds,” and “exchanged short grunting phrases” (255).  It would have been unrealistic for Marlow to explain to us what the natives were saying and if he had delicately stated, “the natives conversed in their own language” then he would not have been relating his true impression at that moment.  His impression of their speech was that it was violent and uncouth.

            Achebe asserts somewhat sarcastically in his article that the natives that Marlow encounters are often, “too busy with their frenzy” (255) to be treated with language, but even in Things Fall Apart, he describes the dancing and ceremonies of the Africans as such–“Drums beat violently and men leaped up and down in a frenzy” (123).

            Achebe also implies that Conrad only bestows speech when it suits his purposes to advance racist stereotypes.  The two instances that he brings forth are the cannibals’ request to eat the potential prisoners and the pronouncement of Kurtz’s death.  It can easily be shown that this again is Conrad being faithful to actual instances on his journey.  These natives were all ones who had been living and working side by side with the white men and would logically have picked up some of the language.  If anything, it shows that Conrad acknowledges the natives’ ability to not only have their own language, but to learn a second.  A last point to enforce the argument that Conrad is not withholding language from the natives, but merely being accurate in conveying his impressions and experiences is the fact that when told of complex speech and reasoning between Kurtz and the native woman he does not in tone or word doubt or dismiss the story.  The Russian relates his difficulties with the native woman to Marlow saying that, “she talked like a fury to Kurtz for an hour...I don’t understand the dialect of this tribe” (61).  An obvious point here is that he does understand the dialect of some tribes.  To anticipate the argument that the use of the word “dialect” somehow downgrades the language of the natives, even in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, a distinction is made in the “dialect” not “languages” between the Africans.  When the missionaries arrive they speak through an interpreter whose, “dialect was different and harsh to the ears” (144). Finally, Marlow takes it for granted that Kurtz can indeed talk to and reason with the natives as he is carried from the hut.  The Russian cautions, “Now, if he does not say the right thing to them we are all done for” (59).

            Aside from the withholding of language from the natives, another major point of Achebe’s article is that Conrad’s work “celebrates this dehumanization,” “depersonalizes a portion of the human race,” and calls “the very humanity of black people” into question (257,259).  It is in these assertions that Achebe overstates his points, dramatically stretches portions of the text and neglects other portions to suit his purposes.  One of Achebe’s examples is that Conrad withholds human expression from the native woman whom he describes as, “savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent.”  In defense of Conrad, just in the previous paragraph he clearly defines the native as a “woman.”  He does not use any animalistic analogy or anything of the sort.  A more dramatic defense of Conrad’s treatment of the woman takes us back to the discussion of impressions and Conrad’s purpose.  The native woman was very obviously decked out in all her ceremonial finery–“She must have had the value of several elephant tusks upon her” (60).  She was an important and probably religious figure among her people.  While Achebe criticizes Conrad’s treatment of her, his own description of Chielo in Things Fall Apart when she is in the role of prophetess actually does remove her humanity.  “But at that very moment Chielo’s voice rose again in her possessed chanting, and Ekwefi recoiled, because there was no humanity there” (106). Further on, “Chielo was not a woman that night” (107).  So the impression that Marlow is recounting is exactly the impression that Achebe’s characters had of a woman in their own tribe who they had the benefit of knowing.  It seems that Conrad was just very perceptive of the otherworldliness of a prophetess–he recognized the same thing Ekwefi saw and “recoiled” at. 

            Conrad is often taken to task for dehumanizing the natives in his descriptions of the sick and dying men as, “black shadows of disease,” “black bones,” and “bundles of acute angles” (20-21).  This, however, can be answered by a close look at his treatment of other characters in the book.  Healthy black men are described as such–“Six black men advanced in a file,” “Dark human shapes could be made out in the distance” (19,60).  It would seem that the “dehumanizing” descriptions of the sick men allows Marlow to distance himself from physical suffering.  His descriptions are similar to those seen in holocaust writings when the suffering is so great that authors or storytellers try to give themselves emotional distance from the horrors they are witnessing.  Even when Marlow relates Kurtz’s poor physical condition we see similar language and description: “It was as though an animated image of death carved out of old ivory had been shaking its hand at a motionless crowd of men made of dark and glittering bronze” (59).  Here it is Kurtz who is dehumanized--“its hand”–and the natives who are “men.”  Another reading of this dehumanizing language contends that it is an attempt on Conrad’s part to condemn the effects of colonization both on the colonized and the colonists (Singh 269-270).

            Aside from using selective portions of text and ignoring completely the author’s stated purpose, Achebe also entirely disregards Conrad’s own statements regarding his opinions on the European colonization of Africa as well as the cultural situation and opinions of Conrad’s society.  Achebe does acknowledge in his article that, “Conrad did not originate the image of Africa ... in his book” (261).  He even acknowledges that “the kind of liberalism espoused here by Marlow/Conrad touched all the best minds of the age” (256).  But this isn’t enough for Achebe.  What he seems to fail to realize is that what might not be a big enough step to satisfy Achebe in 1975 was a huge step for Conrad in 1899.  Achebe negates the fact that Conrad wrote a novel which was an obvious indictment against the system of European colonization particularly in Africa.  He refuses to consider the fact that given the time in which he was writing Conrad was making some rather revolutionary statements.  Consider the moment of realization that Marlow goes through in recognizing the humanity of the Africans, “...this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one.... but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity–like yours...Ugly.  Yes, it is ugly enough” (38).  Rather than realizing it for the experience that most white Europeans would have, the emotions they would feel at the moment when a long held belief came crashing down–especially a long held belief that had been used to justify the enslavement and exploitation of a people–Achebe chooses to focus on the word “ugly.”  Were Achebe to stop and realize that perhaps Conrad was clever enough to infuse the word “ugly” with not just the meaning of calling the natives’ humanity ugly, but also calling his dawning self-realization “ugly” than he would have perhaps rejoiced at a dawning social consciousness.  Achebe is unwilling to accept the fact that men are a product of their time and the society which educated them.  This does not necessarily excuse them, but it does explain them.  Every now and then a thinker, a writer, a philosopher comes along and asks a hard question of himself and his society.  Conrad was engaging in a discourse that was contrary to the predominant thinking of his day.  Rather than condemning him for not taking his realizations further, Achebe would be better served to recognize the fact that Conrad was not maliciously perpetrating racist culture, but honestly evaluating his own assumptions.  Granted, Conrad did not turn into a famous civil rights moralizer, but he most certainly did not, as Achebe accuses, write a novel which celebrates dehumanization.  Frankly, as emphasized repeatedly here, Conrad merely sought to write a book to relate his impressions, not to make grand social statements either way.  His social statements came out of the dawning awareness gained as he processed these impressions.

            Perhaps the biggest problem with Achebe is that he does not answer the fact that Conrad made many statements that clearly elucidated his opinions of European colonization.  Conrad indicts colonialism in general through Marlow’s description of ancient Roman colonization, saying among other things, “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 when you look into it too much” (10).  He also speaks against the African situation specifically in his own travel correspondence, writing that standing on the spot where he longed to travel to as a boy he had, “the distasteful knowledge of the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience and geographical exploration” (187).  Lastly, Conrad revisited his feelings regarding the colonization of Africa as he wrote Heart of Darkness.  He wrote to his publisher, “All the bitterness of those days, all my puzzled wonder as to the meaning of all I saw–all my indignation at masquerading philanthropy–have been with me again while I wrote...I have divested myself of everything but pity–and some scorn...” (199).  Clearly, Conrad was not a supporter of the system which exploited Africa so cruelly.  This being said,  Achebe seems to be much more offended by the way the Africans are portrayed in the work than how they were treated by the colonists.  It would seem that he would rather Conrad have spent years painting an accurate picture of the intimate details of the African people than simply recording his impressions and writing an indictment of the entire system.  Indeed, that is what he does in his work Things Fall Apart.  He dedicates his work to painting a picture of tribal life without taking time to moralize of the actions of his characters.  We don’t know Achebe’s opinions of the tribes’ infanticide; we just know it happened.  However, we do know Conrad’s opinion of colonization–he strongly disapproved.  If a hundred years from now a critic writes a scathing review of Achebe and his obvious disrespect for human life because he failed to moralize on all he recorded, will they be any further off than he is in accusing Conrad of parading insults and prejudices and calling the humanity of black people into question (259)?  Indeed, is it really the blackness of the people that strikes Conrad or their unfamiliarity?  Would a native African suddenly thrust onto the streets of London not have had similar impressions?  Would the black and white change roles as they do in Walcott’s “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” ?

            In concluding the point that Achebe disregards Conrad’s intent, it is important to note that Achebe is writing almost a century after Conrad to tell us that what Conrad saw and experienced first hand is false.  Indeed Achebe addresses this and blatantly refuses to “accept just any traveler’s tales solely on the grounds that I have not made the journey myself” (259).  This would be a valid position to take if one is happy–as Achebe obviously is–to ignore completely the author’s intentions.  Achebe proves the point himself when he says, “Travelers with closed minds can tell us little except about themselves” (260).  Whether or not Conrad’s mind was closed is a moot point.  Even conceding the point, Conrad never intended to do anything other than tell about himself and his impressions and the dawning of his personal awareness.  Achebe cannot say that Conrad’s impressions were wrong–he cannot know how he perceived the sights around him.  What Achebe can do is state that Conrad’s impressions were not accurate representations of what he saw.  There is a difference. 

            In the Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Criticism, postcolonial writing is partially defined as, “a process of dialogue and necessary correction” of European made history (582).  This is where critics must be careful.  “Correction” of history cannot be taken to the point that we erase the history of the enlightenment process.  We can introduce new and corrected portraits of various cultures, but we cannot claim to be “correcting” the thought processes, impressions, and literary journeys which led us through times of widespread prejudice and racism.  Conrad’s Heart of Darkness does not need correction; it does need dialogue.

            Conrad was often puzzled by interpretations of his work.  Writing about his work, The Shadow Line, he says that he never intended for the piece to touch on the supernatural, but “more than one critic has been inclined to take it that way” (222).  Specifically in regard to what must have been some sort of backlash against Kurtz, Conrad writes, “I did not know that I had ‘a heart of darkness’ and ‘an unlawful soul.’ Mr. Kurtz had–and I have not treated him with easy nonchalance.  Believe me, no man ever paid more for his lines than I have” (234).  It seems that at times he even expresses something akin to outrage or at least frustration with the attempts to read meanings into his work which he never intended.  He wrote to his friend Richard Curle,

It is a strange fate that everything that I have, of set artistic purpose, laboured to leave indefinite, suggestive, in the penumbra of initial inspiration, should have that light turned on to it and its insignificance (as compared with, I might say without megalomania, the ampleness of my conceptions) exposed for any fool to comment upon or even for average minds to be disappointed with (232).

However, no matter what criticism he was receiving, Conrad stood by his work.  He declared to his publisher, T. Fisher Unwin, “Bad or good I cannot be ashamed of what is produced in perfect single mindedness–I cannot be ashamed of those things that are like fragments of my innermost being produced for the public gaze (198-199).   It would be possible to read Conrad for his style and artistic representations, but just as with Walcott’s poem Jean Rhys, the work becomes so much more meaningful when you delve into the true intent of the author.  Though Conrad would have been spared some frustration at the “average minds” who were disappointed with his work, it would mean less than it does for responsible critics and readers of his work.

            Perhaps Achebe would have a more sympathetic view of Conrad’s position if he thought of him as a fellow man, a fellow artist, and a fellow journeyer on the path to self-awareness.  Perhaps he would hear Conrad’s words reaching across the years to him as he wrote of artists in general, “I would wish him to look with a large forgiveness at men’s ideas and prejudices, which are by no means the outcome of malevolence, but depend on their education, their social status, even their professions”  (228).  Maybe then he would realize that not only can Conrad’s work have value because there can be art for art’s sake, but also because if you take the time to study the author, his intentions, and his society then Conrad was obviously not gleefully perpetrating racist myths, but genuinely recounting his own impressions.