LITR 5734: Colonial & Postcolonial Literature

Student Midterm 2008

Danielle Lynch

Spring 2008

Conrad or Achebe: Who is the true bigot?

Joseph Conrad: Racist or Storyteller?

The second week of class, many students were eager to pin Joseph Conrad as a “racist.” Citing the language he uses, his description of the Africans and his lack of empathy for them, it seems as if LITR 5734 readers believe he is simply wrong because he is a white colonizer. But perhaps it is not the students in this course who view Conrad as a racist. Rather, it is the years of racial discrimination and marginalization that cause us, as graduate students, to find fault with life as well as art. Coupled with Achebe’s belief that Conrad’s a racist, we naturally decide that he is correct because he is of color and acts as the voice of his nation. I believe the hypersensitivity to racial and cultural issues we possess in 2008 is a direct result of the past. However, as readers and students of literature, we should not disregard and find fault with an author, simply for writing mimetically.  Instead, we should appreciate and seek to find value in Conrad’s message written more than 100 years ago. In doing so, we are fulfilling a class objective, Intertexuality.

Background Knowledge and History

Having taken Postcolonial Literature as an undergraduate, I understood the chosen texts and themes, particularly the Tradition vs. Modernity objective, since it’s almost universal when talking about colonialism vs. post-colonialism. But the most interesting part of the course is breaking down our pre-conceived notions about colonized nations, including that they must be the victims of an imperialist society. In her 2003 midterm, Emily Masterson said she found she needed to “deconstruct [her] American-centric world view by becoming acquainted with real faces and real names of those ‘savages.’” While Masterson uses this deconstruction to wrap her mind around England not being the “conqueror of a natural course,” she does bring up a valid point regarding our current world view.

We must admit that with atrocities like slavery, a complete lack of civil rights and even modern racially motivated crimes, that our senses are heightened when reading texts centered on a time when cultural exploitation was the regular. It is difficult, then, to separate ourselves, as readers of literature, from equality advocates and caped crusaders of egalitarianism. Historically, the colonizers in Heart of Darkness were viewed much like the Europeans who came to the Americas: those who raped and pillaged, rather than discovered and harvested, but through Marlow, Conrad shows he’s anything but simply a “racist.” In fact, I believe he makes a point to show how social inequality, even in the 1898 when the book was written, would lead to our demise. Textually, it ultimately leads to the demise of a colonist.

Achebe vs. Conrad

In his essay, “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness,” Achebe refers to Conrad as a “thoroughgoing racist” (343). I find fault with Achebe using the term “racist,” because Heart of Darkness was written before race was even an issue. The novel was written during a time when it was the culture of white European’s to lay their gaze upon the Africans and view them as “the other.”  Instead, we could call it cultural marginalization and perhaps even discuss cultural exploitation. After all, it was only a little over 13 years prior to the book being penned that the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution legally freed all slaves in all state in this country. Moreover, couldn’t every other colonized area of the world, Australia, for example, find all the same reasons to have a problem with colonialism, despite not being African?

While Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart isn’t a direct response to Heart of Darkness, it seems that this novel, written almost 60 years later, was making an attempt at exposing what Achebe believes Conrad had so flippantly overlooked. This is evident in his essay when Achebe says the Conrad had a problem with “niggers” and that “his inordinate love of that word itself should be of interest to psychoanalysts” (345). But Conrad’s “fixation on blackness” is simply to differentiate the colonized with the colonizers; the tradition with the modernity.

If Conrad is labeled a racist, then perhaps we should label Achebe as sexist. Things Fall Apart condones wife-beating. In fact, Achebe says that Okonkwo was “not the man to stop beating somebody half-way through, not even for fear of a goddess” (30). Through Okonkwo’s actions, Achebe is not only condoning this violence, but he is glorifying Okonkwo and suggesting that him beating Ojiugo was a sign of his masculinity. Kristen Holst Petersen also addresses this in her essay First Things First: Problems of a Feminist Approach to African Literature. Petersen says that in African Literature, particularly Achebe’s novel, “to behave like a woman is to behave like an inferior being” (253). She goes on to mention that the inequality of the sexes in Achebe’s novel seems to amuse him. No doubt, he’s more amused than the inequality of the races in Conrad’s novel. Further In Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, she says that men act as “the one” and woman as “the other.” Who was ever more the “object” than women?

If Yeats can do it, why can’t Conrad?

In Yeats’ poem, The Second Coming, he mentions “Spiritus Mundi,” or “the spirit of the world.” This human consciousness comes in the Christian form of The Holy Spirit. This is in contrast to Achebe’s belief that Christianity will crush their society. Yeats also makes reference to “darkness,” the “rough beast” and “shadows,” much like Conrad. Likewise, he refers to the lion, a savage beast that represents the Africans, in his poem. But Achebe doesn’t note Yeats’ “fixation on blackness” when discussing colonialism, despite his novel title being pulled from the poem. When Conrad makes mention of “a darkness” and goes into detail, describing slaves being beaten and “connected together with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking,” he is penalized by Achebe and accused of

The stark differences

This brings us to another point in the novel, regarding the self vs. other course objective, aside from ourselves as the reader with the course acting as the other. As the European views himself as the one, he sees the African as the other. This theory extends to sex, class, etc. As the other, the European feels the need to not only “fix” the other, but also to point out the stark differences. The self vs. other objective also extends toward tradition vs. modernity, as one acts as the self and the opposite, the other.

The British bring with them a threat to traditional Ibo society: modernity. The European’s bring a new language and a new religion, which was central to the Africans. The Ibo seem to thrive on tradition. They observe a Week of Peace to appease the “great goddess” who will bless them with plentiful crops (30). But in contrast to African values, Achebe allows Okonkwo, himself, to break tradition by kicking off the Week of Peace with a wife-beating. It could be said then, that Conrad was giving social commentary on the need to move toward modernity when it comes to Europe’s imperialist nature, as well as older African traditions like wife-beating.

The European missionaries offering to teach Christian converts to read and write and thus, lose their “language” of proverbs is another threat that attacks both religion and communication, central to any culture. Yet some Ibo tribe members still choose to go into the “evil forest” to convert. These are all steps toward modernity and come with colonialism. Achebe’s attack isn’t on Conrad, but on colonialism as a whole. 

Defenses of Conrad

Many colonizers saw Africa much like the United States sees its current occupation of Iraq. That is, colonization and occupation is acceptable because we are bringing much-needed democracy. Marlow says that he had a “heavenly mission to civilize,” (5) thinking he was doing what was good and right for the Africans. In addition, he goes on to criticize the Europeans, as colonists when Marlow says “They were no colonists; their administration was merely a squeeze, and nothing more, I suspect. They were conquerors” (4). By ridiculing the Europeans’ mission, Conrad shows he finds little about the colonization of Africa a civilizing mission and therefore, actually empathizes with the Africans, proving the text isn’t truly “racist.”  Achebe, himself agreed, in his essay, that “Conrad saw and condemned the evil of imperial exploitation” (349).

Another major difference between the two novels is that Heart of Darkness is written in first person so you’re only able to gain any prospective from one character, Marlow. Meanwhile, Things Fall Apart is written in third person omniscient, which gives us a greater perspective of intent because we’re able to see the bigger picture, as well as particular character’s thoughts. Perhaps Achebe wouldn’t view Conrad’s work as “racist” if we were given the same point and view and introspective into the characters.

Personal Reflections

My personal reflections of the first half of the course seem to bullet on our aversion, as a class, to unpopular thought. Could it be, merely, our heightened awareness of racial inequality in 2008 that prompt us to label a book written in the early 1900’s as racist? Why aren’t we as aware of what could be described as sexism?

In his essay, Achebe says that:

“Whatever Conrad's problems were, you might say he is now safely dead. Quite true. Unfortunately his heart of darkness plagues us still. Which is why an offensive and deplorable book can be described by a serious scholar as "among the half dozen greatest short novels in the English language." And why it is today the most commonly prescribed novel in twentieth-century literature courses in English Departments of American universities (345).

I find it hard to take Achebe seriously, as a student of literature, because he simply has a problem with an “offensive and deplorable book.” First of all, what’s offensive is subjective. And isn’t the beauty of literature conjuring up the different interpretations of a text and having the ability to explore these interpretations? With too many holes in his claims and inconsistent view of what’s “offensive,” and “deplorable,” Achebe’s claims have no bearing on my personal interpretation of Heart of Darkness.