Tim Assel

In a society where a dominant group of people retains authority over a dominated group, the way to break through the self – other identity of the dominating group is to create a voice for the dominated people. This voice can then be shared with the dominating group to make them aware of prejudice and feel sympathy for the injustice enacted upon the dominated group. In the study of post-colonial texts this semester, four works have woven together to accentuate the argument for the establishment of voice. These texts are: Heart of Darkness, Things Fall Apart, "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness," and "Conrad's Image of Africa: Recovering African Voices in Heart of Darkness."

Even though Conrad intended to criticize the European colonization of African in his novel, Heart of Darkness, almost all of the African characters are marginalized to the point of dehumanization. Conrad offers little interaction between the story’s narrator and the various Africans encountered in the novel, and the interactions Marlow has with Africans is artfully colored in a way which makes the Africans seem as taciturn and mysterious as the Congo itself. The voiceless characterization attributed to Africans in Hear of Darkness demonstrates Conrad’s utter disregard for Africans as humans incapable of being equal to the European race. Mwikisa claims that neither Conrad nor any of his contemporaries anticipated a future African readership, which is perhaps the cause of why the Africans in the novel remain voiceless.

Two examples are highlighted by Achebe as instances in Heart of Darkness where Africans are allowed to speak. The first example occurs when Marlow’s crew reverts to cannibalism and one of the crew expresses his desire to catch and devour the attacking savages. In the second example, Marlow expresses his dislike for the manager’s boy as the boy proclaims the death of Kurtz. Achebe claims that in both of these examples, Conrad villainizes and demeans the African characters of the story by placing emphasis on cannibalism and disrespect for the dead.

Mwikisa offers an alternative reading to Conrad’s disregard for African voice in Heart of Darkness. In his essay, Mwikisa searches for glimpses of humanity in Conrad’s portrayal of Africans and claims that previous neglect of the African voices in the novel has been caused by ethnocentric misreading. Two examples of these misread sections described by Mwikisa are: Kurtz’s last words and Marlow’s encounter with Kurtz’s Intended. Mwikisa claims that both of these examples show that Conrad acknowledges "fundamental flaws" in Europe’s colonization of Africa.

Just as Conrad suppresses the voice of Africans in Heart of Darkness, Achebe commits a similar omission of European voice in Things Fall Apart. In Achebe’s novel, European missionaries serve as the "other" which allows Okonkwo to create an African identity. Okonkwo serves as a voice for the colonized Africans to speak out of the silence enshrouded upon Africans by Conrad. Fictional novels, like Things Fall Apart are necessary to give character to the voice which Achebe is attempting to create for the African people.

Fictional stories, like Things Fall Apart, deepen a student’s knowledge of world history and international relations more effectively than other subjects because novels can incorporate more diverse voices and cultural narratives. An author from a culture outside of the dominant academic culture will be able to communicate more effectively through literature than through works of history or sociology. This is especially true for cultures transitioning to modernity from primitives societies. In old-world cultures, oral traditions and storytelling have been the primary means of communication. Moving from these traditions to the writing of novels is one of the steps towards modernity. For a culture transitioning from old-world to modernity, the authors who take from oral traditions to write their novels are in-between the two cultures, similar to how transnational migrants exist in-between and blend elements of their old and new cultures.

The dialogue between these four texts would fit perfectly into a multicultural curriculum on American Civil Rights history, literature, and media studies. Heart of Darkness is a fixture in Western education that would serve as an entrance for post-colonial studies to invade the traditional classroom setting. The writings of Achebe and Mwikisa provide both opposition and support of the messages Conrad attempted to convey to Europeans about colonial Africa and expand Conrad’s depiction of colonization to include the voices of the colonized along with the voices of the colonizers. The marginalization and discrimination encountered and overcome by colonized people would relate very closely to the struggle of minorities in the U.S. for equality with the white majority.