Heart of Darkness Between Racism and Anti-Racism,

Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism, and Impressionism

Heart of Darkness originally appeared serially in Blackwood’s

Magazine in 1899. It was eventually published as a whole in 1902. Since
its publication, the novel has fascinated numerous readers and critics whom
regarded the novel as an important one because of the ways it uses
ambiguity and “foggishness”, or Impressionism style as inadequate term to
describe Conrad’s Narrative style. Critics have regarded Heart of Darkness
as a work that in several important ways broke any narrative conventions
and brought the English novel into the twentieth century like Hunt
Hawkins, American poet; Peter Edgerly Firchow, American scholar; and
Cedric Watts, research professor. However, Conrad’s work evokes series
of sever criticism accusing the work of being racism, imperialist; in the
regard: Chinua Achebe, father of the African novel; Susan L. Blake,
American scholar and writer. Approximately a half century has passed
since Achebe called Joseph Conrad a “bloody Racist”, and the scholar
world has yet come to recover. Barely, a year passes without an attempt to
rebut or soften Achebe’s accusation. Criticism of heart of darkness has
split between rebuttal and advocate. Moreover, Criticism spectrum has not
overlooked Conrad’s defense of the imperialist beliefs manifested in the
novella. Conrad’s work has been accused of imperialist promotion.
However, the accusations have faced series of defending the aim of
Conrad’s work, as a work that criticize European imperialist ideology.
Conrad’s work has received a spectrum of criticism which split between
scholars charge the work of being a racist and imperialist, and others rebut
the charges; moreover, Conrad’s use of Impressionism has cleverly
undermined his accurate intentions and beliefs of Joseph, and disturbs the
critics to agree on certain meanings that underline Conrad’s Heart of
Darkness.

Conrad’s Heart of darkness is criticized of being a racist work by

Chinua Achebe, and Susan L. Blake; however, there have been several
responses, by Hunt Hawkins and Peter Firchow, either to rebut or to defend
the true intention of Conrad’s work. Achebe in his essay: Image of Africa:
Racism in Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” (1975) demonstrates and argues
Conrad’s racist works and misrepresentation of Africa. Conrad envisions
Africa as a”prehistoric earth” (71), “wore the aspect of an unknown
planet” (71)
 ... namely that Joseph Conrad was a
thoroughgoing racist. That this simple truth is
glossed over in criticisms of his work is due to the
fact that white racism against Africa is such a
normal way of thinking that its manifestations go
completely unremarked. (Achebe; 6)
Achebe argues that the Book of Heart of Darkness is only an emphasis on
the Western’s racial prejudices to Africa and African people. Moreover,
the novella, scholars who claim that Conrad’s work has made the twentieth
century novel, has been attacked. Achebe refutes their claims; Achebe
declares Conrad’s work in no way deserves to be called a great English
work:

And the question is whether a novel which

celebrates this dehumanization, which
depersonalizes a portion of the human race, can
be called a great work of art. My answer is: No,
it cannot. (6)
Nevertheless, the need and the desire, Achebe argues, of Western society
which locates Africa and Africans as a savage place unlike the Western
civilization. He indicates to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as the best
illustration and manifestation to that need and desire which have been
discussed in his essay:

Quite simply it is the desire -- one might indeed

say the need --in Western psychology to set
Africa up as a foil to Europe, as a place of
negations at once remote and vaguely familiar,
in comparison with which Europe's own state of
spiritual grace will be manifest. (1)

He arguably explains that need and desire are not renewed, thereby it
makes one to think and to “look at this phenomenon dispassionately” (1).
For Cedric Watts, Achebe and Conrad are in the same truck. Both, Watts
argues, are relying on their background and their times; Achebe is carried
away by his aversion vision of racial stereotypes, while Conrad is
influenced by the prejudices of his time to people of color. Susan L. Blake
supporting Achebe’s charges of Conrad’s work; she initiates her essay:
RACISIM AND THE CLASSICS: TEACHING HEART OF
DARKNESS clearly stating her position toward Conrad’s novella “I would
like to begin from the position that Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is
a racist novel” (396). She set her position against those who defend
Conrad’s work of being an attack to imperialist and racist thoughts of
Western society. In her essay, she sums up Achebe’s essay. Achebe, she
argues, anatomizes three racial characteristics associated with the novel.
First, Conrad’s portrayal of Africa and Africans is unreal (396). Second,
Conrad represents Africa and African as something Western society eager
to repress (396). Third, Conrad sets the confrontations of Europe and
Africa to each has its place (396) he indicates to the primordial ancestry of
the Thomas River and Congo River. Moreover; Blake rejoin a fourth
position that despite Conrad’s criticism of the colonial and imperialist
ideology in his work “ he had participated in as inefficient, inhumane, and
hypocritical “, she illustrate the fact by the famous lie Marlow has told to
Kurtz’s intended.

One might argue that heart of darkness is about

neither Africa nor Colonialism, but the
deterioration of one European mind or the chaos
buried on any European mind (Blake; 397)
However, Achebe’s diatribe has provoked a number of vigorous defenses
and rebuttal of his charges. Hunt Hawkins in his essay: The Issue of
Racism in Heart of Darkness sets number of defenses against Achebe’s
charges. Hawkins displays that Conrad’s novel is a criticism of European
society while Africa is merely a geographical place; “that Conrad’s Congo
story is really more concerned with Europeans than Africans” (164). He
sustains his polemics by Leonard Kibera’s, a Kenyan novelist, comment;
“I study Heart of Darkness as an examination of the West itself and not as
a comment on Africa” (164). He continually argues that the novel is
scrutinizing the European characters –Marlow, Mr. Kurtz, the Intended, the
pilgrims, besides the European’s hunger to richness and wealth (164).
Hawkins externally asserts his polemics “that the tribal life of the Congo
is 1890, the year of his [Conrad] visit, was in fact much less idyllic than
we might wish to imagine” (164). He indicates to the fact that Conrad’s
portrayals are not racial prejudices or judgments, rather is the African life.
He refers to Conrad’s portrayals of Cannibalism; “Cannibalism exists
amongst all people on the Upper Congo” (Glave qtd. in Hawkins; 164).
Conrad, Hawkins disputes, is accurate that he witnessed such practices, he
defensively illustrates Conrad’s declaration to Arthur Symons; “I saw all
those sacrilegious rites” (166), but Conrad has kept the secrecy of African
rites, and conceives the worse from what he has witnessed in Congo, he
prohibits of revealing all the sights in his work. Nevertheless, Hawkins
intimates that Conrad’s portrayals of Africans are based on Anti-
Imperialist belief: “... a powerful indication of Imperialism” (166).
Hawkins, thus, claims that if Conrad’s image of Africa is negative, it is
more so for Europeans:

I have seen devil of violence, and the devil of

greed, and the devil of hot desire; but, by all the
stars! These were strong, lusty, red-eyed devils,
that swayed and drove men—men, I tell you. But
as I stood on this hillside, I foresaw that in the
blinding sunshine of that land I would become
acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed
devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly. (Conrad;
29-30)

Despite that Conrad visualizes Africans in a negative frame of picture,

Hawkins argues, he indeed demonstrates ” many quite positive comments”
(168), he accuses Achebe of overlooking these comments. Moreover,
Hawkins, lastly, states that Conrad’s tendency is Anti-Racist, and the latter
is clear “in his Malayan novels where he shows nothing but contempt for
white men who claim superiority solely on the basis of their skin color”
(169). Nevertheless, Peter Edgrely Firchow’s Envisioning Africa: Racism
and Imperialism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is considered “a work of
impressive scholarship” (Livingston; 129). Firchow tends “to do justice of
Heart of Darkness while in the same time doing justice to its aesthetic
power” (Livingston; 129). More so, Firchow attacks Achebe’s accusation
of the aesthetic value of Conrad’s work;

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. (Achebe; 7)

The genuine purpose of Firchow’s book is to rebut Achebe’s 1975 lecture

at University of Massachusetts and to advocate the halt of reading the work
(Hawkins; 196). Moreover Firchow explain that there are degrees for
racism, and labeling Conrad as the “weak racist”, adopting Frank Reeves
Terminology. Continually, Firchow in his book explains what Achebe calls
a misrepresentation of Africa, African language, and Africans. He
comment on Achebe’s accusation of Conrad displaying the African
language as an “incomprehensible grunts” (Achebe; 5) that theses grunts
“for Conrad [...] are significant and are exchanges between the
Englishmen listening to Marlow’s tale on the Thames” (Firchow qtd. In
Hawkins; 194)
 Conrad’s novella is believed to be an attack on Imperialism ideology
of western world; however Criticism claims that Conrad’s work
undermines self-belief of imperialism. Conrad’s starts his novella, under
Marlow narrative with distinguishing Conquest of the ancient Roman and
Colonization, or in a renewed term: Imperialism; “when the Romans first
came here nineteen hundred years ago [...] they were no colonists [...] they
were conquerors” (7). Marlow puts a difference between the ancient
Roman conquests which was “robbery with violence, aggravated murder
on a large scale”. He sees that conquest can be tolerable only if it aims to
construct the conquered place, and the conquest must be for those primitive
people. For colonialism is based on good intention, civilizing the
primordial savages like Africa:

Their administration was merely a squeeze, and

nothing more, I suspect. They were conquerors,
and for that you want only brute force— nothing
to boast of, when you have it, since your strength
is just an accident arising from the weakness of
others (9)

Marlow believes that English colonist is efficient and the “devotion to

efficiency” what makes it distinguishable from Roman Conquests, that
conquerors invade a foreign land using violence, however; colonizers are
efficient for the sake of helping the colonized people. Moreover, Marlow
states that the white man has a moral duty to help people in backward
countries, and he has to be successful in his mission. Marlow’s introduction
of speech, about the Roman conquest and their cruelty, is an intelligent idea
to give an excuse to the English Imperialism in Africa and defend his own
imperialistic beliefs. However, he gives an excuse for the robbery,
violence, and aggravated murder which is practiced by white man towards
the black; he justifies it as the White Man’s burden and a colonial law.
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. What redeems it is the idea only. An
idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence
but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea—
something you can set up, and bow down before,
and offer a sacrifice to. … (10)
Marlow considers actions of robbery normal because it is practiced with
slavers and using violence is justifiable according to a colonial law. Thus,
Marlow is a mirror reflecting Conrad’s imperial policy. David Ray Papke
sees that “law’s [the colonial law] function seems largely to assist
imperialist control [...] imperialist do more than merely use the law”
(Papke qtd. in Bendjebra; 67). Interestingly, Conrad says that the
conquest/Colonizing process is redeemed by an idea that lays at the back
of it– the idea of progress and civilization. Marlow, sitting in a Buddha
position, declares that “what saves us is the efficiency– the devotion to
efficiency” (9). Ironically, Conrad goes on in the novella to show how the
European colonial experience is exactly like the Roman’s brutal conquest,
exactly like taking away land from those with “a different complexion or
slightly flatter noses” (10) by “brute force” (9). Moreover, he mocks that
efficiency which saves the European by exposing all the inefficiency of the
trading posts;

The business entrusted to this fellow the making

of brick but there wasn’t a fragment of brick
anywhere in the station, and he had been here
more then a year waiting (46-47)

Albeit, Conrad’s criticism of imperialist ideology is interpreted as an attack

on Imperialism, but the course of this attack, all “ideals” are threatened to
turned to “idols”– “you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a
sacrifice to ...” (10). Achebe asserts in his essay that:

They will point out to you that Conrad is, if

anything, less charitable to the Europeans in the
story than he is to the natives, that the point of the
story is to ridiculous Europe’s civilization
mission in Africa (6)
However, Hunt Hawkins, Benita Parry, and others defend Conrad’s novella
as an expose of the imperialist thinking of the Western. They argue that
Conrad’s critics of Imperialism is not grounded on his fully experience on
Congo, but he takes the advantage of other historical works published in
his time to criticize the imperialist ideology which is advocated by the
western society. Cedric Watts interprets Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as an
expose to ideology of Imperialist’s rapacity. To sum up, Conrad’s Heart of
Darkness is an expose to imperialist exploitation of the west. Hawkins
asserts that Conrad’s depiction of Imperialism in Congo is a crucial
uncover of the atrocities, agonies, violence, and cruelties of the West
society. Patrick Brantlinger argues that rites of cutting of hand and heads,
which are manifested in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, are incurred of
oppression of the imperialist people on the Africans; refuting the idea of
being part of African traditions as Hunt Hawkins asserts in his article: The
Issue of Racism in Heart of Darkness. More so; D.C. R. A. Goontilleke,
a critic from Sri Lanka, has said, “Conrad belongs to the distinguished
minorities of radical contemporary critics of imperialism” (Goontilleke
qtd. in Hawkins; 167). And, Wilson Harris, the Guyanese novelist, sees
Conrad’s novel as an attack on European Liberalism itself (Harris qtd. in
Hawkins; 167-168) Conrad expresses clearly his condemnation of
European exploitation, rapacity, and cruelty in such memorial scenes as the
Arab war and cutting of hands and heads.

Impressionism in Heart of Darkness embraces multiple meaning,

which critics have quarreled over time; however, Conrad’s work whose
suggestiveness indefinitiveness seems to cry for analysis even as it resists
it. The first writer to apply the principles of impressionism painting to
literature is Ferdinan Bruntiere. Impressionism, he says, means “before all
to open our eyes to seeing the distinctive traits, to accustom our hands to
rendering this primal aspect of things for the eyes of others [...] that is the
first point” (Hay; 137). Thus, heart of darkness is mainly impressionist
because of its acceptance to the bounded and ambiguous nature of
individual understanding, Conrad’s work most apparent image of
impressionism is the haze; Conrad warns the reader of “foggish” meanings
which rely on the individual’s experience, visuals, sensation of Marlow.
However, Marlow’s journey through Congo explores how “One
individual’s knowledge of another can mysteriously changes the way in
which he sees the world” . In heart of darkness, Conrad has been skilled to
undermine any evidence for clear and obvious meanings.
I don’t want to bother you much with what
happened to me personally, [...] yet to
understand the effect of it on me you ought to
know how I got out there, what I saw, how I went
up that river ... (Conrad; 10-11)

In this respect, Heart of Darkness may be judged essentially impressionist

in nature. Ian Watt has observed “it accepts, and indeed in its very form
asserts, the bounded and ambiguous nature of individual understanding”
(Watt qtd. in Byrne; 14). Profoundly based on the very premises, one can
recognize and organize Conrad’s work as impressionist work. Critics have
rendered impressionism to any writing that attempt to visualize an
individual’s sensory, experience, “perception of physical objects by
equivalently painterly pr picturesque literary effects” (Byrne; 14).
Apparently, Conrad’s adopts the every meaning of the term. The technique,
thus, has been manifested in the first narrator’s use of metaphors such as
“moonshine” and “misty halos” to distinguish Marlow’s narrative,
whereby Marlow’s depiction of his individual visualized experience, from
other narrators;

The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the

whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a
cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical [...] and
to him the meaning of an episode was not inside
like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale
which brought it out only as a glow brings out a
haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos
that sometimes are made visible by the spectral
illumination of moonshine.(Conrad; 6-7)
The passage refers that the setting of meaning is not that simple, and in fact
may be impossible. Conrad indicates the problem of rendering an accurate
meaning or judgment of whatsoever the story embraces. However, Achebe
argues that the frame of multiple narrators which Conrad adopts to mask
and to separate the malaises of the Marlow depiction from his does not
work, that Conrad has failed to refer to that whether implicitly or explicitly
to display his characters clearly to the readers’ analysis:

if Conrad's intention is to draw a cordon

sanitaire between himself and the moral and
psychological malaise of his narrator his care
seems to me totally wasted because he
neglects to hint however subtly or tentatively at
an alternative frame of reference by which we
may judge the actions and opinions of his
characters. (5)
More so, Fredric Jameson argues that Conrad’s narrative style is a hollow
Impressionism, which his style has been split between modern “will to
style” and “leading to an elaborate but essentially hollow ‘impressionism’”
(Bruntlinger; 373). To sum up, Conrad application to Impressionism has
undermined multiple meaning that critics have contended over time for an
accurate meaning. However, Conrad’s use of the technique has succeeded
to mask his true intentions in the story.

Heart of darkness is the story of individual experience of the narrator

Marlow. The work has received various appreciations, which labeled as a
great work of art; however, not all critics and scholars agree with the
judgment. For instance, Chinua Achebe accuses Conrad of being an
emblem to the white racist who misrepresents Africa and Africans as
savages. He also asserts in his essay that Heart of Darkness represents the
racist thinking of the West towards the Africa. Moreover, Susan L. Blake
supports Achebe’s charges declaring that Conrad has covered on the
western atrocities by masking the cruelties in the Congo. Nevertheless, the
sever charges evoke a spectrum of rebuttal charges and defenses of
Conrad’s work; Peter Firchow, in his book, justifies the accusation of
Achebe. Hunt Hawkins set numerous defenses, where he anatomizes
Conrad’s work to exhibits his true intention, that he is an anti Racism and
Anti imperialist. Thus, Conrad’s use of Impressionism, Critics argue,
covers and masks his imperialist beliefs under Marlow malaises depictions.
Nevertheless, what makes Heart of Darkness more then a crucial work is
the way it details, in subtle ways, Marlow’s experience in the Congo.

Work-Cited:
Achebe, Chinua.”An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of
Darkness”. Massachusetts Review. 18. 1977. Rpt. in Heart of Darkness,
An Authoritative Text, bachground and sources Criticism. 1961. 3 rd, ed.
Ed. Robert Kinbrough, London: W. W Norton and Co., 1980: 251-261.
Print
Blake, L. Susan. “Racism and The Classics: Teaching Heart of Darkness”.
CLA Journal. Vol.25, No.4 (June 1982):396-404. Print
Brentlinger, Patrick. “Heart of Darkness; Anti- Imperialism, Racism, and
Impressionism”. Rev. of Heart of darkness, dir. Joseph Conrad. Criticism
Fall, 1985:363-385. Print

Byrne, Paul Johenson. “Heart of Darkness: The Dream-Sensation and

Literary Impressionism Revisited”. The Conradian. Vol. 35, No. 2(Autumn
2010): 13-29. Print

Conrad, Joseph. “Heart of Darkness”. Rev. of Joseph Conrad and

Impressionism, dir. Eloise Knapp Hay. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art
Criticism Winter, 1974: 137-144. Print

Conrad, Joseph. “Heart of Darkness”. Planet Pdf.

Hawkins, Hunt. “Envisioning Africa: Racism and Imperialism in Conrad’s
Heart of Darkness”. Rev. of. Envisioning Africa: Racism and Imperialism
in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness’, dir. Peter Edgerly Firchow. South Atlantic
Review Winter, 2001: 196-199. Print

Hawkins, Hunt. “The Issue of Racism in ‘Heart of Darkness’”.

Conradiana. Vol. 14, No.3 (1982): 163-171. Print

Livingston, Robert Eric. “Envisioning Africa: Racism and Imperialism in

Conrad’s Heart of Darkness”. Rev. of. Envisioning Africa: Racism and
Imperialism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness’, dir. Peter Edgerly Firchow.
Research in African Literature Spring, 2001: 129-130. Print

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MASTER ONE: Literature & Civilization