short paper for my methods and materials class

Heather Beatty
Jamieson
English 200A
20 May 2008



The Heart of Darkness Falls Apart: The Collision of Two Great Texts

To enter into a dualistic dichotomy regarding Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, implying a necessary scholarly preference of one or the other, is an inappropriate and an essentially flawed and fruitless project. Each text stands alone as a veritable representation of a particular time and place, with a particular set of values and social structures. And yet, neither will indifference do when it comes to an appraisal of literature’s social roles and implications. The authors of these two texts had two very different agendas, and thus to place them head to head is a dubious and unnecessary endeavor. Edward Said writes that “narrative is crucial” in understanding cultures and that stories are vital to tell untold truths: they “are at the heart of what explorers and novelists say about strange regions of the world” and also act as the “method colonized people use to assert their own identity and the existence of their own history” (xii). All stories, then, should be considered with appropriate concern.
The two texts in question fall perfectly into place in the balanced sides of Said’s equation: one as the colonialist novelist depicting a “strange region” of Africa and the second as a voice from the “colonized people” seeking to assert a specific cultural identity. Neither text, then, can be right or wrong. Both texts provide descriptions of flawed societies, although arguably Conrad’s text indeed reveals a deeply wrought racism that allows for the system of exploitation that he challenges. To read Conrad’s presumptive text in the environment of current scholarship simply requires great sensitivity and thoughtfulness. A text is only as powerful and destructive as readers and interpreters make it. To closely examine a text with attention to its contextual implications is to undermine its explosive power and see it for what it is: a collection of words and phrases strictly representative of one person, one place, and one story.
It is true that Chinua Achebe has called Conrad a “bloody racist” in his scathing piece, “An Image of Africa” and rightly so. The allegations he proposes are reasonable and his cited quotations hit the mark. There is no denying that to compare a Europeanized African to “a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat walking on his hind legs” (38) leaves a bitter taste in a postmodern, postcolonial reader’s mind. To ignore the multifaceted possibilities of diversity and refuse any intelligible communication to the African characters in the story is to deny a voice, whether through the narrator or as author, is to engage in racism and repression. What good is an author is he or she cannot take responsibility for the words of the proffered text? However, this is a diversion from the real argument, the real question. The real question about Heart of Darkness is, given its time and place, is it revealing and indicative of a higher social purpose? Even a cursory reading of this Conrad’s novella exposes a political agenda of the highest order, contextually speaking. Conrad seeks to subvert the entire system of colonization, to confront the motivating industry: capitalism and greed, and to shake the very roots of British imperialism. Whether or not his text accomplishes this task is beside the point. The racist undertones of his text are beside the point, essentially. But here it gets complicated.
Conrad’s self-appointed project, clear in the text of Heart of Darkness whether or not we consider Marlow to be the voice of Conrad, is to expose the social degradations of imperialism. However, Hunt Hawkins wrongly asserts that Conrad’s attitude is “itself critical of racism” and here I disagree. On the contrary, Conrad indeed utilizes images and terminologies of racism as the color of skins and the social equality of “primitive” people is not his concern. His concern is the greed, waste, and exploitation of rampant European capitalism and imperialism. As Hawkins argues, Heart of Darkness is a “powerful indictment of imperialism,” citing the passage in which Marlow states that “the conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking of it away from those who have a different complexion or slighly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing.” Hawkins cuts off the quote here, but to continue to quote Conrad’s passage proves revealing: “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 pretense but an idea, and an unselfish belief in the idea” (10). Disregarded by Hawkins, Marlow has gone on to uphold the idea of imperialism as a good one, just one which put into practice creates real-world horrors. Never once does Conrad or Marlow imply that imperialism is wrong because it abuses the other because he or she is Other, per se. In fact, the novella reads in such a way that I was convinced Conrad/Marlow would celebrate African colonization if it were “simply” for religious purposes, the “civilizing” of the Other. His moralistic tone is misplaced, completely corrupted by the social standards of his time.
As Said writes, “this narrative in turn is connected directly with the redemptive force, as well as the waste and horror, of Europe’s mission in the dark world” (23). Conrad addresses the waste and horror, but relying on the traditional image of Africa as a “dark world,” connotatively dark in every metaphorical sense of the word. In my reading, as a student of literature interested in a different kind of necessary redemption; that is, a full redemption from the horrors of colonization, I read Heart of Darkness with a different horror. Kurtz’s horrors, and Marlow’s “immensely compelling” (Said 23) narrative find no sympathetic reader in me. I, too, am a product of my time. For me, reading Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is a completely different story. The voice of the colonized, in our contemporary globalized world, is infinitely more fascinating and dynamic, than the voice of the colonizer.
Chinua Achebe writes of worlds and people previously unknown to his very particular audience. He wants to tell this particular story to this particular audience; he wants to shed light on the so-called “darkness” and he wants to expose both the previous voicelessness of this region and this group of human beings and the possible contemporary interest that the previously dominant society might now take in it. He utilizes British literary terminology, even in the title and epigraph of his novel, and appeals to an English-literary audience with his repeated use of Igbo figurative phrases, translated into English of course, that reveal a complex reverence for the power of language. In this way, Achebe makes it metatextually clear that, self-conscious of the fact or not, Amer-European readers encounter a foreign world at once attractive and repellent. Chinua Achebe gives voice to the invisible, to hidden forces and spirit worlds, as well as victims of an insane power dynamic at the hands of imperialist Europeans. At this point in time, Western readers must realize that this voice, so long silenced, is more important than the voice of the standardized axiom, the unmarked sign, whether quasi-rebellious or not.
To argue that one should not be offended by Conrad’s text would be, to put it bluntly, offensive. If that argument comes from a white, Amer-European reader, even more so. The unmarked reader can never understand the marked; can never put him-or-herself into pure embodiment of the Other. But it is vital, in a postmodern world, to try. This is why, as I wrote earlier, students and teachers of literature must proceed with utmost caution, respect, and care. We must provide broad understandings of cultural dynamics, history, and identity. Literary study should no longer be the domain of the “new critic,” as this is an axiomatic, non-inclusive and monologic perspective doomed to fail by virtue of its repetition and repression.
And yet we should continue to read all stories, and as scholars of literature we should always remain open to reading all stories. Heart of Darkness still tells us something about Conrad’s world and conception of masculinity and self. To read it, as J. Hillis Miller has argued, “by no means exonerates Conrad from responsibility for what is said within it.” In fact, to read it parallel to Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, or better yet, Achebe’s “An Image of Africa” would offer students and immensely broader scope of perspectives.