JOSEPH CONRAD’S HEART OF DARKNESS IS LESS CHARITABLE TO THE EUROPEANS THAN IT IS TO THE NATIVES

JOSEPH CONRAD’S HEART OF DARKNESS IS LESS CHARITABLE TO THE EUROPEANS THAN IT IS TO THE NATIVES

By Abubakar Sulaiman Muhd

Heart of Darkness is a powerful piece that draws attention of critics from all over the world. The narrative opens on the River Thames with four important personalities listening to a story of a traveler going down to Congo River.

         

The novella is a collection of Conrad’s experience during his stay in Congo, and he uses it deliberately to set Africa in an abyss of negation.

Conrad/Marlow in the narratives uses all the negative adjectives to disqualify Africa and disfigure its images. Words such as ‘savages,’ ‘shadows,’ ‘diseases,’ ‘brutes’ etc. are used in describing denizens of Africa.

Africa is seen as periphery and antithesis of the west and of course of civilization. Conrad/Marlow describes Africa as unearthly place that bears the features of unknown planet.

         

“We wonder on a prehistoric earth, on an earth   

that bore the aspect of an unknown planet.”

Marlow serves as an emissary of light to a place that has been one of the darkest places on earth. From Conrad/Marlow’s point of view, going to Africa is like traveling back to the earliest beginning of time.

“Going up that river is like traveling back to the earliest beginning of the world.”

To Marlow, this was the first phase of European civilization that has gone far and left no trace. To him, Europe is already there on the zenith ladder of civilization and advancement. All this, is to show the distance between Europe and Africa.    

         

What worries Conrad the more is to see that he was having a kinship link with wild and barbarous creatures that did not have the competency of walking on their legs but rather walking on four like hindquarters.

“No they are not inhuman; well you know that was the worst of it. This suspicion of they are not being inhuman. It would slowly come to one. They howled and leaped and spun and made horrid faces but what thrilled you was just the thought of your kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough.”

Here Conrad wishes if he had no any human kinship with Africans. It is worse than a curse to have a tie-up with barbarous creatures that lived the same way with animals. If it wasn’t because of kinship bond with Africans, Conrad would have argued that in Europe they did not have beginning and primeval background. And if that could be his point, he might be more charitable castigating Europeans than Africans for not having that kind of odd stuff that sets the first stage of human civilization.

Having using lens of dehumanization to view Africans and downgrade their culture, exponents of African tradition embark on the push-back mission to debunk racist claims heaped on the continent.

It is truth universally acknowledge that Heart of Darkness is the most powerful indictment against colonialism. C.P. Savan in his article titled Racism in Heart of Darkness is of the view that Heart of Darkness is against European mission civilization in Africa. What the ships unloaded in Africa were soldiers and customs clerks. The former to conquer while the latter to ensure smooth running of exploitation.

It is also a scathing censure to the Europeans. The danger is in Europe, for Africans did not invite Whiteman to come to salvage them. It is European’s exploitative proclivity that brought them to Africa to engage in committing acts worse than cannibalism and barbarism, not the other way round.

         

Frances B. Singh in his article The Colonialistic Bias of Heart of Darkness   justifies that Conrad /Marlow exposes more ills of the west and showers a fusillade of downpour strictures on the Europeans. He says that in a society where cannibalism has ritual significance, it cannot be possible to be a symbol of jungle and lawlessness because it is performed to commemorate an important occasion, and for that it is part of societal development.

If Marlow opened his eyes and mind wide open, he would have noticed that cannibalism did not eat human flesh out of glutton, or just like that; like the case of Whiteman’s fire rifle. Rather, it is performed for one to show his manliness and prowess and the other to defend himself and show his prowess in return.

B. Singh continues to say that Kurtz’s tribalization is seen as a rejection of western capitalism and materialism in favour of a simpler way of life. But the problem with Kurtz is that he went to native just to gratify his ivory lust by hook or by crook.

         

“We will not be free from unfair competition till one of those is hanged as an example.”

Kurtsz said in one instance.

         

“He declared he would shoot me unless I give him the ivory because he could do so and nothing on earth could prevent him from killing who he jolly well pleased.”

He said in another.

In the famous line in the narrative where Kurtz says “exterminate all the brute,” B. Singh adds that is capable of giving another interpretation. While Marlow is referring the ‘brute’ to Africans, here it may be considered as the only way Africa can develop is when the real brute, the colonizers, are removed.

         

Marlow disqualifies himself to judge Africans because of his weak memory and poor understanding of things.

         

“The prehistoric man was cursing to us, praying to us, welcoming us, who could tell.”

According to his own biographer, Bernard C. Meyer, he says ‘Conrad is notoriously in accurate in rendering of his own history.’

         

In his reply to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, a writer, novelist, poet and teacher, professor Chinua Achebe, in an article titled An Image of Africa racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, argues that Heart of Darkness is a ridiculous to European mission civilization to negate Africa as a human factor only because of a single European who came to Africa at his peril. He adds that to appreciate a novel that dehumanizes and disfigures the image proportion of human factor is less civility to a person who claims all sorts of civilization. And to shortlist a novel base on race exposition among the best half dozen of English-written novels is an insult to civilization

Achebe subscribes to the view that Conrad is a thorough racist in his narration of Africa and opines his view that he would not accept any traveller’s tale on the ground that he had not made the journey himself especially when he found the person to be as jaundiced as Conrad. In his opinion, the great traveler Marco Polo made a voyage round the world and reported  only what pleased him.

In Lord Jim Conrad insists on asking if Jim is ‘part of us,’ meaning the honourable people on earth ‘or part of them’ the ugliest people of the world. In Heart of Darkness he says ‘he is young and you know the problem with them.’

This is another stark exposition of racism in Conrad’s attitude. Many scholars believed that to dehumanize one and see him from the lens of degradation is dehumanizing oneself by his own vision. A critic, Dr. Aliyu Sambo, argues “who sets the standard of civilization that one race will be regarding itself as superior to others?”

Achebe goes on to say that Africa to the European is like a Dorian Gray, a master who unloads his frailties and lapses on his servant so that he can go erect and immaculate leaving his servant to lag behind. On this ground, Achebe concludes that if anything, Conrad is less charitable to the Europeans than he is to the natives. For Marlow knows it well that Africans has rejected the principles of colonialism in themselves while Europeans used the principles to destroy Africa, and that Africans are the innocent victims of colonialism. They were not the ones who committed the crime but were the ones who were the victims of the crime.

Heart of Darkness exposes more ills of the west. It portrays Europeans as predators climbing upon the shoulder of Africans to ascend on the peak of advancement. For the contrasting irony is for the people who claim all sorts of civilization and fountain of humanity to be found perpetrating such inhumane deeds.

The frontier on which Heart of Darkness stands explains the irony of the title. It is not Africans that have the darkest heart in their breast, but every European who countenances to the colonialistic enterprise, and that River Thames will lead anybody who engages in colonial business into an immense heart of darkness.

The disequilibrium allocation of humanity and the colonialistic undoings found in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness are the yardstick to measure between Africa and Europe who has being more castigated by its own queer deeds.