Achebe is very much against Heart of Darkness because it
is a complete misrepresentation of what Africa really is. He explains how even
though they have this very one sided vision of
as to what the locals of the land are like, they are not as different as
they may want them to be. Early in the writing he says that if they allow
themselves to search for a connection they are more likely to find close similarities
between themselves and the "savages". He says that he tries to
portray Africa as " the other world" but that when they actually
interact with the people and get to know them as individuals they are really
just as human as themselves. He tries to make them seem animalistic and primal
because it worried Conrad to see the "lurking hint of kinship, of common
ancestry" but then they met a man and observed him doing his job and
realized they were not all that different. This is similar to Apocalypse Now because they never
correctly the people they consider savages. They only show them when they are
running away from the bombings and blowups that the soldiers cause or when the
soldiers are helping them. They want to make sure that they portray them as weak,
underdeveloped, and as far removed from what the U.S. believed they had fought
to be on the level of. The scene where the "savages" are on their
small boats just floating by the American soldiers portrays them not only as
animalistic but also as smaller than them in stature which can be a way of
saying that they are less powerful. They also were lined up in formations that
seemed tribal instead of militaristic especially because the entire island was
there in formation, just standing there.
Great blog post! I agree with the ideas you presented in your post specifically the idea that Conrad was threatened by the similarities between the Africans and himself. It’s crazy that although the two are very similar, Conrad feels the need to misrepresent the Africans and describe them in comparison to animals. It’s interesting that you point out the height difference amongst the “savages” from Apocalypse Now and the American soldiers. I took a film class where we looked at the different angles used in film, and I learned that aiming the camera either at a high/low position creates dominance amongst the actors involved.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you very much. I also talked about how Conrad is afraid of the similarities he has to the native people. It is a good point you made about how in Apocalypse Now, we almost never see the natives. I thought it was interesting, too, how when the native people are shown on the river they are depicted as tiny little creatures in boats. This made me think of little meerkats staying together in their groups. Even this scene depicts the native people in an animalistic sense, but it also further dehumanizes them by making them seem so inferior and, as you said, less powerful.
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