Achebe vs. Heart of Darkness

While most scholars dubbed Conrad's Heart of Darkness as one of the greatest novels in the English language, Chinua Achebe's "An Image of Africa" essay criticizes Conrad's ability to accurately depict Africa and its people due to his inherent European racist attitude. Achebe sites Conrad's fixation on the people's dark skin color and repetitive use of the "n-word" as evidence for his racist views. Conrad cannot accurately describe a culture through racist language and prejudice views.

Achebe refers to multiple instances where Conrad’s biased outlook and superiority complex alters how he portrays the African people and their culture. “What thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity – like yours – the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly.” This dehumanization of the African people into savages or wild creatures immediately places Conrad on a higher pedestal. This mentality stops Conrad from accurately describing the people and events occurring in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Achebe next discusses the fixation Conrad has on the darkness people and the simplistic language he uses to describe them in comparison to the more complex description of Europeans. Conrad writes, “A black figure stood up, strode on long black legs, waving long black arms.” The only description that Achebe can attribute to the people he encounters is that they have dark skin. This obsession stops him from depicting them as actual human beings or digging deeper into their culture. Conrad’s illustration of an English man in another novel, however, provides much more detail and depth. He says, “his calves exposed to the public gaze… dazzled the beholder by the splendor of their marble like condition and their rich tone of young ivory… in passing he cast a glance of kindly curiosity and a friendly gleam of big, sound, shiny teeth.” The very length of the second quote in comparison to the first displays how much more he looks into the humanity of a white man than he does a black man. Achebe’s references to Conrad’s language and overall racist attitude create a powerful argument against other scholar’s claim on Heart of Darkness’ greatness.

Apocalypse Now has similar flaws because it depicts a white super power visiting an unknown country with a biased attitude. The Vietnamese are portrayed as uncivilized savages that run around in leaves for clothing. The similarities between how unfamiliar people are represented in Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness prove how Achabe’s criticism carries over into multiple media platforms and across a span of war history. Achebe’s analysis goes beyond novels and films as it provides readers further insight into how conflicts likely originated before war.