In this essay I shall attempt to provoke a topic that has always rendered me very curious. There is this story that whenever reading it I feel like I never read it before, but rather heard about from an interesting teller. It is a novella which is entitled Heart of Darkness, and which is one of Europe's famous stories. Heart of Darkness is a novella written by a guy named Joseph Conrad, a Polish writer who described and magnificently the impacts of colonialism in the heart of "dark Africa"; the Congo. However, the problem to some is that Conrad's record of what went on in that place was perceived from the eyes of a European, who─and here I am referring to Conrad has betrayed his true nature of fulfilling his meant task as an ethical recorder-writer.
This phenomenon illustrates that related animals can experience wildly different attributes: one protective and the other dangerous when obstructed. Analogous to hippopotamuses and dolphins, the male characters in Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth, have distinctly different qualities from one another. The distinction between men is made when Macbeth specifically names the “housekeeper”, or the watchdog, and the “hunter” as separate categories of masculinity. (Shakespeare.III.i.99.). Masculinity plays a large role in Macbeth because it contributes to a significant amount of reasoning behind the characters’ actions.
The Meaning of Darkness Within the Heart Of Darkness There are many possibilities as to what the actually meaning of the heart of darkness within Joseph Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness. The heart of darkness may be Europe, the driving for behind the development of Africa. Africa and the river upon which Marlow travels hold many mysteries and perhaps the heart of darkness. Kurtz may also be the heart of darkness, due to his influence. Europe, Africa, the river, and Kurtz are all plausible candidates for the heart of darkness within Joseph Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness.
Europe wanted to set up and colonize in Africa, mainly because of Africa's raw materials it was purely economic. . (Iweriebor, 2011) The African's did not take kind to this, and it provoked not only African political responses but also diplomatic responses and military resistance. A lot of treaties of protection for the leaders of African societies, states, and empires went out. There was a lot of controversy about these treaties and eventually the military had to step in.
In Olaudah Equiano’s Equiano’s Travels and Charles Johnson’s Middle Passage, both authors address the horrific nature of the middle passage, which was the triangular route of the trade of Africans into the Americas. Yet, both authors produce a different discourse on this subject, as both protagonists, within the stories, struggle with “looking at one’s self through the eyes of others”, as Du Bois so eloquently wrote. Bressler also defines binary oppositions as the “western philosophy … of opposing centers, [in that] one concept is superior and defines itself by its opposite or inferior center” (Bressler 111) It can also be viewed, within the context of African-American literature, in that binary oppositions are indeed in affect and within those binary oppositions, an understanding can be found within the two stories. By examining the double voiceness, the double consciousness, and the binary oppositions, found within the texts of the two books, a deeper understanding of the horrors and the implications of those horrors of the middle passage may be
Joseph Conrad’s novella, Heart of Darkness, explores the enlightenment of Marlow, an explorer who ventures into the Belgian Congo. He is led through a chthonic journey, witnessing humanity at both its darkest and lightest and emerging from the jungle reborn. While both Conrad and his characters make it clear to the audience that Marlow has reached an enlightened state, what precisely he is enlightened about is never explicitly states. A common, easily reached interpretation has Marlow lamenting the evils of European imperialism in Africa. Superficially, this interpretation is well-supported by the text; however, if one goes beyond the surface, the interpretation becomes far more universal and ambiguous.
In Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Adichie, there is a critical presentation of the oddities in Nigeria as well as Africa in general, as the continent trudges in the biting tyrannical trauma of the military and anarchical leaderships. This aspect is x-rayed beyond the micro setting (families) to the macro society (countries) as the inhabitants, represented by the naïve Kambili, perceive unruly torture in their experience of governance. We see a novel that reassesses what Izevbaye (1979) expresses as “the civilizing function which literature performs by tearing down the veil of sophisticated drawing room manners and fashionable clothes… dealing with the African image in the past or the politics of the present” (African Literature Today 10, 14). This paper examines how Chimamanda Adichie has unraveled the problems of politics, freedom, gender and development within the threshold of governance in Africa. 199 The Journal of Pan African Studies, vol.1, no.9, August 2007 Introduction Charles Nnolim (2005)1 explains critically that the third generation of writers in Nigeria (which includes Adichie) exhibits “a literary jungle- rich with varieties of life and growth, awe-inspiring and full of breath-taking surprises…” (8).
The reason for the first layer of narration is that “Heart of Darkness” is not so much about what happened in Africa as it is about the psychological, moral and spiritual impressions those events left on someone with completely different ideals and values and unconnected to what happened. The reason to the second layer of narration is less obvious to me at first. I think the role of “I” is of a witness and listener; “I”, like readers, learned that our ideas about “civilization” can be founded on lies, corruptions and unspeakable horrors. By the end of the story, Marlow’s tale significantly changes the narrator’s attitude towards the ships and men of the past. It leaves a profound psychological effects on “I” and readers; it prompts us to ponder the dark side of our nature.
He then establishes a system of forced labor that keeps the people of the Congo in a condition of slavery for ivory and rubber. So, we can deduce that the novel itself, its excerpt to Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness, and journalism within the Free Congo State portrayed the situation with the darkness it deserved. In the novel, Hochschild shines light on the darkness of the situation in Belgium Congo. Hochschild captures the essence of Leopold’s true intentions and the darkness of his nature when he says, “What mattered was the size of the profit. His drive for colonies, however, was shaped by a desire not only for money but for power”.
Hunt Hawkins believes that Conrad’s Heart of Darkness was an anti-imperialism novel, as opposed to what some may believe while reading the novel; an example would be Chinua Achebe, who believes the novel to be racist and de-humanizing. Imperialism in Africa was evident in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and the affects of it was not only political, but also social, psychological, and spiritual. This essay will show a critical deconstruction on imperialism and Conrad’s work. Background In order to understand the point of this essay, one would need to understand what deconstruction is as well as imperialism. Deconstruction, according to Jacques Derrida, started in late 1960s France and “upends the Western metaphysical tradition.