Racism In The Heart Of Darkness, By Joseph Conrad.

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Racism in the Heart of Darkness Many literary critics and authors have said Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness is full of racism and discrimination. Chinua Achebe calls the book, “an offensive and deplorable book” (Achebe, 345), while commenting on Conrad and his character, Marlow’s, blatant racism. Was Conrad really such a racist? Granted, Heart of Darkness was published in Britain in 1899, a time when white men in Europe were still discovering black men in Africa. The society of the time told these men that black men and women were not equal to white men or women. This was a time in European and African history that very turbulent. Many Europeans saw the African men they encountered as savages, nothing more. There were some from Europe, however, that knew these Africans were humans, just like themselves. African explorers Stanley and Livingstone knew all too well the importance of the African people in their exploration of the former’s native land. “Stanley continued coming to terms with Africa. It wasn’t the place of nightmares at all, but a populous, sprawling country of previously unimagined splendor. It was the island he dreamed of years before… a place where no other man controlled his destiny.” (Dugard, 146). Joseph Conrad designed his character Marlow so that they were from the same type of society. Marlow is introduced as a young man who is unemployed and yearning to find a job taking him to Africa. Marlow, having received a job as a skipper of a river steamboat, has no real knowledge of what is going on in the Congo. Marlow had never had experiences with the black men, and although his language seems racist, his actions never are. In order to fully understand why Joseph Conrad created Marlow as he is portrayed in Heart of Darkness, one must first understand Conrad himself. Born Jozef Teodor Konrad Nalcez Korzeniowski, Conrad was born in The

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