He essentially is Africa. He also signifizes an extreme of the American debate on assimilation. He is proud of his roots and refuses to accept assimilationism. He also wants Beneatha to be proud of where her ancestors originated. When he comes to see Beneatha, he brings her gifts of Nigerian clothes and teases her about her mutilated hair.
Joseph Conrad, in his novella Heart of Darkness, contributes to the western concept of Africa’s inferiority to Europe due to his perspective as a white European that he has innately acquired; his intentions, however, cannot be defined through the available evidence. In fact, this novella can be seen as Conrad’s take on the European views of Africans from an outsider perspective. When making judgements on the unknown, people are bound to stick to stereotypes and prejudgements--in this case, Conrad and his white European audience. Whether, in doing so, he is attempting to be nasty towards Africans or not is irrelevant to the fact that Conrad’s perspective is one-sided and racist. Just as Kurtz is a product of his one-sided European upbringing, as we see in the novella, so is Conrad.
Chinua Achebe’s Lens Chinua Achebe’s brilliantly written novel, Things Fall Apart, carefully tells the story of an organized Umuofian society who stumbles and falls apart mostly because of its inner struggles dealing with certain key members of the tribe. Achebe approaches Things Fall Apart with a redeeming and caring eye, as the main purpose of the novel is to change the primitive and spiteful image that Africa had gleaned from various documents written in the past. Many “Westerners”, such as Joseph Conrad, author of Heart of Darkness appeared to see Africans as unintelligent and primordial. Achebe made it his duty to prove them wrong, and shed a whole new light on the intellectual capability of African tribes. Both novels involve the colonization of Africa, but each has its own perspective of the native’s response to it.
Mark Twain, although a humanitarian, greatly emphasizes the extent to which prejudice and racism was ingrained in Southern culture, almost irreversibly. Twain condemns slavery and those who participated in it through his writing, but he also lets the reader know that, to some degree, the characters in the book that we would now consider cruel or downright evil were somewhat blameless for their actions. These misguided creations of Twain’s imagination are an accurate reflection of the real people that lived in that region in the pre-Civil War days. These characters were born and raised in an environment that impressed bigotry on them, and therefore it was nearly impossible for them to cease thinking in a discriminating manner, especially when everyone else around them encouraged that mentality. This realistic portrayal of Huck’s society suggests that one’s upbringing is the crucial development stage for future behavior and mindset.
The Constitution, until recently, did not apply to blacks; blacks feel they deserve payments from 310 years of slavery, destruction to their minds and culture. Dr. Martin Luther King's dilemma in the United States was of a different kind. He was torn between his identity as a Black man of African descent and his identity as an American. He urged Americans to judge based on the content of the character not by skin color and also believed in non-violent protests. Martin Luther King Jr’s main perspective during the fight on racism was equality.
He believes that Conrad has promoted a stereotypical Western image of Africa as a place with no culture or customs, making the inhabitants seem to be like mere animals with human-like features 2) Discuss what new light the article shed on your reading. The article brought many subtle nuances of Conrad’s writing to my attention. I now see the difference in the characterization he gives to the Europeans and Africans. The differences may have seemed justified when I read it but the article shows how this contrast exists throughout the entire novel and cannot be accidental. The article has shown me how a well -written book in the and high respected in literature world can still have flaws and elements of racism.
Chiuna Achebe’s experiences as a young man growing up in an evolving society greatly influenced his writing in Things Fall Apart. Achebe writes about the downfall of an African village by Christian missionaries. In the beginning of Things Fall Apart, Achebe gives a realistic view of how life was growing up in an African village. He describes the Igbo people as having a very strong language; though, sometimes the meaning of words can be lost in translation. The European view of the Africans was believed that they had a simple undeveloped language.
He also believed that slavery was sinful and against some religions. He was the prime mover in the abolition of slavery in England. In his article Thomas Thompson is trying to prove “that the African trade for negro slaves is consistent with the principles of humanity and revealed religion”. But Sharp argues that it’s against law of nature, humanity, moral laws and natural Equality. For example Sharp revealed that the Jewish religion which says they should love others as themselves still owned slaves.
The article concludes that the Congo doesn’t exist on these terms. However, it only proves that the Congo is a failed state. It doesn’t include the fact that the Congo does qualify as a state due to the fact that it upholds juridical sovereignty. Due to the history of the Congo, which did not encourage a unified culture, the Congo has tenuous empirical sovereignty. This lack of unity can be attributed to the artificial borders drawn up by the European colonists.
Slaves had resisted their being traded since slavery had started. Adding to this, slaves had been inspired by the many people that had led the major slave revolutions like in Barbados, Demerara and Jamaica. The revolutions shocked the British Government and made them start to understand that the costs keeping the trade were too high. Eventually that led to the abolition of the slave trade because the plantation owners and the traders started to understand and accept the abolition rather than having a large world war which was what it could have come to if the abolition hadn’t taken place. Some slaves resisted in passive ways against the trade and slavery.