RACISM

Soooo let me start by saying that once we started reading this book, I had the feeling that I would probably say something unintentionally racist. And I did. I said I liked Heart of Darkness. 

To be fair, the reason why I liked the novel was for the only reason Achebe liked Heart of Darkness---"I do not doubt Conrad's great talents. Even Heart of Darkness has its memorably good passages and moments"---because as I noted in the thread on rivers, Conrad can write, and write well. No, the reason why I've been unintentionally racist is that I've gone along with Conrad's symbolism of darkness. Yes, I did recognize the weird objectifying use of the "savages" as symbols, but I went along with it, much like the student who told Achebe "Africa is merely a setting for the disintegration of the mind of Mr. Kurtz."

And although that argument could be made, it's also distressing that in a story so close to the atrocities in the Congo, the focus of the story is a white man named Kurtz and none of the Africans in the story are given actual names. It is also distressing that people are part of the setting. And that the Africans are described with the odd mysticism. Achebe points this out: 


I found it very difficult to analyze Heart of Darkness because of this aura of mystery, which comes off as a kind of reference to a primal nature "civilized society" has lost hold of. But when we use people as part of the symbolism---part of this mystery---it seems that the mystery isn't so much part of the nature of the Congo as much as it is a refusal to "solve the mystery." In other words, instead of trying to treat people as people, Conrad shouts "I DON'T UNDERSTAND" and moves on. 

But we knew all that. People should be treated as people. Conrad says some very questionable things. I took note of it, I moved on. Achebe took note of these, and wrote a well-supported essay that made me feel bad about moving past Conrad's racist statements. This is perhaps what bothers me the most about Conrad's novel: It has pointed out my own problems as a reader.  I am so prone to accepting and analyzing an author's words and  literary devices before analyzing the author's bias, as long as they write well enough. I'll cringe through some parts, but I'll still try to get to the heart of what they say. 


Which leads me to another thing: Can we completely discount a work for being racist? 

The other day in Scholars Alliance, we had speakers talk to us about "life lessons," the topic of that day's session. One of our speakers told us that he got into but didn't go to the University of Pennsylvania and Yale because he "wasn't comfortable with the diversity."

The rest of his speech, however, was completely normal. Work hard, try to be a good person, yadda yadda. I wasn't listening very closely because the entire time I was hung up on how racist he was. And I'm sure some of the things he said were valuable. But he was standing before us, telling us that even though he made some decisions based on horrible conclusions, he could still be successful. Putting this into the context of Achebe's argument, that Heart of Darkness cannot be considered a great work of art, I think we need to find a middle ground. Sure, the speaker at Scholars Alliance was "successful" in most fields, but he could use work in the racial sensitivity department. With Conrad's novel, there is certainly value in it, but in addition there is the need to point out it's flaws (although flaws feels like too minor of a word). 

It might be best to say that Conrad's piece is not a great work of art, but is still a valuable one---it is an indicator of our biases as readers, and creates a path through which we can reexamine our roles as readers and thinkers both individually and in the context of social equality. 

To be honest, I don’t want to criticize Conrad and I find myself mentally defending him throughout Achebe’s article. Yes, Conrad’s comments appear racist, but I’m not sure we can hold him entirely accountable for that. He was born in 1857, in a time and place where the majority of people lived with racist thoughts and tendencies. Truthfully, many still do, but the difference is that racism is not socially acceptable anymore. (You can definitely dance with the things I’m saying and I’m doing my best to convey a certain message, so forgive me if I am unclear.) I am not saying that racism is okay, I’m just saying that we cannot expect Conrad to have deviated from society and not thought of the Africans in a certain way; different and perhaps lesser, considering his mission, background and upbringing. This is the same reason we had to debate whether Torvald was accountable for his actions in A Doll’s House, considering that women held a different place in society in the situation of Ibsen’s play. We cannot expect Conrad to conform to societal expectations of our current time. This expectation is what leads people to agree with Achebe in the first place, considering that he is from Nigeria and therefore biased as well. Achebe’s article bothers me, because he finds every single detail that’s wrong with Heart of Darkness and accuses Conrad of being racist on every account. Even Conrad’s desire to have things in their place is a problem to Achebe, but it’s likely just a personality trait of either Marlow or Conrad. It is difficult to proffer anything on Conrad’s views because of the unclear line between the minds of Marlow and Conrad. Achebe writes, “It might be contended, of course, that the attitude to the African in Heart of Darkness is not Conrad’s but that of his fictional narrator, Marlow, and that far from endorsing it Conrad might indeed be holding up to irony and criticism” (page 5). I think this is a very important thing to remember before we call Conrad racist. Reading any other novel, we wouldn’t blame the author for the opinions of his characters. Going back to the example of A Doll’s House, our class didn’t point fingers at Ibsen for having the same mindset as Torvald. This may not be the case with Heart of Darkness, but it is something to take into account. If we do want to accuse Conrad of being racist, we can always use his words to remind us what used to be, and how we can never be again.

When I begin reading Heart of Darkness, I already had expectations for it to turn out to be at the very least slightly racist and at the most overtly racist.  I'm still not sure which it is because Conrad thesaurus-obsessed style of writing slowed me down so much.  Did anyone else have to re-read sections over and over again because it just didn't make any sense?  I agree that Conrad can write, and write pretty well, but there's a time and a place for flowery language, and I don't believe this was the appropriate story for that.  I'm not even sure if he was trying to write a story about people, or experiences, or life-changing-experiences, or life-changing-people, or life-changing-settings or (ok I'll stop - I realize I'm starting to sound like Polonius).  I don't feel that, as a reader, I got a very clear picture of any single character or experience.  Conrad's style is too ambiguous - at times flowery and at times just plain convoluted to the point of "What the heck is he even getting at?  Fine, I'll just move on now."  For this reason I think any Conrad critique must be either extremely smart or extremely foolhardy to take on such complicated and confusing material and be able to analyze it.
As for the article by Chinua Achebe, I find I agree with the greater portion of his arguments.  And I like that he doesn't just condemn Conrad for being an absolute racist by quoting several passages from Heart of Darkness (or any of his other works for that matter) and sort of sum it all up with a "see what I mean?" argument.  He allows Conrad's work to stand as an example of literature from his time, and he also allows it to stand slightly apart from Conrad himself due to the layered-narration going on.  But then he brings it all back to Conrad by pointing out that whether or not Conrad meant for the work to degrade Africa and Congo and the Congolese, it does because the only state of mind that is represented is that of Europeans being "better" than anyone else.  I think Achebe's point here is really important, and goes to show any who think Heart of Darkness isn't racist just why it is racist.  As Achebe says, how hard would it have been for Conrad to insert a different view - a more equal and fair view?  But he didn't, and therefore he must have agreed with Marlow's sentiments.  However, my favorite part of the article was when Achebe compared the Europeans' view of Africa to that of Dorian Gray's view of his portrait.  "Africa is to Europe as the picture is to Dorian Gray--a carrier onto whom the master unloads his physical and moral deformities so that he may go forward, erect and immaculate."  (For those of you who don't know: In The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde, Dorian Gray (an extremely handsome, impressionable and vain young man) somehow manages to trade his human attributes of age and decay into his portrait, so that while he does terrible deeds and all manner of other things, his own body will never show the damage.  Instead, the portrait, which he keeps locked in his attic, shows the damage he's done and becomes so repulsive that he can't bare to look at it.  The damage is not only physical (though he discovers that any physical injuries or aliments are transferred to the portrait and do not trouble him long enough to matter) but also psychological.  Dorian becomes so evil that he can't bare to look at his disgustingly disfigured portrait because it's become the physical embodiment of his soul.)  I think the connection between Dorian and his portrait and that of Europe and Africa is a very meaningful one.  The Europeans went to Africa and did whatever the heck they wanted - without a thought at to the consequences of their actions towards Africa as a place (all the natural resources they used thoughtlessly, not to mention all the wild animals they killed - don't get me started on the whole ivory thing) or towards any African people.  The Europeans came, decimated, ruined and otherwise destroyed things, and left (except for the most part they didn't actually leave), and just like Dorian with his portrait, they knew they could get away with murder (quite literally) because once they got back to Europe no one would care.  Well, people should have cared, and we still should care.  For example: elephants wouldn't be on the list of endangered species if stupid Europeans hadn't taken a fancy to ivory.
In conclusion, I agree with Amy:  Conrad's piece is not a great work of art, but is still a valuable one, and perhaps one that can continue to be learned from.  We mustn't repeat history, and having works like this one (and, let's be honest, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn can kind of fit into this category of valuable historical works that we can read and learn from - racism is bad) can teach a lesson. As time moves further and further from the era in which these events happened, our memories of them mustn't fade.

A passage that particularly struck me from this piece was: "And the question is whether a novel which celebrates this dehumanization, which depersonalizes a portion of the human race, can he called a great work of art. My answer is: No, it cannot." While I am not sure how much I agree with this statement, it raises some very good questions. The majority of the work we read in high school, the work that has been deemed "classic" and "timeless" enough to be read by every high school student, is written by white, privileged, and male perspectives. While we take the time to recognize the racism or sexism prevalent in these books, we still deify them and treat the problematic elements like they are minor infractions that do not detract from the inarguable timelessness of the book. I like how Achebe takes the opposite perspective in saying that a work that is so thoughtless in its depiction of race cannot be art, because I think we too often ignore the problematic elements of literature and make excuses about it, like "it's from a different time." I agree with Sheridan that we should stop talking about Conrad and whether or not we can blame him for the racism and instead talk about its impact of society, today. That impact is a lot more tangible and relevant, even though it may be subtle and subconscious.

I also enjoyed this passage: "Africa as setting and backdrop eliminates the African as human factor. Africa as a metaphysical battlefield devoid of all recognizable humanity, into which the wandering European enters at his peril. Can nobody see the preposterous and perverse arrogance in thus reducing Africa to the role of props for the break-up of one petty European mind!" Too often is Africa used as a prop in literature, and rarely do we ever read literature and schools that talk about the African perspective. Using Africa as a prop subtly dehumanizes the African perspective, and as Achebe says, eliminates the human factor. If our only contact with minority characters in the high school curriculum is from a privileged, distant perspective, the minority perspective is subtly devalued, which is problematic for society.

It's think it is pretty difficult to disagree with the fact that Heart of Darkness is racist, but let's keep in mind that Conrad wrote his novel during a time when racism was a societal norm. That said, it's not fair to completely discount Heart of Darkness as a work of art for being racist. My study of moral criticism prevents me from fully agreeing with Achebe's arguments, so I will be analyzing Heart of Darkness and Achebe's response from a moral perspective. 

Moral critics are ironically not concerned with what is morally right and what is morally wrong in works of literature; rather, they are concerned with the validity and truthfulness with which a theme is conveyed. Having said that, it is extremely difficult as a moral critic to classify Heart of Darkness as a "good" or "bad" work of literature. However, moral critics would disagree with the arguments made by Achebe. 

Let's start with an analysis of Heart of Darkness. In the eyes of a moral critic, there are two distinct ways to analyze the novel: one, we could take racist historical perspectives as fact since they were considered true during Conrad's time, or two, we could claim that Conrad's portrayal of Africans is inaccurate since we now believe that all human beings are equal. Moral critics typically want to see characters who are fairly treated and who are fully dimensional and realistic. At the time of publication (and during the time in which the book is set), Africans were portrayed realistically, at least in the perspectives of those living in the past. However, we obviously do not pride ourselves in dehumanizing Africans today. When I read Heart of Darkness, I was a moral critic of the past: I found it appropriate to examine the novel using the standards and beliefs prevalent during the time the book is set. Achebe, on the other hand, is a moral critic of the present: he finds that Conrad inaccurately describes Africans in Heart of Darkness. 

Moral critics (of the past AND of the present) would criticize the way Achebe argues racism in Heart of Darkness. Although what Achebe argues is morally correct from a modern perspective, the major flaw in his argument is that he fails to take into account the fact that the book was written and is set in the past. In this way, Achebe should not be criticizing the novel's racism because racism is a truth in the novel's setting. The point of Achebe's essay is to emphasize that Heart of Darkness cannot be classified as a great work of literature because it is racist. What is important to note, however, is that the novel is racist in a modern point of view, not in a past one. We cannot discount Heart of Darkness for being racist simply because racism is a historical truth.

I'm just going to start off with a little reply to Cassie. Racism is still a huge issue in our society; go search racism on google news and you'll find tons of heart breaking I-wish-society-was-better-than-this results. It's pretty shitty still, so please don't discount the issues that are still very much present today. However, that isn't what this thread is about.

Conrad. Let's talk about Conrad, shall we?

I can understand but not excuse Conrad's use of juxtaposition of the "civilized" British and the "savage" African cultures he is exposed to. This kind of writing is used plainly enough, as Achbe points out. Why is this? It is argued that Conrad is a slave to the thinking process of his time, and while I don't discount that as a factor, the racism ingrained into Heart of Darkness cannot be pigeonholed into simply "everyone else thought the same way, too."

Mr. Parris and Achbe both took note that Conrad and Marlow share very similar traits and that the fear and disgust that Marlow seems to hold against the "savages" is shared with Conrad. The story is used for Conrad to distance himself from his prejudices. Marlow also finds Kurtz both interesting and revolting- interesting because he is able to rule over the "savages" and revolting because he understands the kinship shared within himself and those Marlow believes himself above. It is an interesting story, and racism seems to be at the very center of the Heart of Darkness.