RACISM

Hmmmm....Honestly? The article ticked me off a bit. Achebe is a good writer, and he certainly makes sound points, but I am extremely tired of reading such black and white (no pun intended!) interpretations of race--or any other social issue--in literature/Art. What especially bothered me was that Achebe isolated sentences or paragraphs numerous times which alone do no justice to the overall intent or message of the novel. Achebe seems to assume that if he points out the most blatantly offensive segments of the novel, he can trick his readers into believing that Conrad was no more than a racist, white supremacist spokesman for Western civilization. Well, he didn't fool me!

Firstly, Achebe preaches that the motif of light vs. dark means what the lazy reader would assume it means--that dark represents evil and primitiveness while light represents benevolence and civilization. I, however, believe that Conrad was more intelligent than to just use light and dark for their most commonplace associations. Rather, it seems that light and dark in the novel serve as contradictory symbols: light=deception, what we would assume is the truth but really isn't; dark=harsh truth/reality of the world, what we fear because on some level maybe we recognize that we can learn more from our internal and external darkness than through searching for the light of "truth." While Conrad certainly hinted at racism in parts of the novel, I believe he recognized his own shortcomings and, through Marlow, portrayed the paradox of wanting to do what is right but also living under the influence of flawed societal views. One passage that Achebe attacks reads, "...What thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity--like yours--the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar." While Conrad suggests that the thought of being related to the Africans is quite scary, he also actually mentions the idea of "kinship" with them, something he never mentions when speaking of the other white men. Thus, his emotions on the matter are evidently mixed: he expresses the honest, pure fear of being related to beings so seemingly different from himself, but at the same time he recognizes the inherent connection as almost more profound and strong than between himself and the white men who are so obviously misled by their beliefs in taming "savages." And is this not a universal human fear? Theoretically, most of us want to be able accept people who look, think, or act differently than we do, but when it comes down to actual confrontation with that which threatens who we are, and our very beliefs about the world, is it really so easy? I believe it is those instances in which we are forced to confront everything we believe in and try to fit something completely conflicting into that world view that we are forced to look into our "hearts of darkness." Certainly Marlow does, and I think he recognizes that his view of the Africans is problematic, but also so innately a part of him that he can only struggle to understand how he can overcome his "heart of darkness." One of my favorite passages from "Heart of Darkness," when Marlow is noticing all the horrific sights Kurtz has created, including the African heads on poles, reads, "After all, that was only a savage sight while I seemed at one bound to have been transported into some lightless region of subtle horrors, where pure, uncomplicated savagery was a positive relief, being something that had a right to exist--obviously--in the sunshine" (58). Marlow's reference to "pure, uncomplicated savagery" refers not to the Africans, but to Kurtz's evident massacring of Africans. It is "something that had a right to exist...in the sunshine" because it is obviously wrong, but the deceptive "light" of truth makes it seem justified. On the other hand, Marlow has a harder time thinking about the "lightless region of subtle horrors," the ways in which the Africans have been manipulated to believe that they are inferior to the white man. Somehow, blatant violence is easier to cope with than the notion of the huge, ambiguous malevolence guiding men like Marlow to degrade other human beings. One is concrete--a head cut off--while the other is a gray area--how did seemingly moral, civilized ideas lead "good" men to create such darkness? It is a mental confrontation with the truth--that the "right" way of looking at the world has turned out to be wrong.

Furthermore, I had issues with Achebe's assertion that Conrad is "...Inducing hypnotic stupor in his readers through a bombardment of emotive words and other forms of trickery." I am not ashamed to say that I love "Heart of Darkness" especially because of Conrad's incredible way with words. In my opinion, Art does not exist solely to make a point. Art brings beauty into the world, allowing us to relish in the aesthetic wonders of life and open our hearts to beauty's complexity. Perhaps Achebe has dumbed the average reader down to someone who surely cannot appreciate aesthetics while also remaining astutely aware of the novel's complexity of message and implications, but I believe it is possible. I drank in Conrad's wonderfully crafted sentences and gleefully smiled at the impeccable construction of his sentences, but I also noticed the politics and subtleties of meaning which Conrad weaves in. A great piece of art is both aesthetically pleasing and conceptually rich, and I truly feel that "Heart of Darkness" fits that definition.

Sure, "Heart of Darkness" challenges us to question how we can approach a story with such complex implications about race & racial relations with the sensitivity on the issue that our modern mind has allowed in us...but that's a good thing! Art provokes us, it complicates things, it leaves ideas incomplete. So, we can either turn up our noses and overlook "Heart of Darkness" with our high-minded Western sensibility, or we can choose to face it in all its gritty truth and issues. We can recognize our "hearts of darkness," and then use that acknowledgment to move forward and try to overcome the issues we see there.

I agree with Natalie. Although it is impossible to argue there is no racism within the pages of Heart of Darkness, Achebe seems to posit that racism is the only purpose of the novel. As Rishi, Rachel and many others have mentioned Conrad wrote the story during a time where little was known about African culture and most Europeans accepted racism as the norm. Conrad doesn't give the African character's voices or proper descriptions because his story is not really about them. And that is somewhat depressing and very offensive to the memory of the African people who suffered during this time, but it is also simply what the story is about. The story is a white mans tale of journeying to Africa and it is seen through the highly prejudice eyes of said white man.

What bothers me isn't that Conrad or his story is racist. What bothers me is that this is the closest we have come in out years of english education to reading a book about African culture. Other than a few short stories in elementary school Heart of Darkness is the best insight we have been giving in to Traditional African History and Culture. And as Achebe would certainly agree it is really shitty insight.

Much like feminist critics have pointed out with women in literature, Achebe raises an excellent point to how marginalized African culture has been portrayed by the White writers who discuss it. The reason educated professors claim ludicrous and ignorant statements such as "there is no such thing a African history" is because there only exposure to the rich history of African people has been through the pitiful portrayals in stories like Heart of Darkness.

Conrad wrote what he knew. He wrote about the experience of viewing a culture he did not understand nor try to understand. The African people in his story are comparable to accessories to the plot or often shown as part of the setting. Yes this is racist. But no it is not the problem. The problem isn't the book. The problem is people look to Heart of Darkness as a story that brings insight to the lives of African people during King Leppolds time exploiting the Congo. But it in no way does. Yet this story does accurately display how the Europeans of the time viewed the Congo and their time there. It give rich insight into how ignorant Merchants and sailors CHOOSE to be about the people they were exploiting. That is a valuable insight to have because it speaks loudly about what causes racism to thrive and why there are still people in our modern society who believe African Culture did not exist as anything more than a footnote in European History.

As said by the musical avenue Q, "Everyone's a little bit racist, Sometimes... Look around and you will find No one's really color blind. Maybe it's a fact We all should face: Everyone makes judgments Based on race". Although this song is comical and offensive to some, you have to see the real truth behind it: we as humans, have grown in a society constantly looking for differences in people. We always want to rank others, and see how we can improve and be better on the social ladder, and ranking by race is one of the ways humans chose. I'm not accepting that racism is okay, I'm only acknowledging it's very prevalent existence in everyone's lives.
Now, as for Achebe's article, I found it to be a very well written essay, but it didn't persuade me towards his point. Like Natalie said, he only pointed out how racist the book is and failed to see any other merit in it because of it. That close-mindedness made me uncomfortable with the article and, surprisingly, enjoy HOD more. A large part of racism towards Africa in that time, and today, is lack of understanding. As Achebe says "...advantages the West might derive from Africa once it red its mind of old prejudices and bean to look at Africa not through a haze of distortions" (10). Since Conrad grew up in a time where no one understood Africa, it makes perfect sense for him to make judgments on these people based on how they're different; it may not be nice or polite, but it's understandable for the time period. I don't understand what Achebe expects out of HOD, because if Conrad had written "then we landed in a mystical land full of beautiful people of a darker skin tone who's culture was different from Europe, but not in a bad way because it's not nice to judge people!" no one in their right mind would read or believe HOD. Conrad wrote what he believed, based on when he lived and I don't think we can condemn that as only racism when it's a mindset we, as 21st century people, don't comprehend. Currently, we know a lot about the culture and civilizations in Africa, so it's easier to understand and remove our racist colored glasses. I don't find it fair, however, to judge a piece of Literature on a standard that's constantly changing and only covers one aspect of a novel. There's so many other great themes and ideas packed into HOD that make it valuable that only evaluating it on how racist it is, is diminishing to the work as a whole.

To add to what Sheridan and PJ are saying, the focus and goal of the article are everything. This article isn't about Conrad, really, it's about us. I know, how narcissistic of me to say that an article with the word Conrad in the title is actually about me. But it is. Let me explain:

Everyone recognizes that Conrad is dead, even Achebe. While people are splitting into two camps over Conrad's racism, the "it's okay he didn't know better" party and the "it's 2014 and I know everything and this dude knows nothing" party, it's becoming clear to me that these divisions are useless. It doesn't really matter whether we excuse Conrad or not, what matters is if we let ourselves off the hooks because we are so focused on this dead guy. It's infinitely more productive to use Achebe's article to shape our own thinking than to use it as a way to argue over Conrad.

With that said, let's get to the self-examination. I will be the first to say that I am guilty of some of the racist European thinking, for lack of a better phrase, that Achebe is so concerned with. Granted, even I recognized how messed up and dehumanizing Conrad's language is, I definitely have caught myself thinking of Africa as Europe's foil. Heck, it's how I was taught to think of it. But that doesn't make it right, and it makes me want to change how I think. I'm so glad I read HOD and even more glad I read Achebe's article because both of them make me want to be a more informed thinker. Conrad's text may be racist, but paired with this article I still think it carries some very valuable lessons on morality and how we view our place in the world.

To be honest I didn't finish the article. Though forcing myself to extreme measures, I really couldn't bring myself to. Maybe reading it in bed contributed to my inability? It felt like I was being pounded over the head repetitively with a really heavy, large object. When reading Heart of Darkness, I could not detect any racism apart from the obviously satirical racism practically emitting its rays of satire out of the book. Much like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Conrad's novel takes place in a time period where racism towards African Americans was acceptable. Though Marlow does not feel right about what The Company is doing and refrains from looking at African Americans as savages, the sad thing is he really still does. In that regard, I feel like there is much similarity between Marlow and Huck.

I totally agree that this article, to have any meaning/relevancy to us and a "so-what," needs to be about us, and not Conrad. I think a lot of good points about how Achebe suggests we cannot fall into the trap of "reflex action" racism. Let's assume that Conrad's "so what" is that we unintentionally allow racism to continue to permeate our culture and especially much of our literature. (Also, before I get started, to be clear, I'm not advocating either be removed from the curriculum, and I, like many of you, wrote an essay last year in favor of keeping The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the curriculum.)

I think that Achebe's selection of quotes can be boiled down—and this is perhaps a bit reductive—to what I'm going to call "contrast-comparison racism." In other words, to go back to sometime in junior high English, let's assume a comparison differs from contrast because a comparison looks at the similarities between two things, whereas a contrast looks at the differences. Achebe faults Conrad for writing about Africans and saying, "Look, it's almost like us. Ugly." or "Look, she's the 'counterpart' to the 'refined, European woman'" or "look, 'a claim of distant kinship,' fascinating." In other words, Conrad takes these "contrasts" of the savages and then compares them to the white characters, finding the similarities.

Now, (and this might initially seem like a tangent, but "only, I hope, at first sight," so go with it) the last time many of us had to spend a lot of time arguing about "is this racist?" involved The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Some of us may have read this article: www.en.utexas.edu/Classes/Bremen/e316k/316kprivate/scans/smiley.html. Most memorably, to me at least, is what Jane Smiley faults Mark Twain for as "racist." She calls him out for portraying Jim as "pushed to the side of the narrative," as "Huck's sidekick," as "use[d]" and with ignored desires. This is what I would call "comparison-contrast racism:" (yes that's confusing, I'm sorry. It's the order of the two words that matter; I'm sure you could come up with a better way to say it) Jim is first compared to the white characters—he speaks English, interacts with Huck, and is arguably just a normal character when "on the raft." Most times, though, Jim isn't "an individual" (except, as noted, at certain point on the raft). In fact, there is no claim of "distant kinship;" here we assume Jim is man (the comparison), not savage, but the things that make him a man are not usually present (then the contrast). There is, at times, a stark contrast between Jim's lack of autonomy and humanity and those of the white characters.

Jumping back into Achebe's article, then, I actually find Heart of Darkness to be less "racist" today than The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Certainly, I think that Jim gets fairer treatment than the savages of Conrad's novel, but since I think the conversation that needs to happen is about us, I think that the racism of books like Huck Finn is more dangerous.

Claire says she "had already seen" some racism in Conrad's novel, Elizabeth tells, "I already had expectations for it to turn out to be at the very least slightly racist and at the most overtly racist," and many agree with David's sentiment that "I'm a little surprised at why this kind of scrutiny (looking at racism) had not been turned toward Heart of Darkness before." In other words, we all expect Conrad's novel to be racist, see that it is racist, and can at least try to separate ourselves from the racism we recognize. Conrad doesn't pretend the savages are as "human" as his white characters, and we fault him for that. But Conrad also doesn't pretend his savages don't have humanity—however "ugly" it may be—he just fails to understand or explain it. In fact, Conrad's blatant racism creates a reaction in the reader's mind (or at least this reader's mind) that then credits the "savages" with all the human aspects Conrad tries so hard to ignore. The so-called "ugliness" of the concept that Europeans/we are no better or worse than the Africans we recognize as a starkly racist portrayal of truth: we're actually all just humans, or all just animals.

Meanwhile, a novel like Twain's seems to be a bit more pernicious. We see Jim as a man as human as Huck, yet Jim himself has many faults (see that article). Here, fewer readers may begin expecting racism, and fewer may find it if just romping through on a pleasurable read. Jim is treated "fairly," isn't he? Right? It's almost the opposite of Conrad's racism: we might incorrectly recognize Jim as truth—he gets a name, a voice, and characterizations like any other character—and miss the racist aspects.

With that in mind, I actually found Achebe's choice of support—the Conrad quotes he uses—interesting; I'd dance with Natalie's point and suggest that these are perhaps not the "most blatantly offensive" segments of the novel at all. (I'm going to excuse Conrad for his "setting racism"—not anything to do with people, but Achebe's comments about his characterizing Africa itself as a trip back in time. I agree, "The most interesting and revealing passages in Heart of Darkness are…about people" (Achebe 3)).

Achebe does not comment, for example, when Conrad writes, "The fool-n***** had dropped everything, to throw the shutter open and let off that Martini-Henry…If he had only left that shutter alone. He had no restraint, no restraint—just like Kurtz—a tree swayed by the wind" (Conrad 40, 45). (We could question the racism here because of the comparison to Kurtz—a white guy—but Kurtz isn't exactly the epitome of goodness, if you know what I mean.) I find this racist for a two reasons: a) language—and it wasn't enough to use a derogatory term, he needed to qualify it with "fool," and b) "a tree swayed by the wind" isn't exactly reminiscent of a person with humanity and free will and emotions and all those wonderful things that make us human. Both of these points, though, deal with taking a much more "characterized" African—the helmsman—and then suggesting it's a human without humanity, rather than a savage with hidden humanity Conrad's time period refuses to further recognize.

I agree Conrad's novel is racist, and I agree that racism in our literature can perpetuate all sorts of problems. What I'm not sure I find as compelling, though, is that Conrad's racism is as dangerous today (now that colonialism isn't as much of a reality as it is a history) as novels like Twain's, if the "so what" truly deals with allowing racism to slip into our perceptions.

How much is setting a crucial part of the story? Achebe’s focus is on African studies, so it is no wonder that he focuses heavily on it. In the article he writes, “Students of Heart of Darkness will often tell you that Conrad is concerned not so much with Africa as with the deterioration of one European mind caused by solitude and sickness”. Achebe clearly feels that setting is crucial to his evaluation of Heart of Darkness, but it made me wonder—if this novel was identical in text, but was set in an unnamed country with people of an unknown race, would we still be shocked by its racism? Achebe largely uses a biographical lense to evaluate Heart of Darkness- he is very educated about Conrad’s background and his feelings about African Americans. This reasonably makes Achebe very aware of the racism in the novel. Like Amy, I think I didn’t recognize some of the racism as much as I should have. However, Conrad also writes about a theme that is pertinent to all races. Achebe writes, “Herein lies the meaning of Heart of Darkness and the fascination it holds over the Western mind: "What thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity--like yours. Ugly."’ I think this an essential point that Conrad makes in his novel about an overachring truth of all humanity. I am not asserting that the racism in Heart of Darkness needs to be ignored, but rather pondering the change of meaning if setting was not a factor.