Heart of Darkness II

A brief analysis of Chinua Achebe's "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'" reveals that her paper should be read with some caution. First is that her paper is not fully accurate. For instance, she states the falsehood that the Great Wall of China is the only man-made object visible from the moon; in fact, it is not visible from the moon, due to its width (despite its length), and other man-made objects are visible from a significantly higher height than it. Whether or not this should indicate to a reader that she has not done all of the research is up to the discretion of the reader, but it does cast a shadow of a doubt on the inherent reliability portrayed by her position as a professor, as she has not done the research to recognize that at least one statement she claims in her paper to be true is false. Secondly, and more important than a minor inaccuracy, is her clear bias, as a teacher of African literature; given her position, she is inherently in a place to criticize others for their racism. While she is also in a better position than most to see the issues with society, her perspective undoubtedly also makes her overly perceptive, sometimes seeing racism where there is none. Both of these should be considered when reading her paper, but neither of them detracts from her main point of the general excessive focus of Joseph Conrad on race.

One might argue, as some have, that this focus is that of Marlow, not of Conrad. The issue, however, is more complex: present-day Marlow is likely obfuscating some facts to make his past self look better, and Conrad is likely doing the same. The analogue between Marlow and Conrad is quite multifaceted, and therefore it would seem likely that the author is, to at least some extent, represented in this narrator. However, despite that Marlow, as a narrator, is likely hiding some of the evils belonging to the earlier iteration of Marlow, he does not hide his own racism and thoughts of the continent as primitive and base, still claiming that "going up th[e] river was like travelling [sic] back to the earliest beginnings of the world" (105). Marlow does not consider racism to be immoral, and so does not try to hide it. Considering the equivalency between Marlow and Conrad, it seems likely that Conrad similarly does not believe racism to be immoral. That he does not have Marlow hide it means that Marlow did not learn that racism is wrong during his travels; regardless of whether the character is identical to the author, it is clear that their stories of their travels are parallel, and therefore that the lessons that Conrad learns would be transferred to Marlow. As Marlow did not learn a lesson about racism, as evidenced by the racism Marlow displays as a narrator, it would seem that to be against racism is not a lesson that the Congo had to offer; Conrad would not have learned this lesson either, or else he would have transferred it to Marlow, presuming Marlow would have learned it as well, having gone on a similar journey. Therefore, regardless of her bias and her paper's full accuracy, Chinua Achebe does have a point in referring to Conrad's racism, especially with respect to the lack of prior literature; despite the difficulty of withdrawing conclusions from the intricately layered narrative, it would seem that Marlow's racism is not a result of who Marlow is as a character, but rather of who Conrad is as a person.