Is Joseph Conrad´s 'Heart of Darkness' a Colonialist Novel?
Joseph Conrad´s novel, Heart of Darkness (1902), belongs to the literary canon and is a must-read for anyone bibliophiles. It tells the story of Marlow, the captain of a riverboat, as he travels up the Congo River in order to find Kurtz, a colonial agent in search of ivory. During the long and difficult voyage, Marlow and his crew pass various European settlements, are attacked by natives, and watch their ship sink. Marlow manages to obtain the parts to repair the ship, allowing the crew to eventually reach Kurtz´s station. However, they do not find what Marlow had expected: Kurtz, whom Marlow knows only by his outstanding reputation, has gone insane. On their way back to England, Kurtz´s condition worsens, and he dies. The story ends with Marlow´s visit to Kurtz´s fiancée in London. Marlow lies to her, assuring her that Kurtz´s last word was her name – in reality, his last words were, “The horror! The horror!”
In the 1970s, the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe subjected the novel to a post-colonial critique, resulting in his famous essay, An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad´s `Heart of Darkness´ (1988). Achebe points to the colonialist nature of Conrad’s novel, for example, by drawing attention to the author’s antithetic portrayal of the River Thames versus the Congo River. In Achebe´s view, the contrasting depictions of the two rivers stands for the opposition between a supposedly civilized world on the one hand, and Africa on the other.
Achebe argues that this opposition is also at work in Conrad´s representation of people. To illustrate Marlow´s colonialist view of the natives, he quotes a passage from the middle of the novel. In this passage, Marlow perceives himself and his crew as “wanderers on a prehistoric earth”, their boat toiling along “on the edge of the black and incomprehensible frenzy” as they observe the natives from the boat. In contrast to the “incomprehensible frenzy” of the natives, Marlow describes himself and his crew as gliding “past like phantoms, wondering and secretly appalled, as sane men would be before an enthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse.” Later, Marlow is “thrilled” at the thought “of their [the natives´] humanity – like yours … Ugly.”
Achebe also draws attention to Conrad´s depiction of the women in the story, mentioning Kurtz´s African mistress, whom Marlow describes as “savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent … like wilderness itself.” For Achebe, Kurtz´s mistress “fulfils a structural requirement of the story” in being a “savage counterpart” to Kurtz´s “refined, European” fiancée who is portrayed as fragile, “with a pale head” and as withholding human expression.
Certainly, Achebe´s post-colonial critique of Heart of Darkness cannot easily be dismissed as insubstantial. Yet, his view has been challenged by other scholars as an oversimplification. They argue, for instance, that Conrad cannot simply be equaled with Marlow, emphasizing that the story is far more ambiguous than Achebe admits. Some critics even claim that the story can be read as revealing the degenerate nature and hypocrisy of European colonialism by displaying Marlow´s depraved interior life. In their view, the Heart of Darkness does not so much symbolize Africa as it does Marlow´s (i.e. the colonist´s) heart. They argue, in other words, that Conrad´s main interest is not to depict the natives, but rather to expose the savagery of those who claim to be civilized.
In this context, some scholars have also pointed to the fact that Kurtz´s degeneration stands in sharp contrast to his reputation as a cultured European, and that Marlow seems to be appalled by Kurtz´s state. When Marlow meets the real Kurtz (as opposed to the Kurtz he imagines on the way to the station), he can no longer look up to him. It has been argued that Marlow´s lying to Kurtz´s fiancée at the end of the story reveals that he has, in the course of his expedition, become aware of the hypocrisy of European imperialism.
As the above observations show, there does not seem to be a final answer to the question of whether Heart of Darkness is a colonialist novel. Rather, several different interpretations of the story seem to exist at once. What can be said, though, is that it´s definitely worth reading the novel in order to form your own opinion on these issues.
Source: Houghton Library (cropped), Public Domain
