Talk:An Image of Africa

Online version available

What appears to be a complete (or nearly complete) version of Achebe's essay is at

http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/wyrick/debclass/achcon.htm

for anyone who wants to read it. (I haven't added it to the list of article links because I'm not certain it should be according to Wikipedia rules)

Someone who knows more about editing pages than me should check the links in references and external link sections, as some are broken. One on the discussion page is old too. 199.197.101.42 (talk) 16:02, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Rant and counter-rant

How is it that Achebe can say this when the White Man who is the focus of the novel is the very apotheosis of evil? It is as if he didn't even read the thing. One could argue that in his contrarian reading Achebe actually says about whites what he says Conrad said about blacks. Let's be clear: the word "darkness" in "heart of darkness" has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with skin color. Thomas — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.195.192.82 (talk) 13:47, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

The question isn't of good and evil, it is of humanity and inhumanity: "Well, you know that was the worst of it -- this suspicion of their not being inhuman." It is incredible to me, that Achebe's criticism is still greeted with such skepticism and dismissiveness, and such a wealth of vapidity and defensiveness. Darkness doesn't mean skin color? Where did that come from?

(Conrad) I had to look after the savage who was fireman. He was an improved specimen; he could fire up a vertical boiler. He was there below me and, upon my word, to look at him was as edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat walking on his hind legs.

(Achebe) Although the work of redressing which needs to be done may appear too daunting, I believe it is not one day too soon to begin. Conrad saw and condemned the evil of imperial exploitation but was strangely unaware of the racism on which it sharpened its iron tooth. But the victims of racist slander who for centuries have had to live with the inhumanity it makes them heir to have always known better than any casual visitor even when he comes loaded with the gifts of a Conrad.

DBaba (talk) 14:05, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

"Darkness doesn't mean skin color? Where did that come from?" IIRC, the character Marlow was interested in maps when he was a child. This is what interested him in travel so much. One such map was a map of Africa, but since they didn't know much about the continent at the time, it was empty and filled in with black. So, Africa was considered the "dark continent" not because of skin color, but because Africa looked like a dark landmass on the maps of the time. Beala (talk) 07:30, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

[I have deleted my previous comment because Achebe does in fact address whether or not Conrad's view is identical to the narrator's]:

"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 it up to irony and criticism. Certainly Conrad appears to go to considerable pains to set up layers of insulation between himself and the moral universe of his history. He has, for example, a narrator behind a narrator. The primary narrator is Marlow but his account is given to us through the filter of a second, shadowy person. But if Conrad's intention is to draw a cordon sanitaire between himself and the moral and psychological malaise of his narrator his care seems to me totally wasted because he neglects to hint however subtly or tentatively at an alternative frame of reference by which we may judge the actions and opinions of his characters. It would not have been beyond Conrad's power to make that provision if he had thought it necessary. Marlow seems to me to enjoy Conrad's complete confidence -- a feeling reinforced by the close similarities between their two careers."

I disagree with Achebe's conclusions here, but we are all entitled to our own opinions. --BAW (talk) 14:24, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

As any reasonably intelligent high school student will point out, the novel directs suspicion of "inhumanity" towards everyone. The central moral idea of the text is a deep cynicism directed at all cultures. We have, of course, the mysterious savages shouting in the trees—the Africans—but we also have the soulless peons trotting in the streets of London, which city is explicitly compared to a tomb. Now, to address the above quotation from Achebe on whether Conrad's view is identical to the narrator's—well, frankly the question of whether or not Conrad was a racist is a waste of time. The author is dead—in every sense of that phrase. 66.234.218.28 (talk) 04:46, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

I find that difficult to accept, considering, as the article states, that a popular argument for disregarding Achebe's reading of the novel is that Conrad cannot be held accountable for the culture in which he lived and wrote. In other words, even those who disagree with Achebe will go to the author in supporting the merit of the novel. Hence, context is important, and, in the case of an author who so liberally applies his own experiences, in concept and subject matter, to that of his writing: paramount. 68.34.18.128 (talk) 15:49, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

As much as Conrad points to the evils of the colonial enterprise, what Achebe is pointing out is Conrad's implication that somehow the pre-modern primitiveness of Africa causes people to go crazy (hence, all black Africans remain in a state of savagery) and his decision not to give any voice to any African characters, even though Conrad's colleagues in the visual arts were already recognizing the sophistication of African artistic trials. Conrad's Africans have no voice, they remain savages, and it is somehow the continent itself that is responsible (with the logical outcome that Africans are doomed to stay in darkness and savagery). Even as Conrad takes Europe to task, he never allows the Africans any voice, any agency, any humanity. Aristophanes68 (talk) 05:18, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Even as Conrad takes Europe to task, he never allows the Africans any voice, any agency, any humanity. Therein lies the problem. Both you and Achebe have forgotten where this novel is set, the Congo "Free" State. Criticizing Conrad as a racist for portraying Africans of that hellish colony as savages ignores the fact that imperialism has made them that way. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.238.11.49 (talk) 00:04, 20 July 2015 (UTC)