Chinua Achebe, author of the novel Things Fall Apart, has responded to the literary work, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Achebe comments on Heat of Darkness saying that it is a racist work of literature.
To support his thesis, Achebe considered Conrad's life and experiences. We are informed that Conrad was born in the same year the first Anglican missionaries were arriving among the people of Nigeria. Basically, Conrad lived in a time where the reputation of the black man was definitely low. Achebe also spoke about Albert Schweitzer and his quote on the Africans he helped, "The African is indeed my brother but my junior brother." Conrad only considers the relationships with the Africans as a "kinship" rather than a brotherhood. Achebe also brings to light the fact that Conrad was more concerned with laying a claim on the kinship, which was previously mentioned. He then goes on to talk about how Conrad voids Africa as a recognizable setting. It is more of a backdrop, again eliminating the African person as a human factor. There is definitely a prejudice against the humanity of the black people and the references to darkness and blackness in Heart of Darkness. For example, Conrad described a black figure with long black legs and waving long black arms, which shows a bit of an obsession with this concept, even though he seems to criticize it more than flatter it. Conrad uses this novel to spread the dehumanization of the African people.
I believe that this thesis was very well supported and there were many more examples he gave from Heart of Darkness. At first, I didn't know what to expect from Chinua Achebe and I wasn't sure about his argument. That being said, he completely convinced me on his thesis. I actually really enjoyed reading this article because I never would've thought about these points.
