Hello literature world I am writing again as my class has just been assigned to read and respond to Chinua Achebe’s article, An image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. After reading Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad I had some positive and negative opinions about the text but none as strong as the ones Achebe conveys. He hated the book, in short … and that is nicely explaining the way he felt about it. I did love that in the beginning of the article he mentioned how repetitive Heart of Darkness is and that was what I was thinking the entire time while reading the novella! It was like Conrad kept saying the same descriptions using varying literary devices and sophisticated vocabulary. He says “ Of course there is a judicious change of adjectives from time to time…” when I read this I was relived as I thought it was just me who thought the short story was repetitive.

However, something that I was taken back by how upset Achebe was by the racist commentary within Heart of Darkness because I did not find it to be as racist as he made it out be. Going back and re-reading a few passages I still believe Conrad was trying to portray the whites as being brutal and savage like things, not the Africans. On contrary I did not think about how Conrad in a way does belittle in Africa’s name in a sense. Achebe says “…reducing Africa to the role of props…” Africa was the backdrop, the setting for the novella but now that I think about it, Conrad defiantly depicts Africa in such a way. Achebe also refers to it as “dehumanization of Africa and Africans…the very humanity of Black people is called in question…” I disagree with this because Conrad is not attempting to do that in my opinion that is not the purpose of his work. Instead he is sharing his story of all the atrocities that he witnessed and I do believe he puts quite a bit of blame on the Europeans in the short story.

Although I had a difficult time reading Heart of Darkness I believe that it was an incredible story depicting the Congo River, Africa and what took place during this time. However as Achebe does mention each traveler has their own experiences and sometimes does fail to experience and or witness things. Conrad may be bias as several people believe Marlow Is in the story because they had their own experiences, they are not telling of someone else’s in a history book. In another five years or so I will re-read Heart of Darkness and Achebe’s article and who knows maybe I will have a change of heart. I found both these unique pieces of literature to teach me a great deal about historic events I had not learned about as well as author’s purpose! This year I have experienced different books and varying genres and I challenge you all to broaden your interests when reading! As always keep reading and analyzing!