In his lecture on Joseph Conrad's 1975 short story "Heart of Darkness," Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe states that although the novel has been discussed at length over the years, that his “obvious racism did not take place, and it is high time that it did.” The lecture that Achebe delivered in Massachusetts would forever change the way “Heart of Darkness” (1899) was read, and it also had a major impact on postcolonial readings of Conrad. The intention of this essay is to discuss Achebe's claim, whether it contains some degree of truth or not, and whether Joseph Conrad actually produced his works with underlying racist intent. Writing his well-researched short story in 1899, at the height of imperialism, the Polish-British novelist Joseph Conrad recounts, via the narrator Marlow, a fictional English sailor, his travels from "The Greatest City in the World" or how Achebe Conrad accuses Conrad of using this description to undermine Africa and label it a "place of darkness." Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Given the complexity and ambiguity of the text, as well as the large amount of ongoing discussion sparked by Achebe's lecture, this essay will focus on three primary sources. . First, Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Achebe's scathing 1975 essay and Said's defense and contextualization of Conrad's short story in 1992. Conrad's Heart of Darkness is one of the great works where the English literature is considered according to Conradian Owen Knowles (2007) as he explains how Conrad's work His powerful influence on English literature shaped the way for other greats of English literature, such as TS Eliot, with his use of fragments from Heart of Darkness as an epigraph to his poem "The Hollow Men" (1925). Knowles further states that Conrad would have been "astonished by these contemporary reverberations." However, this was criticized in 1975 when Chinua Achebe heavily criticized the news in his essay "A Picture of Africa" ​​and accused Conrad of being a "hardcore racist". Heart of Darkness was one of the novels that helped perpetuate an offensive image. of Africa, having been disturbed by the inhumanity and brutal behavior meted out to the African natives, Conrad was moved to present his anti-imperialist views aboard his ship which is the Heart of Darkness (Okafore, 1988). Conrad's Heart of Darkness is firmly rooted in imperialism and European conquests around the world, while the colonizers misleadingly claimed that they only sought to civilize the indigenous populations by spreading the Christian way of life: their mentality was based on the idea that white Europeans embodied civilization, while white Europeans embodied civilization. indigenous people were ignorant and in some cases primitive. Furthermore, Said argues that this is beautifully presented in Conrad's extremely rich short story, Heart of Darkness. He defends Conrad by asserting that the interaction between Europe and America, on the one hand, has imperialized the world, that these actions have been animated and made explicit, which he says is "experienced by both sides” and that Conrad should therefore be considered a “creature of his time”. Robert Hampson, professor of modern literature and Conradian editor of the Penguin edition of the novella, notes that the country Conrad had entered had, in its entirety, been under the personal possession of King Leopold II of Belgium in 1885, under the pretext to bring “light to the dark continent”. Or however, how Conrad describes it when hedeclared that it was "the most ignoble race for spoils that has ever disfigured the history of human consciousness and of geographical exploration" (Conrad, 1946, p. 17). Out of context, this quote immediately shows that Conrad was disturbed by what he learned about during his maritime expeditions. However, Achebe argues that in this statement, Conrad is simply projecting an image of Africa as "the other world, the antithesis of Europe and, therefore, of Africa". mocked by a triumphant bestiality” (Achebe, p.252). However, Abdullatif Al-Khait argues that Conrad's denunciation of the imperial West deserves merit and applause for showing the horrors of the colonial mission, that it is not in fact a period of "highlighting ignorant savages, but perversion of the West's own vision. self-image of light and civilization.” Achebe, however, associates this with Conrad's "residue of antipathy toward blacks." If Conrad indeed had antipathy towards black people, this is not immediately apparent since his first description of said black people appears in the gentlest and most caring tone. While describing his journey aboard the French liner, “without particularity, as if it were always in the making”. Marlow describes his first encounter with the natives. It is fair to agree with Achebe's argument that Marlow's description is derogatory, when in doing so Marlow says: "You could see the whites of their eyeballs glowing, they screamed [...] their bodies were dripping with perspiration; they had faces like grotesque masks.” Conrad uses here, according to Achebe, “a nice little vignette” (Achebe, 1977, p.5) – “a descriptive explanation of the way things should be – in their place”. However, what Achebe does not indicate, or even acknowledge, is that Marlow is not using derogatory words, he is using the words "black men." He further justifies his respect by saying that "they were a great comfort to watch." However, Guerric Debona accuses Conrad of masking his anti-Semitic views, stating that "Heart of Darkness contains underlying racism and miscegenation", furthermore, that there is a "darker and more ambivalent side to modernism" or what Fredric Johnson called it “schizophrenic writing.” "regarding Conrad." According to the OED, the definition of racism is prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race, based on the belief that one's own race is superior, if it is believed that Conrad was indeed a deceptive racist, after closely Examining the text, attention should be drawn to the way in which Conrad describes African people. As highlighted previously, we notice that its first mention is “black men”. The next mention appears when Marlow describes the feeling of perplexity between the two men looking at each other when he uses the term "unhappy savages", after which, the next mention comes with the description "black men". It is also shown that Marlow is more interested in the natives when he describes them as "helpers". Heart of Darkness was first published as a three-part serial printed in Blackwood's magazine, a period when the British Empire was particularly concentrated. on African colonization and trade, or, as ED Morel says when he writes that "the primary objective of European domination in the Congo was the plunder of its natural wealth". One of the arguments of this essay is that Conrad, who was at this time an expatriate and trying to obtain citizenship, approached his writing with caution. Conrad uses the characters of Kurtz and Marlow as vehicles.