Postcolonial Study of Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad's Heart
of Darkness is one of the most discussed and controversial texts in
postcolonial study. It shows the nature and effect of European colonialism in Africa . At the same time, it attacks the colonizers as
well, though Conrad can not escape the attack of some post colonial critics
like Chinua Achebe for his “dehumanizing” the Africans.
Almost
all the characters in Marlow's tale take part in the colonialist enterprise for
selfish purposes. The narrator expresses that the target of the colonial
expedition in different times has been Congo
“bearing
the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land,
bearers of a spark from the sacred fire”
Here the symbols "the
sword" and "the torch” refer to brutal forces colonial
enterprise and to the negation of the native culture by the so called light of
civilization.
Marlow's aunt is pleased with herself
for helping to send Marlow to Africa as one of
the ‘workers' and as an ‘emissary of light' bearing the task of ‘weaning
those ignorant millions from their horrid ways'.
In
fact, the Europeans have set themselves in Congo
In Heart of Darkness, the colonial agent is Mr. Kurtz. When he first came
he was “a first-class agent”, “a very remarkable person”, but within very short time after his coming to Congo,
instead of turning his station into ‘a centre... for humanizing,
improving, instructing' (p.48), Kurtz, the central figure, has given in to
the ‘fascination of the abomination' (p.21), as indicated by the human
heads on the poles around his house. “Evidently
the appetite for more ivory”, as Kurtz’ Russian friend observes, has
spoiled Kurtz. Indeed, lust for power and wealth corrupts humanity to a great
extent and reduces into savagery.
Conrad is in the novella
critical of the effects of colonialism. Marlow gathers firsthand experience of the cold truth
of colonization: physically wasted workers operating in deplorable conditions,
backstabbing co-workers jockeying for the most profit and recognition, and a
colonized people literally being shackled. It's as if the company is a steamroller
plowing through the jungle, flattening anything and anyone that happens to be
in the way, all, of course, in the name of profit. On his
journey, Marlow, Conrad’s alter ego, meets “a white man in an unbuttoned
uniform, camping on the path with an armed escort”. The white man claims that
he is working for the “improvement” of this region. Marlow ironically
says that he could not understand the meaning of “improvement” until he sees
“the body of a middle-aged negro, with a bullet-hole
in the forehead”.
At the very first of the novella, Marlow, while on a
boat anchored in the Thames river outside London
"And this also…has been one of the dark places of
the earth."
And
this observation, leads him to recollect and tell his journey to Congo
Kurtz is the embodiment of the whole
Europe . Marlow explores his identity:
His mother was half-English, his father was half-French.
All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz.
Moreover, The International Society for the
Suppression of Savage Customs commissions Kurtz to write a report.
Therefore, when we see that Kurtz presides over the
natives' midnight dances which always end with ‘unspeakable rites', it
seems that Europe itself has begun to occupy a high place among the devils of
the land for its taking pleasure in human sacrifice, in the shedding of the
blood of human beings, in sexual orgies, in sexual perversions, and in similar
other monstrous passions.
Therefore,
Kurtz’s last cry ‘horror! horror!' can be his recoil from European
brutality in Africa and thus, a judgment on failure of white civilization. Thus,
we find deadness and illusory greatness of Western civilization in this
novella.
In spite of showing
such presentation of colonialism, Conrad can not get rid of the post colonial criticism.
Chinua Achebe's
controversial article “An Image of Africa” on Heart of Darkness expresses
the allegation that in Western psychology there is a desire and indeed a need
"to set Africa up as a foil to Europe, as a place of negations at
once remote and vaguely familiar, in comparison with which Europe's own state
of spiritual grace will be manifest."
Achebe
also entitles Conrad as "a bloody racist" who tries to show
his "civilized" culture against the ‘darkness" of
a "primitive" Africa and thus
de-humanizes Africans.
For
this reason, Marlow can express his disgust at his journey into the savage beauty of
the jungle, a primeval world, full of peril and lush
"Going up that river was like traveling back to
the earliest beginnings of the world.”
Achebe’s criticism of Heart of Darkness raised such a
storm in the thinking of postcolonial study that one of the English professors
wrote to Achebe,
“After hearing you the other night I now realize that
I had never really read Heart of Darkness although I have taught it for years.”
(Achebe, x)
To conclude, ………….
conclusion?
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