The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

The Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad has presented very dark picture of Africa in The Heart of Darkness.

Heart of Darkness (1899) is a novella  by novelist Joseph Conrad , about a

voyage up the Congo River into the Congo Free State , in the heart of Africa. Narrator of the story is Marlow. Marlow tells his story to friends aboard a boat anchored on the River Thames, London, England.

This setting provides the frame for Marlow's story of his obsession with the ivory trader Kurtz , which enables Conrad to create a parallel between London and Africa as places of darkness. Central to Conrad's work is the idea that there is little difference between so-called civilised people and those described as savages; Heart of Darkness raises important questions about imperialism and racism.

 In 1998, the Modern Library

ranked Heart of Darkness as the sixty-

seventh of the hundred best novels in English

of the twentieth century.

Criticism :-

Heart of Darkness is criticized in postcolonial studies, particularly by Nigerian novelist

Chinua Achebe , who is considered to be "patriarch of the African Novel". 

In his 1975 public lecture "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness", Achebe described Conrad's novella as "an

offensive and deplorable book" that de- humanized Africans.  Achebe argued that Conrad, "blinkered...with xenophobia", incorrectly depicted Africa as the antithesis of Europe and civilisation, ignoring the artistic accomplishments of the Fang people who lived in the Congo River basin at the time of the book’s publication. Since the book promoted and continues to promote a prejudiced image of Africa that "depersonalizes a portion of the human race," he concluded that it should not be considered a great work of art.  Zimbabwean Professor Dr. Rino Zhuwarara broadly agreed with Achebe, though considered it important to be "sensitized to how peoples of other nations perceive Africa."

 In 2003, Botswanan professor Dr. Peter Mwikisa concluded the book was

"the great lost opportunity to depict dialogue between Africa and Europe." In 1983,British Professor Cedric Watts published an essay expressing indignation at his perceived implication of Achebe's criticism: that only black people may accurately analyse and assess the novella. Stan Galloway writes, in a comparison of Heart of Darkness with Jungle Tales of Tarzan , "The inhabitants [of both works], whether antagonists or compatriots, were clearly imaginary and meant to represent a particular fictive cipher and not a particular African people."  Fellow novelist Caryl Phillips stated after a

2003 interview that "Achebe is right; to the African reader the price of Conrad's eloquent denunciation of colonization is the recycling of racist notions of the 'dark' continent and her people. Those of us who are not from Africa may be prepared to pay this price, but this price is far too high for Achebe." 

work cited:-

Wikipedia contributors. "Heart of Darkness." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 20 Feb. 2016. Web. 26 Feb. 2016.