Was Joseph Conrad a Rascist

Is it fair to call Joseph Conrad a arrant(a) Racist? To call someone a thoroughgoing antiblack is to imagine that they are a person who completely and tell ap nontextual matteringly considers one go of hu art objects superior to otherwises. This is precisely what Chinua Achebe is accusing Joseph Conrad of. It is Achebes opinion that Conrad wrote his aggregate of sinfulness from a antiblack point of view intentionally to belittle Africa and its people and to raise up Europe and its people. While I entertain that Joseph Conrad may prolong been a racial and that core of apparition for certain has racial discrimination in it, I believe it unfair to call Conrad a thoroughgoing racist.Conrad is simply a victim of his cadence, having lived from 1857-1924 when the racism against Africans was widespread, still considered normal. He was non intentionally trying to be racist. It is the desire- one might dis adult maletle say the need- of Western psychology to set up Africa as a foil to Europe, as a place of negations at once remote control and vaguely familiar, in comparison with which Europes own subject of spiritual grace will be domainly concernifest (Achebe, 1). In other words, Europeans want to directly compare Africa to Europe in a government agency that the darkness of Africa profits Europe seem lighter.This shows that Conrad may even not have been racist at all. He could be simply constitution a novel that the people wanted at that time. Achebe even briefly states this as a possibility It might be cont destinationed that the attitude to the African in nub of Darkness is not Conrads that that of his fictional narrator, Marlow, and that farthest from endorsing it Conrad might indeed be holding it up to irony and lit crit (Achebe, 4). This is my opinion of Conrad. He was not real(a)ly a racist. He was a brilliant storyteller of fiction that knew the people who would be reading the give.In that time period, most readers were racist aga inst Africans. That was OK back then. Conrad didnt agree with it merely he wrote a short novel highlighting it to appease the masses, eyepatch subtlety showing how wrong racism is. Heat of Darkness projects the encounter of Africa as the other world, the antithesis of Europe and at that placefore of civilization, a place where mans vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by overbearing bestiality. The book opens on the River Thames, tranquil, resting, peacefully at the decline of day afterward ages of costly service done to the race that peopled its banks. But the actual story will take place on the River congou tea, the genuinely antithesis of the Thames. The River Congo is quite decidedly not a River Emeritus. It has rendered no service and enjoys no old-age pension. We are told that going up that river was like back to the earliest beginnings of the world. (Achebe, 2). The Heart of Darkness mentions the race that peopled its banks on the River Thames an d then later duologue about the people who people the banks of the River Congo. thither you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly and the men were No they were not inhuman.Well, you know that was the worst of it- this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped and spun and accommodate horrid faces, simply what thrilled you, was just the thinking of their humanity- like yours- the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough, but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you- you so remote from the iniquity of the first ages- could comprehend. Conrad, 153). This passage is a direct comparison of the savages in Africa to the civilize in Europe. Yet there is a connection, a kinship, between these ii beings. Conrad knows that Europeans love to view Africans as these uncivilized brutes in order to make themselves look better but then he slips in that the 2 peoples are actually of the same heritage, separated only by the tend of time. Africans may appear to be these black monsters incapable of speech, only a dialect of grunting and screaming but they are actually the just as human as any one else. Conrad later depicts the African savages as dogs And between whiles I had to look after the savage who was fireman. He was an modify specimen he could fire up a vertical boiler. He was there below me and, upon my word, to look at him was as edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of pants and a feather hat walking on his hind legs. A few months of training had done for that really fine chap. He squinted at the steam-gauge and at the hot water-gauge with an evident effort of intrepidity- and he had filed his teeth too, the abject devil, and the wool of his pate shaved into queer patter ns, and three ornamental scars on each of his cheeks.He ought to have been clapping his hands and stamping his feet on the bank, instead of which he was hard at work, a thrall to strange witchcraft, full of improve knowledge. (Conrad, 154). This is a very sudden and drastic change from just half(a) of a page earlier when the African savages were kin to the Europeans. Now theyre dogs. Perhaps Conrad really is a thoroughgoing racist. However, one must immortalise that the Heart of Darkness is a story within a story. It is Conrad writing of a man in London called Marlow who is recounting his experience in Africa on the River Congo.So it is not Conrad who is the racist his fictional character Marlow is. This is a very different style of storytelling and it is easy to forget whose words we are reading. sometimes we are reading Conrads words when we are on the River Thames but usually we are reading Marlows words. Achebe contends, Conrad appears to go to considerable mental strain to set up layers of insulation between himself and the moral universe of his history. He has, for example, a narrator behind a narrator. The primary narrator is Marlow but his account is given to us through the filter of a second, light person (Achebe, 4). wholeness of Achebes main arguments is that art is more than just good sentences this is what makes this situation tragic. The man Conrad is a capable artist and as such(prenominal) I face better from him. I mean, what is his point in that book Heart of Darkness? Art is not intended to put people down. If so, then art would ultimately discredit itself (Phillips, 1). This statement simply isnt true. Art is not exclusively a happy thing that only raises people up. There is such a thing as depressing art. The Bluest Eye is a ample example of this. It too has tones of racism, being about a young lady who hates herself because she is black and therefore ugly.The ending of that story is very sad and the fight is not resolved. This me ans that, according to Achebe, The Bluest Eye does not qualify as art. Its unfair of Achebe to only accept art that is happy and uplifting. The world is not a happy and uplifting place. There is darkness in the world. Conrad is attempting to point this out in the title alone, Heart of Darkness. He even suggests that London was once one of the dark places of the world. Achebe expects Conrad to be one of the artists who is big than their times (Phillips, 5). He says that that is what makes you a spacious artist.Being ahead of your time is not a requirement of great artistry. Thats not to say that there are no great artists who were ahead of their time but there are plenty of great artists who werent. To be bigger than your time takes a highly innovative and rebellious mind, which is a rare thing. All great innovations are mocked upon first arrival. This is why they are called innovations they go against the norm. One cannot expect a writer in a racist world to duty a book that spea ks out against racism. That being said, it can be argued that Heart of Darkness does speak out against racism from an ironical standpoint.The overreaching incredulity is, what happens when one group of people, supposedly more humane and civilized than other group, attempts to impose itself upon its inferiors? In such circumstances will there of all time be an individual who, removed from the shackles of civilized behavior, feels compelled to push at the margins of stuffy morality? What happens to this one individual who imagines himself to be released from the moral order of beau monde and therefore free to behave as savagely or in good order as he deems fit? How does this man answer to chaos? (Phillips, 4). When considering these questions, I am forced to recall the motion-picture show Three Kings. This whole movie seems to be based upon these questions. It takes place in Iraq right at the end of the Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm. A group of American soldiers shine a map leading to the Kuwaiti gold stolen by Iraq. One soldier asks what is the most important thing in life? destiny As in people do what is most necessary to them at an given moment (Clooney, Three Kings). This is the answer to Phillips question how does this man respond to chaos? He does any(prenominal) he needs to do, not whatever he wants to do. In Heart of Darkness each man is thrown into his own chaos and they all respond differently, but each man does what he feels is the most necessary. The idea of necessity can be apply to Conrad as well. What was most necessary to a writer living in the early 20th century? For Conrad, it was to stick to the status quo, to write a book that uses Africa as a foil, which portrays Africans as savage beasts. This does not make him a racist, merely a man who is following the trend of society.Assuming that Conrad wasnt a racist, what if he had written Heart of Darkness without any racism? He would have been mocked, perhaps even cast out or discredi ted. Today he would be revered as one of the great futuristic minds of his time of course but he has no appearance of knowing that. So he took the safe route and wrote Heart of Darkness from a more racist point of view. This does not make Conrad a thoroughgoing racist, as Achebe would accuse him. Arguments could be made either expression that Conrad was racist or that he wasnt. If he was not a racist at all then thats the end of it.However, if he was a racist it becomes more complicated. Although due to the time and society in which Conrad was innate(p) and raised, his racism is therefore not intentional. He is not a racist in a non-racist society he is simply another racist just like nearly everyone else. Works Cited Achebe, Chinua. An Image of Africa Racism in Conrads Heart of Darkness Massachusetts Review. 18. 1977. Clooney, George, Perf. Three Kings Warner Bros Pictures. 1999. Film. Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness 1902. Phillips, Caryl and Chinua Achebe. Personal Interview. 21 February 2003.