The Racist & The Sexist

The question isn’t whether one thinks Conrad is a “bloody racist” as Achebe states or whether he accurately described a people who had lived in the Congo. If anything one must ask in what ways has he told a story that would otherwise never be heard, if its author were not a European. If instead Joseph Conrad was named Ikonkwo Conrad or Christine Conrad would there still be a discussion of the work as being prejudiced. Even if one chose to build his/her argument through the frame of Post Colonialism there are significant depictions of Conrad admiring those who Achebe feels he tarnishes. As seen with the lines, “ They howled, and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces: but what thrilled you was just the thought 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…” (Conrad 63). Although Conrad states the ugliness of those he is describing he is also connecting how he is like them, how he can admit to having a “response”.

Although Conrad does make it a point to identify with the Congo people, he also makes note of there differences. A kind of separateness is given not only in the people but in the physical environment in which he is walking into, “We could not understand, because we were to far and could not remember, because we were traveling in the night if first ages, of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign-and no memories” (Conrad 62). A “night of first ages” as opposed to what? A “night” of modernity? A “night” of civilization? There holds the connotation of lesser, one could almost hear "a night of savages" being whispered by the lines.

Nevertheless one can ascertian that there is no true racist or non-racist Conrad, for there is bound to be some group, or theory consisting of all the things an author omitted or felt didn’t get the rightful attention it deserved to find a argument with. Let us not critique a man based on a novel he wrote, for even Achebe can be judged as sexist for his lack if depicting all of Igbo society, and focusing solely on the male dynamics over equally depicting the women as well in his novel Things Fall Apart.