"The Racist Novel"

Was Joseph Conrad a racist?

Since Chinua Achebe’s landmark speech in 1975 that has been the dialogue surrounding him and his novel Heart of Darkness. In fact I’d venture to say that every discussion of either Conrad of Achebe in any academic forum on any level of society invariably links the two by centering in on this controversy.

My answer to the question, knee-jerk as this will sound, is: it doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter if Conrad was racist anymore than it matters that Tennessee Williams was a homosexual or that Virginia Woolf was raped. In the context of being an author of fiction your personal experiences have to take a back seat to the actual produced work no matter how much they may influence you to right. Ad hominine attacks add nothing to the discussion of literature in fact they more often detract from it. Even if Conrad was a racist; that still does nothing to take away from his talent. H.P. Lovecraft and Jack London were both known racists but their talent is still respected, why shouldn't Conrad be afforded the same treatment?

The question is not the one to be asked. What we should we be asking instead is:

Is Heart of Darkness Racist?

Oh absolutely. With scenes of barbarism committed by the blacks, accepted barbarism committed by whites against blacks and a general lack of black voices throughout the novel it can’t help but be. Even in descriptions it weasels in there: The man seemed young -- almost a boy -- but you know with them it's hard to tell. If Achebe never started his battle with Conrad, Heart of Darkness would still be a racist novel.

But even as a “Racist Novel” it has its merits. Our very discussion of the topic proves that fact. As a “Racist Novel” we now have a legitimately well written and popular novel which we can look at a point to as example of racially biased representations of non-whites in literature and with Achebe as the major critic, we can directly compare Conrad’s work to his and examine the differences in representation of blacks and whites based on the time and the writer.

We can't throw out a work just because of a particular viewpoint it espouses. When Achebe talks about Heart of Darkness he says: "I am talking about a book which parades in the most vulgar fashion prejudices and insults from which a section of mankind has suffered untold agonies and atrocities in the past and continues to do so in many ways and many places today"

He is right but let’s look at it this way. When I talk about Taming of the Shrew I am talking about a play in which a woman is broken, battered, abused and almost starved to death in order to keep from voicing her opinion and causing her to conform to what men at the time felt a woman should be. Is Taming of the Shrew sexist? Yes it is. But are we ever going to get rid of Shakespeare from the canon? Shakespeare is the canon!

Conrad-Racist writer or Satire slinger?

Achebe definitely makes a convincing case for Conrad’s racism. Of course, we shouldn’t ignore the time difference. Achebe makes his claim in 1977; at least that’s when the piece was published, while Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” was published in 1899. That’s 78 years. It may not seem like a lot, but many things change in eight decades. Conrad may have been a racist, but he also may not have known any better. It doesn’t excuse him, but it does make us hold off the angry mob. Our founding fathers owned slaves, does that make them racist? Conrad may try to get off on the fact that he was ignorant and that he didn’t know any better. The argument could even be made that its fiction and the narrator isn’t even Conrad. That argument mentioned by Achebe, who says “But if Conrad's intention is to draw a cordon sanitaire between himself and the moral and psychological malaise of his narrator his care seems to me totally wasted because he neglects to hint however subtly or tentatively at an alternative frame of reference by which we may judge the actions and opinions of his character” Could Conrad be using Marlow as a scapegoat so he could speak his racist thoughts without persecution?

We would have to look at the work itself, I will begin with the excerpts giving to me by Achebe in his piece. “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 made horrid faces, but what thrilled you, was just the thought of their humanity -- like yours.” It seems like Conrad is saying that the real shock of the savages was how they looked like humans. Of course the outrage which stems from this except is that the “savages” are human, there shouldn’t be anything thrilling or shocking about it. They look like humans because they are. On one side we have Conrad’s gross use of terms that showcases African in a negative light, for example, he refers to them as savages even though they have clans and cultures.

Another quote from "Heart of Darkness reads "The man seemed young -- almost a boy -- but you know with them it's hard to tell" while some people may see this quote as racist, i don't see the problem with it. is the word "them" offensive all of a sudden? this could be an example of Conrad's blatant ignorance. He just doesn't know. Have you ever seen someone who looked older or younger than they actually were? I've seen kids that are 13 that can pass for 17.

Yet can we truly ignore Conrad’s time period. I know its only 78 years, but consider how long it took for African-Americans to actually get civil rights after slavery was abolished. I guess we may never know the true intentions of Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”. But based on what Achebe said, I would be inclined to think that Conrad was a racist.