An Image of Africa

“Heart of Darkness is indeed so secure today that a leading Conrad scholar has numbered it ‘among the half-dozen greatest short novels in the English language.’”

While there are plenty of other examples of racist, colonial literature Achebe could have picked from to form a similar critique, it is the elevated status of Heart of Darkness as an essential part of the English canon that makes it perfect for his critical lens. Achebe argues that a piece of literature that is so steeped in racism and dehumanization should not be considered “great.”

“Is Conrad saying then that these two rivers are very different, one good, the other bad? Yes, but that is not the real point. It is not the differentness that worries Conrad but the lurking hint of kinship, of common ancestry.”

The “kinship” between the Thames and the Congo echoes the kinship between Africans and Europeans, which disturbs Marlow in Heart of Darkness. Achebe demonstrates that portraying this shared humanity as uncanny fundamentally dehumanizes the Black characters in Conrad’s novella.

“In the final consideration his method amounts to no more than a steady, ponderous, fake ritualistic repetition of two antithetical sentences, one about silence and the other about frenzy.”

Conrad’s portrayal of the River Congo and the inhabitants of the region is full of unresolved contradictions revolving around “silence” and “frenzy.” The silence is linked to the denial of human language; the frenzy represents the constant threat of violence that Conrad believes is inherent to the “savage” Africans.

“Herein lies the meaning of Heart of Darkness and the fascination it holds over the Western mind: ‘What thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity—like yours…Ugly.’”

Rather than using the shared humanity of Africans and Europeans as a means for building empathy and making a case against imperialism, Conrad portrays this link as uncanny. The humanity of Africans was sensationalism meant to thrill and disturb Conrad’s audience, not open their hearts. His readers are accused of being “ugly” like those colonized by Europeans, thus reinforcing a low opinion of the colonized instead of creating a more complex or positive portrayal of them.

“Tragedy begins when things leave their accustomed place, like Europe leaving its safe stronghold between the policeman and the baker to like a peep into the heart of darkness.”

Achebe argues that Conrad’s psychology is inexorably linked to the broader Western attitude toward Africa. Kurtz was destroyed by coming in too close contact with the “heart of darkness.” Achebe sees this as Conrad’s obsession with everything being in its proper place: Anyone who leaves their proper place is destroyed, like Kurtz or the Black boiler operator who dresses like a white European, or else permanently altered, like Marlow.

“The difference in the attitude of the novelist to these two women is conveyed in too many direct and subfile ways to need elaboration. But perhaps the most significant difference is the one implied in the author's bestowal of human expression to the one and the withholding of it from the other.”

Achebe uses the juxtaposition of the only somewhat-prominent female characters in Heart of Darkness to emphasize how Conrad dehumanizes the Black characters. The Black woman, Kurtz’s mistress, is treated as an enigmatic spectacle; she says nothing as she is examined head to toe by Marlow’s voyeuristic gaze. The European woman, however, is granted “human expression” in that her use of language grants her the humanity that the Black woman is denied.

“As for the announcement of Mr. Kurtz's death by the ‘insolent black head in the doorway’ what better or more appropriate finish could be written to the horror story of that wayward child of civilization who willfully had given his soul to the powers of darkness and ‘taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land’ than the proclamation of his physical death by the forces he had joined?”

Achebe turns to one of the few examples of Black characters being granted human expression in Heart of Darkness to reinforce his argument about the West’s portrayal of Africa as a setting for European self-discovery. The man who announces Kurtz’s death has no character, personality, or humanity of his own; he merely serves as a prop to announce the death of a white man.

“Marlow comes through to us not only as a witness of truth, but one holding those advanced and humane views appropriate to the English liberal tradition which required all Englishmen of decency to be deeply shocked by atrocities in Bulgaria or the Congo of King Leopold of the Belgians or wherever.”

Here, Achebe addresses some of the potential counterarguments to the main idea of “An Image of Africa”: Conrad’s racism is merely a product of his time, and Heart of Darkness is actually an anti-imperialist novel. However, Achebe contends that whatever progressive sentiment that may be present in Heart of Darkness is counterbalanced by its refusal to acknowledge Africans as properly human.

“It is important to note that Conrad, careful as ever with his words, is concerned not so much about distant kinship as about someone laying a claim on it. The black man lays a claim on the white man which is well-nigh intolerable. It is the laying of this claim which frightens and at the same time fascinates Conrad, ‘…the thought of their humanity—like yours…Ugly.’”

The Black character that is humanized to the greatest degree in Heart of Darkness is the steersman, whose death actually seems to move Marlow. However, Achebe reemphasizes the fact that the kinship between Africans and Europeans that this scene evokes is distasteful to Marlow (and Conrad). To acknowledge the dying man as human is the claim he lays on Marlow, and, because it is “well-nigh intolerable” to Conrad, Marlow’s empathy for the steersman ends there.

“The point of my observations should be quite clear by now, namely that Joseph Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist. That this simple truth is glossed over in criticisms of his work is due to the fact that white racism against Africa is such a normal way of thinking that its manifestations go completely unremarked.”

Achebe’s thesis is the most controversial line from “An Image of Africa.” However, this is not just an ad hominem attack on Conrad as an author; Achebe makes a meticulous effort to support his claim, drawing on history, literary criticism, and Conrad’s own life and words. His argument is not as much about Conrad as it is about the Western impulse to support such views reflexively.

“Irrational love and irrational hate jostling together in the heart of that talented, tormented man. But whereas irrational love may at worst engender foolish acts of indiscretion, irrational hate can endanger the life of the community. Naturally Conrad is a dream for psychoanalytic critics.”

Achebe again draws on Conrad’s inherent contradictions to support his argument about Conrad’s racism. His irrational love for the first Englishman he ever saw stands in stark contrast to his irrational hate for the first Black man he encountered. From a psychoanalytic perspective, Conrad serves as a stand-in for the West: to psychoanalyze his racism is to interrogate the West’s racism.

“The point of all this is to suggest that Conrad's picture of the people of the Congo seems grossly inadequate even at the height of their subjection to the ravages of King Leopold's lnternational Association for the Civilization of Central Africa.”

The Congo suffered a brutal regime of colonization, exploitation, and genocide under Belgian rule. However, Achebe emphasizes that, despite the degradation the Congolese faced under these conditions, they still had a distinct culture with a rich history of art. He uses this point to counter the argument by some critics that Conrad only depicted in his novella what he saw in Africa: a society ravaged by colonization. Achebe claims that, even amid the terrors inflicted upon Congolese people, Conrad’s illustration of them is flat and dehumanizing.

“If Europe, advancing in civilization, could cast a backward glance periodically at Africa trapped in primordial barbarity it could say with faith and feeling: There go I but for the grace of God. Africa is to Europe as the picture is to Dorian Gray—a carrier onto whom the master unloads his physical and moral deformities so that he may go forward, erect and immaculate. Consequently Africa is something to be avoided just as the picture has to be hidden away to safeguard the man's jeopardous integrity.”

Achebe’s allusion to The Picture of Dorian Gray contributes to his Psychoanalysis of Western Thought, through which he develops his argument about how the West views Africa. According to Achebe, Europe needs Africa for self-affirmation: Colonial Europe degraded Africa to make it feel better about itself. However, like the portrait in Oscar Wilde’s novel, this racist image of Africa reflects badly upon Europe, not Africa itself. The West needing a scapegoat to prop itself up as a superior society only highlights its insecurities and cultural flaws.