racism essays heart darkness

Enter Your Search Terms to Get Started! Heart of Darkness - Racism Racism in Heart of Darkness In the novel, Heart of Darkness, the author Joseph Conrad makes some comments that could be taken for racially prejudiced remarks. By using different terms to describe people of color, we can depict how Conrad saw Africans as an inferior people. In the book Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, the readers can see how racist the Europeans were toward blacks not only because they were turned into slaves to do the white mans work, but also, we can see how the European people seem to think the Africans were not equal to them. There are also, many examples of discrimination towards woman in this story. Women were looked down upon and they were considered to be worth less then men, or even not as important. First, Joseph Conrad makes some comments about blacks that are very disturbing and racist. One example of this is when he says, the thought of their humanity-like yours Ugly (Conrad 32). This just goes to show how Conrad was a complete racist. He gives us the thought that being compared to a black man was just plain ugly and the thought of it made him sick. That is plain and simple racism that is throughout this book. Another example is the usage of the word “nigger” which is used freely to describe the natives of the land. Conrad writes, The hurt nigger moaned feebly somewhere near by, and then fetched a deep sigh that made me mend my pace away from there (Conrad 23). This remark Conrad made was disturbing and clearly racist because he not only described the black man as a nigger more then once but the word “feeble” that is used in the sentence shows no remorse coming from Conrad’s depiction as he slowly walks his character away. Next, we learn that the Europeans were racist toward blacks. We can see how the European people seem to think the Africans are not equal to them.
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Achebe, Chinua. An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' Massachusetts Review. 18. 1977. Rpt. in Heart of Darkness, An Authoritative Text, background and Sources Criticism. 1961. 3rd ed. Ed. Robert Kimbrough, London: W. W Norton and Co., 1988, pp.251-261 In the fall of 1974 I was walking one day from the English Department at the University of Massachusetts to a parking lot. It was a fine autumn morning such as encouraged friendliness to passing strangers. Brisk youngsters were hurrying in all directions, many of them obviously freshmen in their first flush of enthusiasm. An older man going the same way as I turned and remarked to me how very young they came these days. I agreed. Then he asked me if I was a student too. I said no, I was a teacher. What did I teach? African literature. Now that was funny, he said, because he knew a fellow who taught the same thing, or perhaps it was African history, in a certain Community College not far from here. It always surprised him, he went on to say, because he never had thought of Africa as having that kind of stuff, you know. By this time I was walking much faster. Oh well, I heard him say finally, behind me: I guess I have to take your course to find out. A few weeks later I received two very touching letters from high school children in Yonkers, New York, who -- bless their teacher -- had just read Things Fall Apart. One of them was particularly happy to learn about the customs and superstitions of an African tribe. I propose to draw from these rather trivial encounters rather heavy conclusions which at first sight might seem somewhat out of proportion to them. But only, I hope, at first sight. The young fellow from Yonkers, perhaps partly on account of his age but I believe also for much deeper and more serious reasons, is obviously unaware that the life of his own tribesmen in Yonkers, New York, is.