An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness

Overview

Chinua Achebe mounts a forceful critique of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, arguing that the novella participates in and reinforces racist depictions of Africa and Africans. Achebe contends that Conrad's language, imagery, and narrative choices reduce African people to a backdrop of silence and savagery, making them objects rather than subjects of history and moral consideration. The essay reframes the work from celebrated modernist achievement to a text that must be judged for its ethical and political effects as well as its aesthetic qualities.

Main argument

Achebe asserts that Conrad is not merely a product of his time but an active promulgator of a view that dehumanizes Africans. He challenges defenses that read Conrad as ironic or ambiguous, insisting that the pervasive metaphors of darkness, primitivism, and animality cumulatively construct Africa as "the other" in opposition to European humanity and civilization. Achebe maintains that literary greatness cannot excuse the moral damage of portraying an entire continent as valueless and voiceless.

Language and representation

The essay focuses on Conrad's diction and narrative perspective, showing how repeated imagery, of silence, bestiality, and moral torpor, functions ideologically rather than neutrally. Africans in the narrative are largely unnamed, unarticulated and described through negation or absence, which Achebe reads as a systematic erasure. He emphasizes the discrepancy between Conrad's expressive skill and the content that skill serves, arguing that eloquence can render cruelty more persuasive and thus more dangerous.

Narrative authority and irony

Achebe critiques defenses that attribute Conrad's racism to the narrator's hypocrisy or to modernist complexity. He acknowledges narrative irony and ambiguity but insists that these features do not absolve the author when the narrative consistently situates Africa as a foil to European conscience. The issue is not only what characters say but what the text as a whole permits readers to imagine about African humanity and history. For Achebe, Conrad's rhetorical mastery compounds the harm by making racist implications appear natural and unremarked.

Implications and legacy

The essay challenges literary criticism and pedagogy to reckon with the ethical dimensions of canonical texts, arguing for critical scrutiny of how literature shapes perceptions of human worth. Achebe's intervention sparked intense debate, prompting defenders and detractors to reconsider Heart of Darkness' place in curricula and scholarship. More broadly, the essay helped launch postcolonial readings that foreground representation, power, and the voices excluded by imperial narratives, reshaping how modern literature is taught and judged.

Enduring significance

Achebe's critique remains a touchstone for discussions about race, authorial responsibility, and the politics of literary canonization. It models a method of close reading that links stylistic detail to historical violence and insists that aesthetic evaluation cannot be severed from moral consequence. By insisting that African perspectives be acknowledged and that racist portrayals be called out, Achebe redirected literary conversation toward a richer, more ethically aware appraisal of texts once insulated by reputations.