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Essay on Racism in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad in his novel, Heart of Darkness, has made remarks throughout the story, which are from the racists from of view and are discriminating against the blacks. At many places he has also presented women as the weaker sex, by discriminating them.
"The thought of their humanity -like your.....Ugly." (Conrad) These words are used by Conrad in his novel ‘Heart of Darkness.’ It is prevalent in this line that it is an utter racist comment and that Conrad even got disgusted with the thought of black men. However, such views expressed by Conrad in the story are that of extremism and show the narrow-mindedness of the writer.
Racism and Discrimination are prominent throughout this fiction. The root cause for it is that European believed that the blacks were beneath them because of the colour difference. Thus, Conrad has used such points in the story that drive the reader to conclude that Conrad was in the clutches of intense racism.
In many parts of the story it is obvious that women were not treated equally and were therefore not provided with jobs that would give them the equal status to that of men. At one of the places Conrad writes, "She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent…She stood looking at us without a stir and like the wilderness itself, with an air of brooding over an inscrutable purpose" (Conrad). Over here it can be observed that the woman is a mistress and describes her or elaborates her personality to that of being a savage. Since the story was written in early 1900’s racism was widespread and thus Conrad has not been hesitant throughout the story to go on expressing racist comments. “This vision is based on the idea of ‘Great’ Britain, a country with a glorious imperialist past that was in fact built on slave-trading and colonizing the ‘dark’ continents.” (Storry, 1997)..........
