An Analysis of Chinua Achebe's Article An Image of African Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness Essay

Heart of Darkness is a great novel written by Joseph Conrad, this novel calls the very humanity of black people in to question, it also presents a powerful critique of imperialism and racism, so it is clear that there is a message needs to be sent through the events of this story. Morcover Heart of Darkness is still overrated not only because concod couldn't write english properly, but also because the case against it made by Chinua Achebe, he claimed conrad to be a bloody racist" in his lecture " An Image of Africa" he also added that " it is an offensive and totally deplorable book" , But for me as areader I disagree with china achebe for lots of reasons and facts. First of all I will discuss the issue of racism most sociologist and politician think that racism equals "Prejudice plus power" and that since African people, lack power, they are simply not capable of practicing racism against anyone, son as long as racism goes with power, we can not stop it or hide it, especially that racism has along history and goes so deep in the english society that racism must go so deep in english life (definitely) in the language, that it's hardly to be avoided even by anti-racists, even by its victims who are english, in fact, if Conrad is a racist, it's hard to see how racism in english to be avoided, further more, it's true that most of us reject racism but, being english, in english, we can not except as racists. Now that is "institutionalized" As a result most readers do not notice that conrad is " through going racist" as Achebe claims, because white racism against Africa is a normal way of thinking. The title of the novel has several meanings which certainly plays an extremely large role in the overall interpretation of meanings, the phrase " heart of darkness" refers to Congo because it...

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