Analysis Of Chinua Achebe s An Image Of Africa

Nathaniel Oehl 4/4/2016 In Defense of Conrad: A Response to Achebe’s â€Å"An Image of Africa† In â€Å"An Image of Africa†, Chinua Achebe comes to the bold conclusion that Joseph Conrad â€Å"was a bloody racist† (788), with his discussion centering primarily on Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as a racist text. Achebe’s reasoning for this branding rests on the claims that Conrad depicts Africa as â€Å"a place of negations at once remote and vaguely familiar in comparison with which Europe s own state of spiritual grace will be manifest† (783), that Africans in Heart of Darkness are dehumanized through both the characterization of individual Africans and the Congo as a setting, and finally that Marlow is no more than a mouthpiece for Conrad’s personal views on race and imperialism. However, Achebe makes critical oversights and contradictions in the development of each of these argumentative pillars, which prove fatal to the validity of his overarching cont ention. This should not be construed, though, as a yes-or-no assessment of whether Conrad was a racist outside of what his written work suggests—Achebe himself has â€Å"neither the desire nor, indeed, the competence to do so with the tools of the social and biological sciences† (783)—but as an assessment of claims specific to Heart of Darkness and their implications for Conrad’s views and attitudes. Achebe’s first allegation is that Conrad, and Western society in general, develops Africa â€Å"as a foil to Europe† in order to draw attention toShow MoreRelatedAnalysis Of The Book Heart Of Darkness By Chinua Achebe1364 Words   |  6 Pages In Chinua Achebe’s essay, â€Å"An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad s Heart of Darkness,† Achebe purports that Joseph Conrad’s short story, Heart of Darkness, should not be taught due to it’s racist caricature of Africa and African culture. In Conrad’s book, Marlow, a sea captain, is tasked with venturing into the center of the Congo, otherwise known as the Heart of Darkness, to retrieve a mentally unstable ivory trader named Kurtz. Marlow narrates his adventures with a tinge of apathy for the enslavedRead MoreThe Heart Of Darkness By Joseph Conrad1166 Words   |  5 Pagesof the most popular topics of modern literature. The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad depicts a story of colonization took place in the Belgian Congo through Marlow’s perspective. In this book, the author portrays the European ideas of civilizing Africa as well as the ideas of imperialism and racism. Although Conrad refers darkness many times in the book, especially in the title, he did not give any clear statement what the darkness was and what aim is he approached by the use of darkness. 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And the single book which has helped him to launch his revolution is the classic, Things Fall Apart.   The focus of this essay includes: 1) Achebes portraiture of women in his fictional universe, the existing sociocultural situation of the period he is depicting, and the factors in it that condition male attitudes towards women; 2) the consequences of the absenceRead More The Women of Umuofia in Chinua Achebes Things Fall Apart Essay1999 Words   |  8 PagesThe Women of Umuofia in Chinua Achebes Things Fall Apart    The only women respected in Umuofia are those like Chielo, the priestess of the Oracle of the Hills and Caves, who is removed from the pale of normalcy. Clothed in the mystic mantle of the divinity she serves, Chielo transforms from the ordinary; she can reprimand Okonkwo and even scream curses at him: Beware of exchanging words with Agbala [the name of the Oracle of the Hills and Caves]. Does a man speak when a God speaks? 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Taken together, the key themes and processes that have been selected as the focus for each of the eight essays provide a way to conceptualize the twentieth century as a coherent unit for teaching, as well as for written narrative and analysis. Though they do not exhaust the crucial strands of historical development that tie the century together—one could add, for example, nationalism and decolonization—they cover in depth the defining phenomena of that epoch, which, as the essays demonstrate