Marginalised, Excluded or Silenced Social Groups within the Text - Essay Example

?Marginalised, Excluded or Silenced Social Groups within the Text Joseph Conrad’s book, ‘Heart of Darkness’ portrays Africa as a place that is uncivilised and filled with barbarous inhabitants. Both African natives, and, to some extent, women, are the social groups that are silenced or marginalised in the book. Africa, as portrayed in this book, is the direct opposite of the civilised continent of Europe where civilised human beings live. In writing his book, Conrad makes use of Marlow’s character to give voice to his own feelings about the inhabitants of the Congo. He compares the civilisation of Europe to the ‘uncivilised’ existences of the Congo’s inhabitants and shows Marlow moving into an oasis known as the ‘Outer Station’ to lend further meaning to this subject. The Outer Station is situated in the coast of Africa, and is administered by white Europeans who force African natives to perform most of the drudgery connected with running the outfit. Once Marlow reaches the oasis’ shores, he glimpses the darkness in the atmosphere of the place as well as in its inhabitants. The African natives whom Marlow encounters are depicted as sub-humans or animals. They are marginalised by the author in that they are not given a chance to explain their predicament. Nor are their feelings on being forcibly pushed to work away from their homes expounded upon. Rather than seeking to invoke pity for the wretched creatures that have been turned into slaves, the author strives to provoke apathy in the reader by stating that the natives ‘sat near the same tree in acute angles. One stared at nothing in particular while another sat in contorted collapse in an appalling and intolerable manner’ (Conrad 1990). Far from seeking to provoke sympathy in the reader, this actually seems to portray the natives as being idle people who prefer to laze around rather than work. Marlow finds, in the Congo, that his pre-established values are of no effect in his new surroundings. The author actively depersonalises his African characters all through the novella; while portraying Europeans as civilised beings that are models of humanity. While Africans are never allowed to be human, or experience normal human feelings such as hurt, pity, or happiness, they are constantly referred to by insulting terms like ‘nigger’ or ‘black shadows’ (Conrad 1990). In essence, the writer succeeds in changing Africans into irrelevant entities in such a way that the reader learns to adopt the position of the writer in ignoring the fact that they are human beings. In places in the novel where the derogatory names are not being used, there is a patronising tone used by the colonialists towards the natives. The author appears to try and convince the reader of the stupidity or idiocy of Africans in asserting through his European characters that the Africans had to have simple concepts explained to them in very childish ways, such as an analogy of the boiler tender, to understand matters such as the European work ethic. Naturally, the author neglects to mention that Africans worked in their own plots of land and fully understood what work was even before the White man reached their shores. The author also neglected to mention that the Africans may have been reluctant to work for the White man because they were being forced to do it for hardly any real wages. All through the book, the African natives are identified as savages. This is done without explaining to the reader what would make an entire ethnic group savages; apart from the refusal to work when they are told, as they are told, in their colonial masters’ lands- which had been stolen from the natives. In truth, it is the white people in the book who proved to have even more qualities of savagery than they accused the African natives off. To further encourage the perception of African natives as semi-human creatures, the colonial masters would often fire their rifles into the jungle for no apparent purpose. The reader is also informed that the natives had revolting customs such as cannibalism. This further dehumanises the natives in the mind of the reader. One of the characters in the book, Kurtz, expresses his doubt that anything can be done to raise the African natives to a state of being civilised. He categorically states that the only way to deal with this issue is by “exterminating the creatures” (Conrad 1990). In giving further proof of the seeming ‘animal character’ of the African natives, the author, through his favourite character, Marlow, describes the natives as people who “danced in the river for no reason, stamp their feet, shake their horned heads, and gyrate their scarlet bodies while donning a bunch of black feathers a top a mangy skin and screeching amasing words that do not in any way resemble human language but sounds more like a satanic litany” (Conrad 1990). Any reader, after reading this, would imagine that it was a group of exotic animals that were being described and not human beings of a different ethnicity. Another social group that is basically excluded and silenced in the novel is the female gender. All the women described in the book do not actually speak for themselves. The reader can only guess at their appearance and intelligence through the words and descriptions of the author. The European woman as well as the native woman is mentioned in the book. The native woman is portrayed as the ultimate quintessence of Congo’s untameable wildness. She is uncultivated while also being dangerous and exciting. Marlow introduces her as being a gorgeous and wild apparition (Conrad 1990). This is an echo of the author’s description of the landscape of the Congo landscape. There are no words or human feelings attributed to the native woman- rather she can only be viewed through the author’s perceptions of her. In a further comparison that connects Africans to the animal world, the author describes the native woman’s home as being the ‘cold and unwelcoming outside environment’; as though she actually lived in the trees with her family. Marlow’s description of the European woman is slightly better than that of the African woman in that the European woman lives in a home that has “chairs with bent gild legs” and a “grand piano that has a flat surface akin to a polished sarcophagus” (Conrad 1990). However, the European woman is also excluded from the privilege of being a fully functioning human being; a trait that appears to be reserved only for White men in the author’s estimation. While she is not portrayed as a savage, like her African counterpart, the author’s odd idolisation of the European woman appears to depict her as some plaything that functions merely as a thing of beauty, and whose purpose is to be admired by men. The ‘Heart of Darkness contrasts the ‘civilised’ people, Europeans, with the ‘savages’ who are Africans. In the book, the African characters also have trivial roles that merely appear to be emphasising the author’s stereotypes. For example, African characters usually speak in very broken English that consists of one or two words or expressions such as ‘Mista Kurtz, he dead’ (Conrad 1990). They are not shown as speaking in full and intelligible sentences even in their own languages. This makes them seem infantile at best. Reference Conrad, J. (1990) Heart of darkness, Dover Publications, London. Read More