A Deconstructed view of Heart of Darkness - Essay Example

? A Deconstructed view of Heart of Darkness Number Number Teacher’s Due Word Count: A Deconstructed view of Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad’s Work, Heart of Darkness is a classic work of modernism that has lent itself to many readings and interpretations. It came out in 1899 and has been an important part of the canon of English literature since then. Even though it came out during the nineteenth century, it is counted by most critics as among the first of the modernist novels. This is primarily a consequence of the fact that the notions of time as readers find it in Heart of Darkness is similar to the modernists’. Apart from this, the techniques of writing that are employed in the novel make it similar to the ones that were employed by writers such as James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. His writing is also quite different in style and thematic content from the works of the fin-de-siecle writers like Oscar Wilde and Charles Baudelaire. On the face of it, the modernists were quite radical in their views and saw themselves to be located outside the politics of their times even though their writings were heavily influenced by it. Conrad’s novel claims to be anti-imperialist (Hawkins, 286); however, it has several racist stereotypes that are used for the purpose of description of Africans that Marlow encounters on his way to meet Kurtz. These stereotypes can then be seen as an affirmation of the economic cause of their origin, most of which are forms of imperialism. Many of these views came into existence following the birth of deconstruction as a form of literary criticism that sought to read a text along its fault lines. A deconstructed reading of Heart of Darkness would look at how imperialism affects the way in which race is looked at in the novel by the protagonist and the author. Deconstruction as a school of thought needs to be understood before an analysis of the novel using its perspective. Deconstruction as a school of thought and criticism originated with the work of Jacques Derrida who spoke of the need for a critique of the relations between the signified and the signifier. What he proposed was not a dismantling of the structures formed of these elements but an analysis of their relative importance. Such an analysis would be extremely relevant to the field of literary analysis as it would enable critics to understand the politics of the signifier and the signified and the other binary oppositions that operate therein. These can be seen in the importance that is given to what is signified over the signifier, in certain instances. For instance, in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, the character of Mammy as a signifier is unimportant when compared to the idea of slavery and the stereotype of the subservient black slave, which is the signifier (Mitchell). In certain other cases, the signifier assumes importance. In Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, the butterflies that accompany Mauricio Babilonia are signifiers that are given precedence over whatever they signify (Marquez). Such instances are rare and an analysis of why this is so is one of the important consequences of deconstruction. Such binary oppositions are often employed to create political hierarchies by privileging one half of the binary over the other. This paper shall seek to analyse the binaries that are created in Heart of Darkness and look at how the author, despite the ambiguity in the anti-imperialist rhetoric that he employs privileges Western (European and English) civilization over African ones. The images used in the novel form a reader’s entry point for a deconstructivist reading of it. In the novel, the images of the African natives are almost completely different from the ones that are used to describe the English and other European natives. The quest that Marlow undertakes is to rescue the European lost in Congo, Kurtz. This separates the African from the European and divides them into two camps or binaries. At a certain point in the narrative, Marlow says, “It was unearthly, and the men were—No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it—the suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity—like yours—the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you—you so remote from the night of first ages—could comprehend. And why not?” (Conrad, 63). The importance of these lines lies in the fact that they represent an example of what critics have referred to as the ambiguity in the narrative of Heart of Darkness. There is a hint of the fact that Marlow sees in the Africans a common humanity that binds them together. There is however, at the same time, a subtle indication from Conrad that the Africans are in fact people in whom Marlow is able to see the primitive self of man. The evolution of this primitive man would lead, in Conrad’s worldview, naturally, to the Western man. In his anti-imperialist propaganda, an elevation of the status of the African subject does not arise as a concern. The moral questions that are raised regarding imperialism are relevant from the perspective of the European colonizers and not the Africans, as far as Conrad is concerned. John V. Hagopian points to the unreliability of Marlow as a narrator as a factor that would reinforce the ambiguity of the position that Conrad adopts in the novel. The presence of uninterested sailors who listen to Marlow’s story only lends credence to this theory, according to Hagopian. The signified as we would imagine it has to be modified as the signifiers have been used by the author in an ironic sense (Hagopian, 273). This would not be what one would think of the novel if one looks at how other readings of the text have been. Chinua Achebe, for instance, talks of the racism that is inherent in the way Conrad and his protagonist conceptualise of Africans and their civilization. He talks of how Conrad creates binaries between the African and the Western. Within this binary, he privileges the Western and sees in the African a common bond that helps them remember their primitive states. In this view, Conrad views the Western man as the pinnacle of all evolution. Within this worldview, even women of Western countries are not provided with a position of equality as is seen in the manner in which the Intended of Kurtz is treated. According to Achebe, Conrad views Africa as “the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization, a place where man's vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant bestiality” (Achebe). Achebe’s contention is correct as the African point of view is not sought in the work and it remains one where the narrator and the protagonist continue to view the river and adjoining land through its silence. This silence signifies lurking humanity and at the same time, the possibility of violence- a violence that Western civilization has successfully managed to repress (Conrad’s view)-which would place African civilization at a lower level than Western civilizations, according to Conrad. Achebe’s critique was made in the light of his observations that people even now, do not believe that African civilization possesses any degree of complexity to it. He debunks this myth beautifully in his work, Things Fall Apart, where he talks of a complex way of living that was practised by the Igbo tribes of Africa (Achebe). Another aspect of the racism can be seen in the two poles of the ambiguous attitude that Conrad adopts towards Imperialism. Imperialism was a form of capitalism which was mostly justified by Western countries on the basis of evolutionary and Christian theories which placed them in a position of superiority in relation to the other races of the world. The civilizing mission that sought to ‘improve’ other races was a facade for economic exploitation; however, it had racist undertones whereby it sought to subjugate what it felt were inferior races. While many critics have hailed the novel as an anti-imperialist one, some have astutely pointed out that the novel criticizes European imperialism of the kind that was carried on by Belgium but sanctions British colonialism on utilitarian grounds. The inefficiency of the Belgians is repeatedly pointed out by Conrad and this is sought to be replaced by British colonialism. Pericles Lewis points to this aspect of Conrad’s agenda in his essay where he talks of how Kurtz is a conglomeration of what were considered to be “European depravities, with little special reference to England”. This adulation for the ways in which English colonial administration functioned placed in opposition to the ways in which other colonizers did, is not a stance that can be described to be anti-imperialist (Lewis, 212). Imperialism, justified by racist and elitist viewpoints, is by definition, against the equality of races. The underlying racism that pervades the novel is thus, something that justifies economic exploitation. Who controlled the colonies is what is important to Conrad and his novel and not the fundamental malaise of colonialism that fuelled and was fuelled by racist stereotypes. To understand these, one needs to read the novel along the fissures that the narrative provides such as the passage from the novel provided earlier. Conrad’s business is a tricky one as he attempts to introduce ambiguities in the novel which ultimately reveal his racist ideologies. To understand the intricacies of what is signified by the different signs in the novel, one needs to understand what lies beyond the ambiguities of the novel and what fuels it. The important aspect of racism in the novel is often subsumed within the larger aspect of the question whether it is imperialist or not. Criticism in the novel tends to focus on the imperialist aspects of it. Conrad himself seeks to change the exploitative tale of imperialism that leads to a lot of suffering for the Africans into a platform where he can discuss the almost existentialist crises that European civilization has to go through in the wake of the new century. The Africans, in this picture are turned into mere shadows of earlier stages of human evolution where the white man can see himself reflected through the prism of past centuries. Thus, while there is a kinship, the image of the black man signifies more than a shared humanity- it signifies a part of a binary that according to the novelist was left behind in the progress of mankind towards a developed state. This is one of the most significant readings that have been advanced regarding the novel. Several readings of the novel are possible. The one given above may be refuted at several points and the novel has been termed racist by as many people as have termed it anti-racist. The complexities of a Polish anglophile who praises the country of his adoption need to be explored at greater length while dealing with a novel like Heart of Darkness. This novel, however, is a significant part of the canon of English literature. This is because of the fact that it was one of the first novels in English literature which discussed the problems of colonialism and racism at length and introduced its now famous ambiguities. These ambiguities created the scope for further discussion and new forms of criticism like the one employed in this paper- deconstruction- serve to highlight the reasons as to why even the radical nature of the text hides many racist stereotypes within it. The novel may have been radical for its times when the project of imperialism was at its highest. This, however, does not change the fact of its being racist in its labelling of the African civilization as primitive and underdeveloped. It also does not, however, change the fact that the novel introduced fresh perspectives with which to view the issue of imperialism and racist stereotypes. Keeping this in mind, one must find a middle path through which to analyse the novel rather than take extreme positions, taking into consideration the economic, social and political conditions of the time in which the novel was produced. Works Cited Achebe, Chinua. "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'". Web. http://kirbyk.net/hod/image.of.africa.html Accessed 8th June, 2012. ---. Things Fall Apart. New York: Heinemann, 2000. Print Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness and other Stories. London: CRW Publishing, 2006. Print Hagopian, John V. “The Narrator in Heart of Darkness”. PMLA 96 (2), 1981. Web. http://www.jstor.org/stable/461994 Accessed 8th June, 2012. Hawkins, Hunt. “Conrad's Critique of Imperialism in Heart of Darkness”. PMLA 94 (2), 1979. Web. http://www.jstor.org/stable/461892 Accessed 7th June, 2012. Lewis, Pericles. “"His Sympathies Were in the Right Place": Heart of Darkness and the Discourse of National Character”. Nineteenth Century Literature. 53 (2), 1998. Web. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2902984 Accessed 8th June, 2012. Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. One Hundred Years of Solitude. New York: Harper, 2008. Print Mitchell, Margaret. Gone with the Wind. New York: Macmillan, 2004. Print Read More