Africans in Joseph Conrads Heart Of Darkness - Book Report/Review Example

Africans in Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness. Joseph Conrad wrote Heart of Darkness. It is a novella where the narrator, Charles Marlow, tells his story to an omniscient narrator, who is actually the book's narrator. This is Marlow's story of his adventures in Africa. His narrative tries to explain why he thinks Africa is dark. The darkness alludes to the skin color of the Africans, the dark mysteries of the natives, the land and the unknown. This essay explores how the Africans were depicted in the short novel, Heart of Darkness. The Africans are depicted in a negative way. They are portrayed as being uneducated and ignorant. Charlie Marlow narrates how a former captain, Fresleven, fights with an African chief over a quarrel about two black hens. Fresleven is killed by the chief's son. His body was left to decompose where he fell. The entire village disappeared because the Africans are terrified that a white man is killed. The Africans think that the whites are gods and killing a god would bring disasters upon them so they fled their village. Marlow says; 'The supernatural being had not been touched after he fell. And the village was deserted, the huts gaped black, rotting, all askew within the fallen enclosures. A calamity had come to it, sure enough. The people had vanished. Mad terror had scattered them, men, women, and children, through the bush, and they had never returned.' (Conrad -). Marlow attempts to relate this incident with humor. He makes fun of the Africans. His message is that the whole village is sacrificed over the trivial matter of two black hens. He emphasizes that there was no supernatural disaster or calamity to punish the village for their errors for the quarrel and death of Fresleven. The Africans are depicted as being fearful and irrational in this incident. The white man seems to have prejudice against the Africans. He is intolerant of them. Marlow relates how another white man labels the Africans as his enemies. Marlow shows his prejudice too as he goes one step further when he says that; '"It was the same kind of ominous voice; but these men could by no stretch of imagination be called enemies. They were called criminals, and the outraged law, like the bursting shells, had come to them, an insoluble mystery from the sea. All their meagre breasts panted together, the violently dilated nostrils quivered, the eyes stared stonily uphill. They passed me within six inches, without a glance, with that complete, deathlike indifference of unhappy savages."' (Conrad -). Marlow seems to dislike the Africans' physical appearances and bases his judgment upon his misconceived ideas about the Africans. The white men are suspicious of the Africans. They are being humiliated in many ways by Marlow's depiction of them in his long narrative. He does not think that it is wrong to superimpose the white man's foreign law over the local Africans, even though he recognizes that the foreign law, to the Africans, is 'as an insoluble mystery from the sea'. Marlow cannot read expressions on the Africans' faces. He describes the Africans as being deathlike and indifferent because they appear without reaction when they are passing by him. Marlow is too proud to realize that the Africans are being worked hard for the white man's capitalist gains in procuring products from the land. The able bodied Africans who work for the whites are physically intimidating to them. The Africans do not look happy because they are tired in their toil. The white men do not see beyond their prejudice to consider the welfare of their African workers. African lives are depicted as being worthless. Marlow comes across a mine and some of the workers. He sees that the Africans have labored hard and are dying. He loses his fear and hatred of them as he thinks that they do not look like enemies and criminals now. His description of the Africans changes not for the better but continues in the same negative way. The dying Africans are now described as being black shadows of disease and starvation. The employer does not bother to provide medical care for the sick Africans and they are allowed to slowly waste away. Marlow does mention that some Africans cannot get accustomed to the food provided by the white man's companies and they cannot eat the food. Thus, the Africans starve themselves unintentionally. They lack the education and knowledge to know what is happening to them and slowly die from starvation. Their weakened bodies cannot cope with their demands of physical labor and this hastens their deaths. The white man knows this but he does not act for the benefit of the Africans. He leaves them to their fates. The Africans are thus depicted as being unimportant and dispensable. One day, when the chief agent is busy writing in his book, a caravan passes by and there was a great deal of noise from many carriers speaking. He says that; '"When one has got to make correct entries, one comes to hate those savages--hate them to the death."' (Conrad - ). He thinks it is justified to call the Africans savages because they were talking loudly in the open station-yard while he was inside his office doing his work. he thinks his work is more important than the Africans' work. He expects everything in his favor. How would the Africans know that they cannot talk because a white man is inside his office working! They are seen by the white man but he preferably does not wish to hear them. When they are denied the right to talk, it is as if they are denied their language. The white man would like to reduce them into nothingness. The white man does not think that it is himself who is an intruder into the Africans' country and that he has imposed himself upon the local Africans. The chief agent conveniently forgets that he is doing the accounts of the Africans' produce. Without the Africans and their country, he would have nothing to work on and would not be in Africa in the first place. He does not feel gratitude for the cause of his work. The chief agent does not give his justification for calling the Africans as savages. He does not think that the Africans might consider him and the whites as savages who have come to exploit their land. In Chapter Three, the savagery of the Africans comes to mind when there is a ceremonial performance with three natives caked in red mud. Marlow says; '"When we came abreast again, they faced the river, stamped their feet, nodded their horned heads, swayed their scarlet bodies; they shook towards the fierce river-demon a bunch of black feathers, a mangy skin with a pendent tail--something that looked a dried gourd; they shouted periodically together strings of amazing words that resembled no sounds of human language; and the deep murmurs of the crowd, interrupted suddenly, were like the responses of some satanic litany."' (Conrad -). He does not specifically tell what it is as he does not believe in superstition but it appears to be a black magic ritual. Marlow asks Kurtz if he understands what it is about and Kurtz implies that he does. The dark Africans have wised up to the evils of the white man stealing their ivory. They have no other resources to deal with this savagery and resort to black magic to curse their injustice. Kurtz understands the Africans as he says he wants justice and recognition for his store of ivory. Kurtz fights the Africans with his sickly mutterings but he succumbs to his illness and dies. There has been a gradual buildup of the image of the African as a savage from Chapter One. This climax suggests that Marlow and the omniscient narrator are in favor of the white man's opinions of the Africans after all. The Africans are depicted as savages and the eventual winners in their dark land. Works Cited. Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. USA: North Critical Edition, year. Read More