Critique of Heart of Darkness - Essay Example

Fothergill Critique on Heart of Darkness According to Fothergill around 19th Century, there were a biased African assumption that affected all literary works published around that time including the one by Conrad. He also believes that missionary view of Africa was biased because they were traveling to Africa for the first time, and therefore they had much misinformation. At this particle point I do agree with Fothergill, most of the people who first came to Africa had preset mind that Africa was uncivilized continent “just as though I had got a heavenly mission to civilize you” (Conrad 71).

As if that is not enough, most of the first white explorers to arrive in Africa also believed that Africans were backward people who were not educated “ mostly black and naked, moved about like ants” (Conrad 80). However, this may not be true because it has been argued that civilization begin in Egypt and apart from that Africans were educated in their special way. In connection to this, Fothergill believes that the literary work by Conrad fits into the novels which has a lot of biases as far as Africa is concerned is because a times it supports the stereotyping of Africans as uncivilized but then at other instances it starts to question why they are seen as backward "I shook hands with this miracle” (Conrad 83).

In conclusion, I support Fothergill critique because it is quite evident that there was much biases during the time the book was printed. This misinformation came from the missionaries who among the first people to go to Africa and also scientists such as Charles Darwin who was studying evolution.Work CitedConrad, Joseph. “Heart of Darkness” Web. 01 May, 2015. http://web.archive.org/web/20130919162744/http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer -new2?id=ConDark.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parse d&tag=public&part=1&division=div1