Heart of Darkness post 3 (pages 103-116)

In an article written by Chinua Achebe about Heart of Darkness, Achebe expresses his belief that Conrad is an extreme racist, a statement which proves to be untrue within the novel. While Marlow directs his steamship down the river towards Kurtz’s location, he tells the reader that there are twenty cannibals on board. There cannibals are actually native Africans, and Marlow claims they are “Fine fellows-cannibals-in their place” (107). From this statement, it can be inferred that Marlow believes Africans are a lesser civilization than the Europeans. Of course, Marlow attempts to sound accepting of these natives while telling this story to his fellow shipmates, but  he only accepts these natives ‘in their place’. That is, Marlow believes the native Africans are civilized when they are under European control. However, by choosing the word ‘cannibal’ to describe the natives Conrad displays the irony of the situation. The native Africans are by no means cannibals because even in extreme hunger, they have not attempted to eat any humans on board. The natives control their hunger, which can bring out animalistic tendencies in humans, by eating a small portion of seemingly unappetizing food each day. Conrad displays Marlow’s naivety through the extreme diction of ‘cannibal’, and shows that Europeans are unaware of just of civilized the African people are by describing the way they control their hunger. Finally, by distancing himself from Marlow’s narrative voice, Conrad does not display his racist impulses through Marlow, but rather shows the reader the misguided notions the Europeans had about the Africans during this time period.