After reading "Things Fall Apart" after "Heart of Darkness" I can understand why they are so often tought together in many college classes around the world. In many ways they are two sides to the same story. You can imagine some of the nameless African slaves from "Heart of Darkness" having lived in a village from "Things Fall Apart" but never being able to have their story heard.
Up until "Things Fall Apart" was written, almost all of the novels that involved Africa were much like Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," portraying natives as savages or animals and not even human. There was never a story that portrayed African's as people just like Europeans, they were always slaves to be used and were never given a voice or a backstory. European novels would talk about the exploration and colonization of Africa and all the riches that were being found there. Then came "Things Fall Apart," and finally native Africans were given a much more accurate depiction of their lives, and people around the world could really start to analyze past works such as those from Conrad and other authors.
One of the greatest examples that Chinua Achebe gave of the portrayal of native African's in previous European novels was the last paragraph of "Things Fall Apart." When the District Commisioner thought about the book he was going to write and how he could include the story of Okonkwo killing a messanger and then hanging himself, he figured:
"One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole chapter, but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate. There was so much else to include, and one must be firm in cutting out details. He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought: The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger" (117).
This one paragraph really sums up Achebe's thoughts on previous novels involving Africa and it's people. The European colonists show up thinking they know everything, that they can sum up a person's entire life story in a couple sentences, and then title the work to show that they are superior because they were able to pacify these primitive people. Looking back on the novel, "Things Fall Apart" seems to have the ultimate goal of getting the reader to really consider previous novels such as "Heart of Darkness" and think about how they portray the natives. Achebe is trying to break the common views of these African people being primative and animal-like, and if we hope to move on as a species, we must continue to analyze these past novels and realize they only cover one side of a story, while the other side might be equally as important.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Should We Read "Heart of Darkness?"
Racist views, derogatory terms, oppression, and slavery are all present in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness." To question whether we should read it is a worthy thought to follow, but to truely analyze it you have to think of it from both the point of view of a present day reader and that of a reader back near the turn of the 20th century when the book was origionally released.
Living in the present day we can consider ourselves far more enlightened compared to how we know people were treated throughout history. The civil rights era has past and for the most part racism has been conquered with the exception of a few bad peas in the pod that is society. We can look at people of all race, gender, and beliefs equally, whether we agree with them or not, while in the 1800's these thoughts were far from reality. We may read "Heart of Darkness" now and consider it a racist view of how white colonialists are superior to anyone with a different color skin.
Back in the time Conrad wrote his most famous work, these racist beliefs were commonplace, and as people grew up they were pressured into these thoughts by others in society as well as by their parents teaching them. To read "Heart of Darkness" in the 1890's you would have seen nothing wrong with it.
Today we read the short novel and are given the chance to analyze it much more thoroughly based on the knowledge we have gained on the issues of race and equality. We have the opportunity to read a popular text and reflect on how things were a little over a century ago and see how far we have come. That analysis is why we should continue to read "Heart of Darkness" if for no other reason than to prevent history from repeating itself.
Living in the present day we can consider ourselves far more enlightened compared to how we know people were treated throughout history. The civil rights era has past and for the most part racism has been conquered with the exception of a few bad peas in the pod that is society. We can look at people of all race, gender, and beliefs equally, whether we agree with them or not, while in the 1800's these thoughts were far from reality. We may read "Heart of Darkness" now and consider it a racist view of how white colonialists are superior to anyone with a different color skin.
Back in the time Conrad wrote his most famous work, these racist beliefs were commonplace, and as people grew up they were pressured into these thoughts by others in society as well as by their parents teaching them. To read "Heart of Darkness" in the 1890's you would have seen nothing wrong with it.
Today we read the short novel and are given the chance to analyze it much more thoroughly based on the knowledge we have gained on the issues of race and equality. We have the opportunity to read a popular text and reflect on how things were a little over a century ago and see how far we have come. That analysis is why we should continue to read "Heart of Darkness" if for no other reason than to prevent history from repeating itself.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Darwin and "The Darkness"
If all nineteenth century racists believed what Darwin believes, that we are all the same species, and all the races are equal, would they have hated themselves just as much as they hated black people back then?
So many questions come up when I read Heart of Darkness and Charles Darwin's "On the Races of Man" about race and if we all are the same, with such minor differences that it's pretty much only cosmetic, why all the hate? I guess it's because I'm alive in the 21st century and was brought up to view everyone equally. I am able to read articles such as Darwin's objectively and decide for myself whether I agree with the ideas. Other questions arise as to what house parties must have been like at the Darwin household, and what was discussed, or whether people wanted to punch Darwin because his views contradicted their racist ones.
Darwin specifically points out in his article the similarities between races across the world, and that ideas of evolution being based on geographical location are most likely false. He states examples of people living in two completely different climates looking exactly the same, giving the example of the Esquimaux people who "live exclusively on animal food; they are clothed in thick fur, and are exposed to intense cold and to prolonged darkness; yet they do not differ in any extreme degree from the inhabitants of southern China, who live entirely on vegetable food, and are exposed almost naked to a hot, glaring climate" (216).
Darwin also goes on to explain the similarities of races across the world, saying "the spreading of man to regions widely separated by the sea, no doubt, preceded any great amount of divergence of character in the several races; for otherwise we should sometimes meet with the same race in distinct continents; and this is never the case" (215). This theory states that we must have come from the same beginning race and split up around the world before becoming more diverse.
In Heart of Darkness, the opression and enslavement of blacks in Africa paints a graphic picture of how misled views of one race being superior, or viewing whites as a stronger species leads to unneeded violence. Many times in the short novel, African people were called savages or referred to as animals, as if they were completely different from the Europeans that ventured into their homelands. These ideas Darwin brings up about us all coming from the same race in early stages of human evolution makes you have to think about the past and wonder how people could believe these things, or if they ever tried thinking through these beliefs of racial superiority. If people believed that we were all the same except for a few cosmetic differences, would any of these past events have happened?
So many questions come up when I read Heart of Darkness and Charles Darwin's "On the Races of Man" about race and if we all are the same, with such minor differences that it's pretty much only cosmetic, why all the hate? I guess it's because I'm alive in the 21st century and was brought up to view everyone equally. I am able to read articles such as Darwin's objectively and decide for myself whether I agree with the ideas. Other questions arise as to what house parties must have been like at the Darwin household, and what was discussed, or whether people wanted to punch Darwin because his views contradicted their racist ones.
Darwin specifically points out in his article the similarities between races across the world, and that ideas of evolution being based on geographical location are most likely false. He states examples of people living in two completely different climates looking exactly the same, giving the example of the Esquimaux people who "live exclusively on animal food; they are clothed in thick fur, and are exposed to intense cold and to prolonged darkness; yet they do not differ in any extreme degree from the inhabitants of southern China, who live entirely on vegetable food, and are exposed almost naked to a hot, glaring climate" (216).
Darwin also goes on to explain the similarities of races across the world, saying "the spreading of man to regions widely separated by the sea, no doubt, preceded any great amount of divergence of character in the several races; for otherwise we should sometimes meet with the same race in distinct continents; and this is never the case" (215). This theory states that we must have come from the same beginning race and split up around the world before becoming more diverse.
In Heart of Darkness, the opression and enslavement of blacks in Africa paints a graphic picture of how misled views of one race being superior, or viewing whites as a stronger species leads to unneeded violence. Many times in the short novel, African people were called savages or referred to as animals, as if they were completely different from the Europeans that ventured into their homelands. These ideas Darwin brings up about us all coming from the same race in early stages of human evolution makes you have to think about the past and wonder how people could believe these things, or if they ever tried thinking through these beliefs of racial superiority. If people believed that we were all the same except for a few cosmetic differences, would any of these past events have happened?
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