Fiction and politics
Representing the ‘other’ in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
In this article Mike Peters challenges the now conventional reading of Conrad’s novella as a
racist portrayal of Africa and Africans, arguing instead that Conrad’s whole method is
designed to shake our view of what is ‘Other’.
Heart of Darkness (1899) is a controversial book. Most famously and directly, Chinua Achebe, the
Nigerian novelist, described Conrad as a ‘thoroughgoing racist’ and his story as ‘offensive and
deplorable’ for the ways in which it dehumanises Africans. More recently and positively, newly-elected
US President, Barack Obama – whose own father came from Africa – recalls in his memoir (Dreams
of My Father) his view that the book should not be removed from his college reading-list because it
allows us to
understand just what it is that makes white people so afraid ... It helps me understand
how people learn to hate.
Obama’s attitude reminds us of how fiction is closely engaged with political ideas – something also
emphasised by the post-colonial literary critic, Edward Said, who sees Heart of Darkness, along with
many other texts, as a significant contributor to a Western body of knowledge about the African
continent – a ‘huge library of Africanism’, that influences the way in which Europeans respond to a
place they probably do not know directly. As Said neatly puts it:
To represent Africa is to enter the battle over Africa.
The texts we study at A Level, then, have a political role. Asking questions about the ways in which
texts either support or challenge dominant ideas about, for example, gender or race, may offer
illuminating insights if you’re looking for a different approach, whether preparing for an exam or writing
a coursework assignment.
An imperialist world view
One idea, which certainly dominated the late Victorian period and the early part of the 20th century,
was that of Imperialism. With the Empire at the height of its power and influence, British citizens
looked out at the world with a confident sense of superiority. The home country and the territories that
it had colonised were associated with familiar values of order, reason and security, whereas beyond
our shores, places and people existed associated with the very opposite – with, to use one of Said’s
most influential and useful concepts, the ‘Other’. A first reading of Heart of Darkness might suggest
that Conrad shares this Imperialist world view. London and Brussels seem to represent the former
values whilst the Congo, constantly imagined as a location of ‘darkness’ seems to represent that
which is strange, dangerous and irrational. Yet, as we analyse the text more closely, the different
ways in which the narrative resists this simple binary opposition, and thus the ideological simplicity of
Imperialism itself, become clear.
Relishing binary oppositions
From the novella’s opening the conventional contrast between a metropolitan well-organised society
and an apparently threatening primitive African society – encouraged by the politicians and the media
of the day – is undermined. Above the Thames, on which Marlow, the story’s narrator, waits to set out
for his African voyage, the ‘air was dark’ and we are reminded that London, the centre of the Imperial
mission to bring order to far-away lands, ‘has been one of the dark places on the earth’; ‘yesterday’
there was ‘savagery, utter savagery’. Conrad may make use of a familiar Orientalist idea – that the
journey into the heart of Africa is a journey back in time to some primeval location – but he also wants
us to recognise that the primitive is closer than we think; the ‘darkness’ is not only over there.
The strangeness of the coloniser
The subversion of conventional divisions, and thus of conventional ways of imagining the relationship
between different cultures, is also implicit in Conrad’s decision to use the voice of Marlow to relate the
tale – a character who, from the very beginning, seems set apart. With his ‘sunken cheeks ... a yellow
complexion ... and ascetic aspect ... he resembled an idol’ – a figure of strangeness and mystery
compared to his respectable bourgeois companions, who wait on the Thames for the ‘turn of the tide’.
Charlie Marlow’s separation is a crucial element of Heart of Darkness, enabling Conrad to distance
himself from the colonialism that he portrays. Whatever else Marlow is, he is not a simple
representative or spokesperson for the unnamed Imperial Company which employs him. The
absurdity and impersonal emptiness of this Company is suggested by the portrayal of its various
employees. The Chief Accountant is more preoccupied with his appearance and the tidiness of his
book-shelf than with the suffering around him. A manager’s ability to ‘keep the routine going’ perhaps
indicates that ‘there was nothing within him’. And another agent is described as a paper-mâché figure,
who has ‘nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe.’ Denied humanity, the colonisers are also
rendered strange and insignificant by the often ironic imagery used to depict them – ‘pilgrims’ for a
band of adventurers who seek ‘to tear treasure out of the bowels of the land’ and a ‘flock’ of small
birds for a group of powerful officers. Through Marlow’s narration Conrad de-familiarises that which is
meant to be most familiar to his readers: the characters and the institution of Empire.
The ‘remarkable’ Kurtz
Of course, Kurtz, the main object of Marlow’s imperial mission, is also, in his initial idealism – ‘All
Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz’ – one of the main representatives of colonialism. Having
‘gone native’, most notably by forming a sexual relationship with an African woman, his white
compatriots write him off. Even Marlow says that Kurtz ‘lacks restraint in the gratification of his various
lusts ...’ However, unlike his fellow colonisers, he also affirms his ‘loyalty’ to this ‘remarkable man’ who
had ‘something to say and whose ‘stare … was wide enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in
the darkness’; Kurtz, it seems, is a preferable ‘nightmare’ to that of his materialist self-seeking
companions. His ability to slip out of one identity, constructed by race and profession, into another
that is markedly more uncertain and unpredictable, appeals to Marlow and, arguably, Conrad.
Straight-forward oppositions are also subverted by the ambivalence which surrounds Kurtz’s famous
last words – ‘The horror! The horror!’ – which could refer either to his African experience or to his
understanding of the true nature of colonialism, or indeed to both. Here, as well, Conrad’s text resists
the easy ideological categories which we use to interpret and parcel-up the world.
Representing the colonised
If the colonisers are represented as inhuman and strange – as ‘Other’ – what about the way in which
the colonised are portrayed in Heart of Darkness? Undoubtedly, some of the language used to
describe the natives of the Congo is racist and offensive. Yet, Conrad’s representation of Africans is
more complex and interesting than this judgement would suggest. Initially it is important to note that
we do not see the natives directly but only through the sceptical and marginalised eyes of the
narrator. We might expect then a certain degree of ambivalence in their depiction and we are not
disappointed.
This ambivalence emerges in those moments when Marlow recognises, across the differences he
registers, as in a mirror, a common bond with the African people he encounters. His crew may be
cannibals but unlike the stereotype, he comically observes that they do not ‘eat each other before my
face’; rather they are ‘men one could work with, and I am grateful to them’. In spite of prolonged
hunger they, unlike Kurtz, do exercise ‘restraint’.
Similarly, the helmsman, who is ‘the most unstable kind of fool’ and ‘is of no more account than a
grain of sand in a black Sahara’, is given significance by the description of him at his death, so much
so that Marlow ‘has to make an effort to free my eyes from his gaze’; and a little later he talks of
missing him and the ‘subtle bond’ that had formed between them. Another crew member might be a
‘savage’ but the narrator’s ironic perception that he sees the modern boiler of the colonisers’ boat as
‘witchcraft’, creates a subtle resemblance between African and European civilisations.
Whilst Heart of Darkness by its insistence on the huge gulf between the continents of Europe and
Africa, does endorse an Imperial view of the world, this gulf is also, as we have seen, repeatedly
subverted. Conrad writes of the Africans – ‘They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid
faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity...’ The ‘Other‘ is both acknowledged
here and rejected.
What happens at the end?
At the end of the novella also, expected and well-established divisions are folded. Visiting Kurtz’s
fiancée on his return to Europe, Marlow sees her home as strange and violent as the African world
from which he has returned. When she raises her arms and he sees a
tragic and familiar Shade, resembling in this gesture another one, tragic also, and
bedecked with powerless charms ...
one image and culture is superimposed on another, so that single and separate identities – those of
the white and black woman – are merged.
Yet, Marlow cannot tell Kurtz’s fiancée the truth about his last words, for to do so would be to
undermine another powerful opposition – that of gender. The European female has to be protected by
a lie from ‘the horror’ which Kurtz discovered; his knowledge, just like Conrad’s, is just too disturbing
and threatening for the maintenance of traditional roles and beliefs. The author may have serious
quarrels with both patriarchy and Imperialism but he is not completely able to escape his own
historical moment.
If, however, traditional divisions and traditional attitudes are restored at the end of Heart of Darkness,
this is only after they have been previously destabilised – a phenomenon common to many texts.
Whilst the racist language of the book makes it difficult, even upsetting, to read, Conrad does succeed
in challenging the Euro-centred view of the world that was dominant at the time of the book’s
publication and that still shapes some current political thinking. Think, for example, of George W.
Bush’s ‘axis of evil’ speech as another version of the ‘us-and-them’ ideological mind-set against which
Heart of Darkness is written. As an alternative, Conrad’s novella promotes the value of mixing,
blending and inter-mingling, the value of hybridity – a particularly appropriate value for an historical
moment in which the first mixed-race man has become US President.
Mike Peters is an AQA B A Level Literature coursework adviser and moderator, as well as a tutor for the
Open University and WEA.
This article first appeared in emagazine 44, March 2009.