Things Fall Apart, written by Chinua Achebe, is a famous book written about African culture. Achebe was not in line with the African cultural representation in the book by Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, and wrote his work in response to Joseph’s to narrate the true colors and rich history of Africans. It has been a long debate to confirm if Heart of Darkness is a racist text, as all the blacks in it are barely human, but it indeed points out that Europeans were wrong, and their idea to colonize Africa was just the front of a much bigger devious scheme to rob them off of their rightful heritage to rare minerals and resources.
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Although considered a great book in the
past, Heart of Darkness has now lost its appreciative aspect
and is a target of negative criticism. Many critics favored this book when
racism was prevalent; European authors like Conrad wrote such books and showed
blacks through a completely different lens. In this book, Conrad is shown
traveling through Africa and talks about how blacks behaved like mammals. They
were crawling instead of walking on two feet; they growled and snarled instead
of talking like humans and wore no clothes. Conrad, intentionally or not, did
not even give voice to the blacks in his book; they were robbed of the only
weapon which could have shown them as somewhat human or civilized.
Conrad says that young Marlow was fascinated
by “blank space of delightful mystery”, referring to African land. This shows
that Conrad was ignorant and indifferent to the blacks ’ inherited culture and
history, as he called their land “blank”, meaning they have no cultural
heritage, even the most essential ones, like language and historical evolution.
At
one point, Conrad points out Africa as a “snake” on the map, subsequently
calling the African land venomous, harmful, and dangerous. Conrad, time and
again, calls the blacks “beasts”, “savages”, and “cannibals”. Such words subtly
hint at the prospect that blacks are less than humans and can be brutalized and
enslaved. Through this concept, the Europeans justify their actions of making
Africans their slaves and looting their resources.
Though Conrad, through mentions of slavery,
has pointed out the wrongful doings of the colonizers, he has completely put
African history, culture, art, and norms into the background. There is no
mention of them being people before colonizers had come to this land and even
afterward have failed to mention that. This indirectly solidifies the fact in
the reader’s mind that Africans might have very well been animals as they have
no society of their own.
On
the other hand, in Things Fall Apart,
Achebe makes blacks look human, moving through life, living in a system of
education, justice, and leadership. Achebe did not appreciate Conrad’s point of
view and tried to tell his side of the story, of how they lived. Achebe used a
simple phrase, “he walked”, which is the very first thing different from Conrad
in terms of how blacks moved. In another instance, “He had a slight stammer”,
which gave voice to blacks instead of calling them beings who did not know how
to talk. Through this point, Achebe has tried to highlight that blacks are also
humans with the ability to walk, talk, and behave like other human beings.
Achebe
talks about art and music, which humans enjoy. The Africans played music during
their events, and even Okonkwo’s father, Unoka, played the flute. It showed
that the blacks were of a sane mind with their roots in arts and music. He also
talked about Africa’s history, mentioning that the Igbo people had a rich
culture of storytelling, and an “endless stock of folktales” (Achebe pp. 34),
which shows their connection to their cultural history, which were passed
between many generations.
Achebe
also mentions of infiltration of Europeans in the African land, which matches
Conrad’s point. They had their own culture and language and started persuading
the natives to learn their language to understand their trade better. It was a
sly move on the whites’ part as they, instead of learning the native language,
manipulated them into learning theirs, which somewhat hints at the assumption
that the Europeans did not consider the Igbo language as important and did not
try to learn it. The concept of Achebe matches that of Conrad’s, but it differs
in the plan of action. In Conrad’s story, whites forced the hands of black
slaves, but Achebe showed that it was a gradual shift of power towards whites.
Before
Europeans came on board, the Igbo people have their own judicial, religious,
and education system. This point completely undermines and contradicts Conrad’s
narration that when Europeans came, blacks had no system. Instead, Achebe
mentioned that whites implemented their systems, first in their people, and
when they started getting more native followers converting to Christianity,
expanded their system into Igboland. It was a gradual process that took years.
Throughout
all the above analysis of Things Fall Apart by
Achebe and Heart of Darkness by Conrad, it can be concluded
that even though Conrad showed the downsides of imperialism and colonization,
he utterly neglected Africans as a nation. It is a possibility that Conrad
wrote this book from a racist view, but one cannot say such a thing for sure.
On the other hand, Achebe managed to convey imperialism as well as African
culture, which was the sole purpose of these books.
This article is produced by Tayyaba Noor, one of the
contributors to the SOL Community.
