Heart of Darkness

A detailed Summary of Heart of Darkness

Our world has been plagued by racism before biblical times. Two of the most inhumane outgrowths of racism are detribalization and slavery. During the nineteenth-century European Imperialism, racism led to many acts of inhumanity by Europeans, particularly in Africa. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness presents us with a fictional account of these inhumane acts in Africa illustrating that racism and its outgrowths are the most cruel examples of man's inhumanity to man.

One reason racism is such a cruel example of man's inhumanity to man is that it is based on thinking of people as members of groups rather than as individuals. Conrad brings up this grouping of people leading to racism when he has Charlie Marlow say, "The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different completion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, it is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much (Conrad 70). As Edward W. Said, author of Culture and Imperialism, explains, "Independence was for whites and Europeans; the lesser or subject peoples were to be ruled..."(Said 24). The mentality of the whites allowed them to feel as though they could dominate over the natives. This mentality led to abuse and

Kurtz murdered these people to demonstrate his power over the whole group and then placed their heads on posts as a symbol of his supremacy.

destruction of the people they felt were worthless. A step in controlling a people by dehumanizing them is to simply treat them as if they are objects. In Heart of Darkness the natives are objects, and even more atrocious, trophies to the white man.

Once the whites strip the natives of their humanity, it not only makes it easier for the whites to torture the natives, it also becomes easier to indiscriminately kill them.

Their [the cannibals] headman, a young, broad-chested black, severely draped in dark-blue fringed cloths, with fierce nostrils and his hair all done up artfully in ringlets, stood near me. 'Aha!' I said, just for a few fellowship's sake. 'Catch 'im,' he snapped, with a bloodshot widening of his eyes and a flash of sharp teeth-'catch 'im. Give 'im to us.' 'To you, eh?' I asked: 'what would you do with them?' 'Eat 'im!' he said curtly...(Conrad 111)

Unfortunately, the human race has demonstrated its cruelty and inhumanity throughout time. This has been especially horrific in dealings between races. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness illustrates the preponderance of European racism and its attended brutality in Africa. By looking at the Africans as a group rather than as individuals, dehumanizing them and ultimately destroying entire cultures the Europeans in Heart of Darkness show the absolute atrocity of man's inhumanity to man.

As described in this passage, the African natives become completely powerless as human beings once they are given their role as animals. This dehumanization allows the Europeans to be without accepting responsibility because they view themselves as superior and the group of people they look down upon as less than human and even as objects. Once the exploitation of the natives is extreme enough, morality is outweighed by expediency and the uses of the powerless become f

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Approximate Word count = 1350
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English