Chinua Achebe Response:

In this section Chinua Achebe basically talks about how racist Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is. I accidentally read this first instead of reading Heart of Darkness. I think reading this first allowed me to read differently. I focused more on detail as far as how the people, surrounding, and language were explained. If I had not read Chinua Achebe’s section first then I feel that I would have read to just keep up with the list of characters and the plot of the story rather than digging deeper. One of the first things that he talks about is the comparison of Mr. Kurtz mistress and a European woman and their descriptions. He pulls passages directly from the book. Joseph Conrad uses words like “savage”, “wild-eyed” to describe her and says “she stood looking at us without a stir and like the wilderness” describing her posture(Conrad and Achebe 341). Through the use of these words I think that he is possibly trying to portray and image that she (human being) is almost animal-like. The first thing that I thought when reading this was staring at a deer. He goes on to describe the European women as “floating toward me”, and “mature capacity for fidelity” meaning she had a strict observance of promises and duties. With this it seems as if she was more complex than his mistress. After reading this section I think the most important thing is the title of the book, Heart of Darkness. I asked myself why this is the name of the book? I tried to think of all the scenarios. The first I could think of was an actual heart/soul of the people in the story, so human nature? The next I could think of was it being the actual land/territory where they were. The last I could think of was, hence Chinua Achebe’s input and the word darkness in the title was that it actually was racist talking about the blacks. At first I thought that Achebe might be a little bias since he is African but he has seen both sides/views considering his American education.