Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, sometimes seems like the tale of an empathetic seaman who is slowly transformed by the horrors he witnesses on the shores of the African continent. At other times, it reads like a full blown racist document, full of hatred and demeaning stereotypes. From the very beginning, however, there it illuminates the narrow minded rationale employed by the Imperialist ideals as well as the disservice it does to all it encounters. Under the shadowy umbrella of the prevailing idea that all men are not created equal after all, this story, as told by Marlowe, spends little time on the actual treatment of these fellow humans, but instead focuses more on the “conqueror’s” (Conrad 1956) view that the African s aren’t quite human at all. This isn’t a story of good versus evil, instead, it’s about a race of people who are brazenly complacent in their notion that they have been chosen by God to …show more content…
“Probably (feeling) the need at last of asserting his self-respect in some way” (1958), a Captain has beaten an “old nigger mercilessly” over two black hens, and then is himself killed by the old man’s son, making room for Marlowe to “step into his shoes” (1958). As he prepares to leave, he find, in an area being cleared for a more efficient raping of the land, innocent natives, “each with an iron collar on his neck, and all connected together with a chain” (1963), forced to walk in a line and perform sometimes useless acts of work (1963). Marlowe foresees then, he says, that “in the blinding sunshine of that land he would become acquainted with a flabby ...weak-eyed devil of a …pitiless folly” (1964). His vision proves to be true as he witnesses several incidences of the destruction of an entire culture, not because it is necessary, but because they are different. Just as importantly, it is also because they possess something extremely