Two Visions In Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness

The part of the course to which the task refers is Part 4: Literature in critical study. Heart of Darkness is a novella written by westerner novelist Joseph Conrad, published in 1899 and in 1902 to book, about a voyage up the Congo River into Congo Free State, in the heart of Africa, expressed by the story's writer Marlow. Marlow tells his story to friends aboard on a boat tied up on the River Thames in England. This context grant Conrad to create a relationship between London and Africa as places of darkness. On the following essay I’ll be discussing “How could the text be read and interpreted differently by two different readers?”, based on the novella Heart of Darkness. I’ll be focusing on how Heart of Darkness is interpreted by two different

Edward Said, begin his critique Two Visions in Heart of Darkness stating that “Europeans should not be blamed for the misfortunes of the present in Africa” (Edward Said, n.d. Web), and exclaims point of view from an European perspective. Said claims that Conrad’s narration throughout the novella allows readers today to see an Africa that is not made up of thousands of European colonies, even if he himself might have had a very narrow idea of what Africa was really like. Said shows the novel as one of the most admirable imperialist texts in history. Conrad refers to imperialism as the “idea behind it” at the start of the novel (Lisa Goddard, 17 July 2007. Web). From a Westerner point of view, Said comments on how Conrad gives us the impression that there is no way out of the force of imperialism. Joseph Conrad wants to state that Marlow is limited to his situation at current time. Edward Said hints this when he wrote in his critique “Independence was for whites and Europeans, the lesser or subjects people were to be ruled; science, learning, history emanated from the West”. By this I mean, that from a Westerner point of view, the way Conrad symbolizes Africans in that extract, is to display that his narrative was arranged into a specific time and place. Furthermore, by describing Africans as “creatures” and “shadows”, it demonstrates how Conrad uses stereotypes to suggests that there was no alternative to imperialism, and that the natives that were described in this way were incompatible of