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What Is The Difference Between The Horrors Of African American Civilization

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In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the reader instantly can tell the difference between the European civilization and the African civilization and the reality of it by the domination and torture of the African people. Heart of Darkness is symbolic of the gluttony and evil in humanity as embodied by Kurtz and Marlow. Kurtz’s last words “The horror! The horror!” displays the cruelty and horror of what the characters have done. Victor, for messing with science and killing his loved ones, and Kurtz for destroying other individual lives and for the “unspeakable secrets” of what he has done. An example is a quote said by Marlow shown below: The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. Here, Conrad explains …show more content…

The novel associates darkness with truth and light and lightness with deception, fraud, and lies. The horrors of Europe are considered a bad thing, because of a race as big and “pure” as Europe there is nothing that can damage them or conquer them. So when something happens, everyone becomes hypocrites and forgets their wrongdoing and blames other people. The horrors of Africa are considered a good thing, because the white and European race is superior to Africans. The Europeans treat the Africans like they are savages and a race that is meant to be slaved upon. So in their minds they are the saviors and they don’t care about the horrors of what they have done, only what other people have done to them. The novel gives off a perception of what an inferior race is supposed to be like, they are supposed to be invaluable and useless in the eyes of Europeans, the “superior” race. The Africans are just relied upon to collect ivory and be slaves. Unfortunately, some of these racisms and ignorance of a superior and inferior race still exists

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The African History evolved throughout the 20th century where an increasing number of white historians working in the field ( Holt & Brown, 2000). However, there were numerous areas in which work needed to be done. Therefore white historians entered the field to share the work. One of them published the first extensive study of slavery.

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This chapter addresses the central argument that African history and the lives of Africans are often dismissed. For example, the author underlines that approximately 50,000 African captives were taken to the Dutch Caribbean while 1,600,000 were sent to the French Caribbean. In addition, Painter provides excerpts from the memoirs of ex-slaves, Equiano and Ayuba in which they recount their personal experience as slaves. This is important because the author carefully presents the topic of slaves as not just numbers, but as individual people. In contrast, in my high school’s world history class, I can profoundly recall reading an excerpt from a European man in the early colonialism period which described his experience when he first encountered the African people.

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There was no concern for the Africans' well being when it came to their treatment. The Europeans physically and mentally abused them. In document one it says “Their masters are making them work too hard and giving them too little to eat”. They were starved, making them too weak to work.

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The Europeans seen the Natives as purely savage creatures, and held little to no regard to their lives or well-being. There is a difference in the Europeans treatment towards the Africans. This is because the Europeans treated African slaves as goods. As told in J.B Romaigne’s journal, the Captain punished a fellow European for damaging the goods. “The Captain, seeing this, knocked the butcher flat upon the deck with a handspike.

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In fact, the aboriginals were dehumanized to the status of savages, brutes, and objects. For instance, Marlow deemed his boat’s helmsman a machine and Kurtz’s African mistress a mere statute. The apparent superiority of Western civilization is further evidenced as Marlow journeys to the inner station: “what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity—like yours—the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly.” Despite having not personally witnessed the natives, Marlow consciously classifies the aboriginals as primitive.

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It was interesting to learn that race was not an immediate issue in the colonies until the intense need for labor came into play. It’s amazing how the people who first came to America as Christians who were seeking freedom of religion and freedom from poverty were so quick to turn on members of another race to better their lifestyles. It seems strange that Whites felt differently about Native Americans in the beginning than they did African Americans. I guess the difference would be that when Europeans first settled here they needed help learning the lay of the land and realized that cooperation with the Natives allowed for better success in their adventures. This allowed them to rationalize the idea that Natives were practically White and

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Being enslaved was not an easy job for African Americans. African Americans survived slavery through their connection with their culture. They then went on to contribute to the economic and social development of the South and America. African Americans survived the institution of slavery and Africanized the American South. They helped free themselves by sticking together as a family, resisting, as well as wanting slavery to change.

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In chapter One of death of the negro vol.1 Europeans were showed to be one of the most superior race. why was that being the case? The Europeans had various positions, and they favored position as well, they had many advances technology, military, and weapons. The African tribes people were captured by Europeans, giving the slaves to traders for money and wealth. The Europeans thought they were cleverer, leading them to have this thirst for power because they had African slaves.

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Ignorance of another's personal values or situation results in an impassable schism between the two parties. People fail to understand each other, and as such, they regard each other in lower lights. In “Heart of Darkness”, Joseph Conrad, through Marlow, writes his novella through a lense of ignorance and the perspective of the typical white person of the time in order to relate his story to the reader. Marlow and the accountant are contrasted with Kurtz to display the effects of evil on an individual.

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Into the Darkness: How and why is a social group presented in a particular way? Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness takes a multi-faceted approach to the issues that surrounded 19th century colonization and imperialism in Africa. Marlow’s journey into the heart of Africa serves to highlight the hypocrisy of this endeavor, and how this deceit followed the rhetoric utilized by the colonizers in order to justify their colonization of Africa and the treatment of the natives. As the novel progresses, Africa becomes more of a backdrop for Conrad to truly expose the depravity of European intervention in Africa. Through Marlow’s narrative, varying connotations of words and his own main character’s reactions,as well as copious amounts of descriptive imagery, Conrad casts Europeans in a negative light in order to criticize imperialism and colonists.

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BRIEF ANALYSIS The use of various literary devices in Joseph Conrad’s novel helps to bring his story to life, which ultimately is to his advantage. Conrad brings the reader into the darkness, displayed the corruptibility of humankind and left them pondering the absurdity of evil and imperialism. One of the strongest literary devices that Conrad uses to engage the reader in his novella is the use of imagery. However other important literary devices that are used throughout the novel as well as in the extract above is: similes, metaphors, personification, foreshadowing, and symbolism and narrative techniques.

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2054 Words | 9 Pages

Conrad’s novella is from a white man’s point of view who travels to the Congo. On the other hand, Achebe’s story is based on an African’s point of view which he intentionally wrote to combat this negative image of Africans. While Achebe’s character’s can speak for its culture, lifestyle and traditions, Conrad’s character can only speak about what he sees and they stereotypical portrayal of Africans. According to Hunt Hawkins, “Achebe observes that Africans are barely present in Heart Of Darkness… It might be said that Conrad failed to portray Africans because he knew little of their culture, having spent less than six months in the Congo, mostly in the company of white men, and without knowledge of any African language.”

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1066 Words | 5 Pages

Racism in Heart of Darkness Heart of Darkness is a novella written by Polish- British writer Joseph Conrad in 1899. Since it was written Heart of Darkness has been criticized as a colonial work. One of the critics who condemn Joseph Conrad and his work has been the Nigerian authors and critics Chinua Achebe in his work "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad 's 'Heart of Darkness". Achebe considers Conrad as “a thoroughgoing racist” (Achebe 5) for depicting Africa as "the other world" (Achebe 2). The aim of this study is to examine Heart of Darkness referring to the Achebe’s ideas in his 1977 essay.

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A theme is considered as the central idea that the whole story revolves on although it is not expressed or written directly in the story most of the time. In the novel, “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad, the themes expressed are “colonization, racism, greed, imperialism, moral degradation along with hypocrisy.” There are many other themes but in this essay, few of the themes will be discussed on regarding the level of importance that is Colonization or imperialism which is coinciding with power and secondly slavery with moral degradation (racism) and then Hypocrisy. The setting of the story in “Heart of Darkness” takes place at Belgian Congo, which is the most infamous European state in Africa for its greed and brutalization of the natives

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Africa in this novella is portrayed as “the Heart of Darkness” the place where the men’s inner evil is exposed, this is done through their thoughts and actions. The contrast between the Thames River and the Congo River is also made evident in the novella. The Thames River is described as calm and peaceful. It is viewed as a city of light that is not mysterious.

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