I should have listened to the storm - review of "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad

                                      

The first time this dreaded book entered my life, I was sitting in my high school’s Literature classroom; a small, narrow room off the library. I could barely hear my teacher as she introduced us to the texts we’d be studying that year. You see, we were in the middle of a wild early February storm, the wind and rain hurling itself violently against the glass; something that I, as a literature student with a flair for the dramatic, likes to take as some kind of metaphor - “No! Don’t read that book!” the storm pleads with me - alas, it was on my reading list, and therefore I had no choice but to open that book. And so began my passionate hate affair with Heart of Darkness, Marlow, and that cursed steamer ship travelling up the Congo.

Conrad’s work has faced criticism by many for being racist, and on this I must fervently agree. It is evident from the very first words in the novel; the title. Conrad immediately draws the connection between Africa and evil; Marlow’s journey up the Congo river forms the literal, physical journey into this “darkness”, while he also meets and discovers evil men, the metaphorical journey. Heart of Darkness also implies that it is Africa that is to blame for the evil in these men, rather than some inherent capacity within themselves to commit evil acts when able to do so; that by being in Africa, these European men are travelling back to an earlier savage condition of humanity and therefore not at fault for the atrocities that they commit. Further, through this insinuation that Africa is somehow a more primitive place than Europe, Conrad perpetuates the narrative of cultural superiority; the rightness of Western domination - that Africa as a continent is passive and unchanging, a place without history or development and therefore its colonisation is merely a cultural mission as opposed to a violent, hostile takeover. This racist distinction is further evidenced very early on in the text; as Marlow makes the clarification that the Europeans were no “colonists”, but rather “conquerors” whose violence was “very proper” when faced with the “darkness” they were. Now, a conqueror can be defined as a person who conquers a place or people. A colonist or coloniser? A country that sends settlers into a place to gain control over it. These definitions are important here because they illustrate a deficit in Marlow’s distinction and Conrad’s work as a whole; these two words are synonymous; they hold no real difference, despite what Conrad attempts to assert to appease his own anti-imperialist beliefs. The greatest weapon in the arsenal of the imperial machine is the ability to colonise or conquer - a fact that Conrad glosses over in this case because the colonisation is done to the seemingly uncivilised and even prehistoric Africa. This idea is extremely racist and only serves to reinforce the power of imperialism. This racism is one of the significant reasons I rage against Heart Of Darkness’ inclusion so often in studies of English literature; is this really what we want our legacy to be?

Not only do I have the general misfortune of having read this book, I also have the specific misfortune of having read this book as a woman. As racism permeates this text, so too does a level of misogyny that shocked me as a modern reader. The way women are written in this book - the very few that are in the book - limits women to two rudimentary archetypes that can be categorised in Freudian terms as a Madonna/Whore complex - something that Conrad closely links to race. The white women are foolish, shielded little chits who live in a fantasy land and must be protected from the harsh reality of the world; “its queer how out of touch with truth women are,” - they are the Madonna, the angel in the house. On the other hand, the black woman, Kurtz’s mistress, is the Whore; wild, primal, a base sexual creature - barely a person at all, but rather an avenue for white men to explore their darkest, most perverse sexual fantasies; she is the beauty, the allure and the danger of Africa. This complex upholds the racist association with whiteness and purity; perfectly demonstrated by the way in which Kurtz’s European fiance and his African mistress are depicted; one is demure, proper and unspoiled - the other is greedy, sexual and dark. In Heart of Darkness, the white women, who can be seen as the guardians of morality, are unwittingly upholding the imperial machine, as passive participants in its racist perpetuation. Conrad has so intrinsically linked sexism and racism together that to untangle one, you must simultaneously untangle the other, like charging cords that have been stuck in the same drawer together for too long. 

My final piece of critique of this text is one of significantly less academic value; I simply found it to be extremely boring. Early on, Marlow’s audience, our unknown original narrator describes him to be a “teller of tales”, someone with charisma and an engaging ability, a knack for storytelling. On this point, I must fundamentally disagree. I could barely make it through what I found to be one of the driest works of fiction I’ve ever encountered in order to be able to formulate an actual critical response to it. 

I understand that Heart of Darkness is considered an important part of the western literary canon, and as such finds its way onto many reading lists from high school to university, however, as a book reviewer and a literature student, I would strongly advise that you do not pick up this book unless you have to, or if you have some kind of masochistic tendency to make yourself suffer - if you’re a glutton for punishment, this might be the book for you! A final note, to that storm in early February who tried so hard to warn me - I’m sorry. I should have listened to you.