In this essay I will discuss and explain how the postcolonial study talks about the discrimination of the Orient and how the Occident nominated and discriminated them. I will also focus on the postcolonial plot in Heart of Darkness as well as the consequences of post colonialism in Africa and I will try to find out the reason behind this domination, superiority and inferiority complex of human mind with the help of psychoanalytic theory. I will also analyze the major characters of this novel; Marrow who is the protagonist and Quartz’s character. And further west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom In the sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars. And this also,’ said Marrow suddenly, ‘has been one of the dark places of the earth. ” (Conrad 19). The way of discrimination begins from the very beginning of the story. Here the narrator was describing about African environment that Is very dull, gloomy and darker place than the other part of the world. The narrator was describing in such a way as if God has also ignored this place and created as a dark place.
Here the reader can get the flavor of Orientation. The narrator is an Occident and considering others as inferior. Heart of Darkness talks about Belgian elimination. They started to control African trade sector first. The protagonist named Marrow was a part of this company. The title itself refers that Africa is the Heart of Darkness where two Occident named Marrow and Kurt went to save Africans and wanted to spread civilization among them. The actual scenario was the opposite. This novel explores the Issues of imperialism also. In the text, Marrow is cynically implying that throughout human history, there has always been a whole tribe of people brutally tortured and systematically annihilated In the name of Collocation. The protagonist describes the Congolese as, “not enemies” or “criminals, they were nothing earthly… Nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom” (20) implying that their miserable condition was due to the torture and mistreatment of the Europeans” (Lam 2).
The Occident considered themselves as superior and others as inferior and neglectful as well. Marrow called them as “black shadows” (Conrad 34) not as human. He was feeling like dying when he was in the outer station. Then he went toward the station and found a well-dressed white man there. L shook hands with this miracle, and I learned he was the Company chief accountant, and that all the book- keeping was done at this station. He had come out for a moment, he said, to get a breath of fresh air”‘ (35). Marrow was very astonished to see a white man among those black men.
It was Like a great wonder for him and that white man rued of the black environment there. Marrow was surprised to hear like that and was thinking that how can a person get discriminated the Orient not only physically but also geographically. “Concord’s indignation at being a white slave and exploited was channeled into an art which dictated Belgian exploitation in the Congo, and his sense of being on the ‘frontier between civilization and savagery’ was transformed into a myth about the barbarism of colonialism” (Raisin 120-121).
Using the tool of civilization, the Belgian colonizers also tortured and dominated the Africans. Stewart also says about this matter, “It suggests that a naked exposure of the human ego, unshielded by civilization and its self-contents, to a world of savagery presumed to be far beneath it is, in the long evolutionary run, only a baring of the soul to the most primarily rooted human impulses” ( 319). Their primary intension was to educate them about the basic components of civilization but in reality, their intension was something else. A series of historians have since contested the Hobnobs-Lenin thesis, pointing out that there Nas little economic interchange between Europe and Africa in the years immediately following apart-Zion, and have suggested as an alternative a political motivation for colonization” (Hawkins 289). The Europeans wanted to capture the land for some economical reasons and mostly for political reason. The Occident was racist. They discriminated the Orient based on their skin color.
Traverse in Concord’s ‘The Rescue’ and equally emphasized in ‘An Outpost of Progress’ concerning the attitude against the lower races’ preventing the progress of so-called civilization. Wash’s study and Concord’s novella both serve to highlight the fact that the process of perpetual colonization necessarily seems to involve racist and imperialist tendencies” (Hansson 3). The Occident believed that they were superior to the Orient epistemologically and ontologically as well. “It has been criticized as racist and sexist by some authors, such as African author China Achebe.
But Achebe is perhaps mistaken to dismiss the evolve as a bad book about Africa without acknowledging that it is a very good book about European Imperialism, and more generally about the problem of evil: the heart of darkness in the primitive recesses of the human soul and of life itself, at the heart of civilization, and without spectacle or grandeur in the banal complicity and conformity of most of humanity’ (Catkin 585). According to the psychoanalytic theory of the Beginning Theory it is Just the people mind that pressurize one person to think like this and human subconscious and conscious mind are responsible behind his. This essay reads Dido’s novel Our Sister Killjoy as a postcolonial revision of losses Concord’s Heart of Darkness. While both novels have been accused of being racist texts, this essay argues that the implied existence of Concord’s text is crucial for our understanding of Dido’s racist representational strategies” (Holler 130). Most of the tendencies of doing crimes are the results of one’s psychopathic mind and obviously his/ her ego. This ego helps the Occident to think them superior.
They thought that they are white in color, which symbolizes purity and divinity; on the there hand, Orient is black in color, which indicates the impurity and inferiority. In reality, it is Just the human mind and heart, which can fill up with purity not in hysterical appearance. In Heart of Darkness the reader can see that the writer mainly focused on the domination over the Orient based on their race, ethnicity etc. “China Achebe explicitly examines the racism in Concord’s Heart of Darkness.
In Achebe’s view, the image set of the book is negative, a portrait of a dark, irrational, timeless mage of Africa was and is as Achebe tells us the dominate image of Africa in Nesters imagination and Conrad merely brought the peculiar gifts of his own mind to bear on it” (Nassau 10-11). Marrow is the protagonist of the story. He is the storyteller. He can describe a story in such a way that anyone can go easily into the story deeply. In Heart of Darkness, he tells his friends about his Journey to Congo River and about the men and women that he met there. He was very adventurous.
He Anted to travel blank places and his Journey towards Congo basin was part of his adventurous life. He was curious and skeptical in nature; nothing is simple to him. Marrow is similarly impressed by his walk through the grove of dying natives, but here we can see Concord’s genius for artistic economy, as in the one small scene he scores Stanley point by inference with unforgettably moving detail, while at the same time demonstrating the devastation caused by these same white intruders, “ho so readily overstepped the thin line between civilization and barbarism” ( Meyer 336).
Though he was a representative of white man and European civilization he was anorak of the actual meaning of civilization actually. To him the African black men Mere Just like a shadow; not a human. After reaching the station, he was feeling like he Just entered into an animal station. He felt some relief when he saw another white man. To him Just the skin color makes another person a normal human like him and the others as animal. “The novel registers the psychological Journey into the centre of evil in one’s mind. As Marrow advances through the Jungle, his psychological desires are obviously changing” (Nassau 42).
The reader can see the suppression and sublimation in his characters and thoughts. It is the ego, which forces him to think in this manner. “Marrow, like Conrad himself, was changed by the experience of Africa, ND returns to Europe cynical and somber with such knowledge of the world as makes it impossible to remain comfortable in the old dispensation” (Catkin 588). Marrow thought that only the Occident has the capability of doing anything but finally he saw that it is not fully true. Kurt is another important character in Heart of Darkness.
He is the chief of the inner station. “Marrow is initially attracted to Kurt because the man ‘had come out equipped with moral ideas of some sort’ (p. 31). The Jealous bricklayer calls him ‘an MIS-Sara of pity, and science, and progress, and devil knows what else’ (p. 25). Kurt had begun as an idealist, and in his report he had quite sin-cereal proclaimed We can exert a power for good practically unbounded’ (p. 51). The ‘idea’ espoused by Kurt that Marrow seems to admire, then, is not Joining the natives but rather improving them” (Hawkins 288).
He was Marrows one of the main interest. “Concord’s Heart of Darkness creates the terms of its appeal by challenging us to specify the meaning Marrow tries to find in the character of Kurt. Those readers who write about what they discover in Marrow’s tracks pursue “hat Marrow himself says he is unable to disclose: the substance, the essence, the details of what it is that Kurt has done, and what it is that he represents” ( Missile 20). He wanted to travel Africa Just like Marrow in order to spread European civilization and humbugging the uncivilized people.
Another important thing is that he got the taste of immense power in inner station and he wanted to hold his position. He was a multi talented man. He can inspire people with his words and make them feel that he is very genius. He could influence people easily by his talent; even the making of Kurt,’ and Quartz’s very existence proves this to be true: Like the Europeans involved in enterprises such as the Company, he epitomizes the greed and lust running wild that Marrow observes in the Congo.
However, unlike the Company, Kurt is not interested in his image or how he is perceived by ‘noxious fools’ such as the Manager. While Brussels is a Whites sepulcher’, a Biblical phrase referring to a hypocrite or person who employs a fade of goodness to mask his or her true malignancy, of hypocrisy, Kurt is completely open about his lusts”. He was actually very genius indeed; he came Africa with some noble cause; but after settling here he fall into the grave of greed. He colonizes the Congo people by torturing; tempting, killing, tricking etc .
Finally he had to pay this by giving his own life also. He Nas a representative of so many European colonizers who colonizes other land to make profit for their own company and to reach this goal they did whatever is needed whether it was crucial or not. His character can also be analyzed through the lens psychoanalytic theory. It is the mind or perception, which force one person to do all the things. He was a mysterious character indeed. “Overall Kurt symbolizes Europe as it is moving towards the end of imperialism when the Europeans recognize heir harmful actions” ( Nassau 41).
Heart of Darkness is a wonderful creation. Both Marrow and Kurt searched for the truth; finally, at the end of their lifetime they could the truth that people can cause havoc with the name of civilization and imperialism as well. “Conrad wrote this novel to examine civilization and as Freud says; ‘ Civilization describes the whole sum of the achievements and regulations Inch distinguish our lives from those of our animal ancestors and which serves two purposes-namely, to protect men against nature and to adjust their mutual relations” ( Nassau 53-54).
People can realize that the darkness is not about one’s skin color; it is people’s heart or mind, which is full of darkness. [2188] Paper outline losses Conrad was a brilliant author. He was actually a Polish author but wrote in English after settling in England. His Heart of Darkness is a famous novel where he rote about Belgian colonization in Africa. In this novel Conrad recollect the memories of his Journey to the Congo. This novel is a reflection of his experience as Nell as own interpretation.
Conrad also tried to travel around the darkness of human characters of this novel; Marrow who is the protagonist and Quartz’s character. .
