Thursday, January 24, 2008

Firchow and Achebe

I think that Firchow had a strong argument when he said that there are degrees of racism. I also agree with Firchow's distinction of Conrad being a racialist. I think that while Conrad was aware of differences between the races, it was an awareness that did not give way to obvious endorsement of hatred or a need to supress the differences of others. Conrad's distinction of the people as being "ugly" could simply be a matter of preference that indicates Conrad's obvious unfamiliarity with the customs of other these people. It would be very difficult to take a person from a culture and force him to look at customs completely unfamiliar to himself and find the beauty in them immediately even if there is beauty abound (which in my opinion there always is). Imagine taking one of the natives from their home and making observe a British lifestyle and expecting them automatically accept it as a beautiful. In fact in many cases this is what happened, and the result was not an appreciation but disdain for European lifestyles. It is in many ways is no different than a person finding the food of a certain country disgusting because his/her pallette is not accustomed to tastses of this kind. Certainly in issues of race the harm comes in is when actions are attached to such beliefs that cross the line and suppress the differences and choices of others. Actions that both Marlow and Conrad seem to be strongly against and distance themselves from them throughout Heart of Darkness. However, a stronger argument would be in the more subtle dismission of the African's in general. The story seemed to be solely focused upon the actions of the Europeans in the story and while these are people Marlow was likely to have interacted with at this time, it did little to strengthen Marlow's image as being sympathetic to the plight of the locals (with the exception of the helmsman). An analysis of the more subtle depiction of the story as being centered upon European actions would have been a stronger argument than Achebe's which seems to present many fairly disjunct arguments that he punctuates near the end with something like "I think you can see what I am getting at, Conrad was a racist." The character of Marlow, while oftens times viewing the natives as weak, sickly and pathetic often did so as a presentation of these people as being pathetic as a result of the colonial inhabitancy as seen by the start constrast of the lavish british lifestyles (such as the presentation of the accountant) to the lifestyles of the natives (as seen by the "valley of death" for example).

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