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Thought for the day...
"All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education." - Sir Walter Scott
2 comments:
I think that it would be realistic to see the chained-up people being guarded by another native. It reflects the impact that the imperialist society has had on the local people. The guard was most likely forced into guarding the "prisoners". However, I can see why Achebe would be uncomfortable with this and consider Conrad's views racist. Achebe takes it as a personal offense because the passage with the chained prisoners being guarded by one of their own coud be interpreted as Achebe's people being weak or betraying their kind or something along those lines. This might be incorrect, but I think Conrad brings it up almost as an anti-imperialistic measure. Again, the guard may not have had a choice to guard the prisoners. In Heart of Darkness, Marlow was just telling a story, but the impression I got from him was that Marlow didn't like what was happening, even though he only went to fill in his map. I interpret Conrad's point as an anti-imperialistic measure. I'm not necessarily taking sides here, but I can understand both Achebe's and Conrad's points. This is just what I think.
It is a fact that both authors grew up with different beliefs and different perspectives on the way things should be. Conrad grew up in time with whites who strongly dislike the natives and their culture. Achebe being a native grew up believing that all white men were out to get the natives including himself. I also believe that just because you write something with the subject of racism in it, you do not automatically become a racist person. I think that Conrad did not elaborate on the culture and the specifics of the african culture because he did not know. He did a safe thing by just writing about what he knew. He did not falsify anything to make his reading more interesting. It seems that Conrad was showing the point that there was racism but he did not say directly that he was against the natives and that he believed that the should be chained together and do the dirty work so that the white man did not have to. Achebe seems to be uncomfortable with things that he does not understand. He seem to me that he is an opinionated person with things that he feels strongly about but i think he needs to show things that back it up. Again with him degrading Conrad with his sexuality and his orientation seems to me that he is not confident enough in his own opinion in the first place. Conrad left specific things out because he did not know it and because he found that it probably was not important. I also thing that he had one of the natives to be the guard to show that he was not being racist because he incorporated the other minority in the group. The white man might have been the ones making the natives work and do that grunt work but how is that different from what actually happened in real life. He just wrote a story that he found to be neutral not one sided. I believe that if he was racist he must have had great will power because I did not find the racism and the demeaning things that Achebe found in Conrad's writings.
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