Comparison Of Chinua Achebe And Joseph Conrad

An Image of Africa: Comparison of Chinua Achebe and Joseph Conrad

Both Joseph Conrad and Chinua Achebe have been introduced to language of ‘English’ in their later year of age. They have not been educated in the central of European countries yet they try to create their own perspective of binaries of dominant and submissive and of heard and unheard. Geographically placed, Africa is in the centre of Europe; it clearly suggests how the Europeans or the White Men subdued the Africans or the Black Men by intentionally placing Africa surrounding all the European countries to overpower them in all walks of their lives. In Chinua Achebe essay he quotes Schweitzer’s saying – ‘The African is indeed my brother but my junior brother’. Nevertheless Africa remains a part of Europe, yet they pose the superiority over Africans. The river Congo plays a very important role because the floe of river is downwards that suggests going back to civilization according to Europeans [To have a barbaric view of thoughts] and separating the Europeans from the Africans. In Heart of Darkness, Marlow reminds of us Dark places on the Earth- Once England also remained as a dark place for Romans and hence Marlow remembers of his barbaric thoughts on Africa being a dark places seems to cross his mind but never acknowledges the facets of European history. Here Darkness refers to lack of identification of oneself and other’s emotions. Hence it becomes impossible to penetrate interior ideas or feelings of an