Cry The Beloved Country And Things Fall Apart Critical Analysis

In Basil Davidson’s video, “Different but Equal”, Davidson examines ancient Africa, and how Africans were perceived in ancient and modern times. Davidson discusses pre-colonized Africa and its history, and how racism prevailed in the past and in modern day. By discussing early civilizations, as well as modern day perspectives, Davidson allows the viewer to have expansive information on how individuals view Africans and their culture. In Davidson’s video, he discusses how people in the past have viewed Africa and African culture, and how that relates to our perception of Africa in modern times.

Western Eurocentric stereotypes erroneously portray traditional African civilization and culture as exotic, different, and primitive. For many westerners, Africa is stereotyped as a continent with tribes and villages with primitive social structures and hierarchies. African countries contain various cultures, languages, and religions. African’s experienced denial of religious and cultural identity after gaining independence from European countries because European’s imposed western ideologies upon a continent with numerous diversities.

Africa is predominantly represented as a land of darkness within the text. Tawfik Yousef in his essay, Imagery in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, says, “Marlow's trip to the Central Station is a further step into darkness and his trip to the inner station is yet another. We are told that Marlow and his companions 'penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness'” Marlow says, “We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on a earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet. We could have fancied ourselves the first of men taking possession of an accursed inheritance, to be subdued at the cost of profound anguish and of excessive

The main character, Marlow, in Joseph Conrad’s 1910 novel The Heart of Darkness begins his journey into Africa skeptical of what might occur, but naive to the true horrors that were in stake for the young man. Marlow’s detailed descriptions of the sights and torturous actions towards the natives he witnesses along his journey lead to many literary critics to deem Conrad a racist. One author notorious for calling Joseph Conrad out on his racist remarks is Chinua Achebe who gained fame from his article “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness”.

Into the Darkness: How and why is a social group presented in a particular way? Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness takes a multi-faceted approach to the issues that surrounded 19th century colonization and imperialism in Africa. Marlow’s journey into the heart of Africa serves to highlight the hypocrisy of this endeavor, and how this deceit followed the rhetoric utilized by the colonizers in order to justify their colonization of Africa and the treatment of the natives. As the novel progresses, Africa becomes more of a backdrop for Conrad to truly expose the depravity of European intervention in Africa. Through Marlow’s narrative, varying connotations of words and his own main character’s reactions,as well as copious amounts of descriptive imagery, Conrad casts Europeans in a negative light in order to criticize imperialism and colonists.

People do not view Africa as a great world power due to its history of slaves and poverty. Africa will become a great nation like it was before the peace broken by European powers. Africa will return to its natural roots being free from violence and discrimination. The poem, Africa, relates to the harass of Africans and African-Americans being seen as a lower class even in modern time. This poem repeats in America with black injustice crimes, ripping black culture to modernized.

Racism in Heart of Darkness Heart of Darkness is a novella written by Polish- British writer Joseph Conrad in 1899. Since it was written Heart of Darkness has been criticized as a colonial work. One of the critics who condemn Joseph Conrad and his work has been the Nigerian authors and critics Chinua Achebe in his work "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad 's 'Heart of Darkness". Achebe considers Conrad as “a thoroughgoing racist” (Achebe 5) for depicting Africa as "the other world" (Achebe 2). The aim of this study is to examine Heart of Darkness referring to the Achebe’s ideas in his 1977 essay.

In Heart of Darkness the idea of imperialism was under an immense pressure, and Kurtz exemplifies this idea with his initial beliefs when entering the Congo. Kurtz’s description of the situation as “an exotic Immensity ruled by an august Benevolence” is sharply contrasted by his statement to “exterminate all the brutes” in his report (Conrad 50-51). In Heart of Darkness, the western view of the Congo is drastically false; they believe that the natives are naive and savage. This idea, similar to that of the Americans, highlights the major differences in culture. The people of the Congo think that Kurtz is some sort of god even though he wants to eliminate them from their home.

Hunt Hawkins presents the controversy that Joseph Conrad’s, Heart of Darkness, encounters, as its contents portray Africans as dehumanizing, savage, and uncivilized beings. In order to provide a sufficient amount of information with regards to the controversy, Hawkins introduces the analysis of distinct scholars to describe racism, imperialism, and human nature. As a result, an analysis of the characters are provided to the audience and allow an individual to understand why Conrad decided to write Heart of Darkness the way he did. Thus, during this process, Hawkins describes the manifestation of the darkness that eventually consumes Kurtz.

“Enlighten my ignorance.” This request is sometimes used by a person who is lacking information. In Cry, the Beloved Country, the author Alan Paton describes many situations that show the problems that arise because of unjust conditions in the country of South Africa. One of the major problems is ignorance. Some people are lacking formal educations, some are lacking an understanding of other cultures, and some are lacking understanding of members of their own family. One of the main characters is James Jarvis whose son Arthur has been murdered. After the death of his son, James comes to understand that while he is an educated businessman, he is ignorant in several ways. James Jarvis is an example of the change that can happen when one man realizes he is ignorant of his son’s motivation, of his neighbor’s needs, and of what he can do to make a difference.

As such, it can be said that the novel seeks to represent the Blacks of Africa as lowlife beings, prehistoric barbarians and savage creatures that have no rights to say anything for themselves. However, Conrad also shows a flipside to the typical ideology of Whites being superior to Blacks by representing the Blacks as a strong and restrained group of people, confined only due to helplessness. In the novel, the natives of Africa are first introduced with the use of animal imagery. The sentence “A lot of people, mostly black and naked, moved about like ants,” describes the Africans that were building the railroad.

In 1884 Berlin Conference was held to decide the future of Africa. They finalized to create free trade in the Congo region, free navigation and created rules to divide Africa among themselves. Joseph Conrad wrote Heart of Darkness during this period so, those historical backgrounds on colonization help to portray the theme of imperialism in this novel. In Heart of Darkness, Conrad portrays themes of imperialism in three different views through his main character Marlow. Therefore, this essay argues on how Heart of Darkness comment on Imperialism based on the power of the colonizers, the power of Mr. Kurtz and imperialistic view of Conrad over women.

How can one make so many mistakes in life and still be forgiven as if they did not do anything wrong? In the novel Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton, religion was an important point throughout the whole novel. The main character, Stephen Kumalo, who simply goes by Kumalo, was a black South African priest who revolved his life around his family and God. There had been many times in Kumalo’s life where his feelings and actions had been the results of devoting his life to God. Paton continually mentioned the importance of faith in this book and what it meant to each of the characters present. One of the main ideas in this novel was the journey Kumalo took in order to overcome the challenges he had faced. The obstacles he was presented with included finding his daughter and his son. When he had found his son, Absalom, he was in a time of hardships and looked to God for answers. Therefore, Kumalo and Absalom were two characters who were strongly impacted by faith and their relationships with God, which allowed them both to forgive and ask for forgiveness.

In Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, the imperialism of Africa is described. Conrad tells the story of the cruel treatment of the natives and of the imperialism of the Congo region through the perspective through the main character, Marlow. Through the lens of New Criticism, it is evident that Conrad incorporates numerous literary devices in Heart of Darkness, including similes, imagery, personification, and antitheses to describe and exemplify the main idea of cruel imperialism in Africa discussed throughout the novella. Throughout Heart of Darkness, Kurtz and other men that are known as strong, greedy, European leaders of the movement to imperialize Africa, are mentioned multiple times.

‘Heart of Darkness’ was written in 1899 by a Polish novelist Joseph Conrad, about the expedition up the Congo River in the Heart of Africa. This essay will mainly deal with the reference of the ‘darkness’ in the novel and it even deals with the theme which will further support the statement. The idea of ‘darkness’ in ‘Heart of Darkness’ represents evil or dark side of Humanity. It is also related to the idea of colonization, especially when it comes to the idea of mistreatments of people and misuse of natural resources.