Heart Of Darkness Imperialism Essay

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Group A, Question 1
The imperialistic mindset of racial superiority and its justification of unspeakable brutality were a defining feature of the interactions that the European had when facing non-Europeans. The Europeans’ mentality of expansion and the use of a good vs evil mentality really defined the way in which the Europeans interacted and exploited people.
In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness he delves into the imperialism and the issues surrounding it. On his travel to the Central Station, Marlow encounters all types of atrocities from torture up to slavery. The book depicts a very dim picture on the subject of imperialism. Even the way in which they try to defend or justify imperialism are inherently weak. The repeated use of the word ‘trade’ and their treatment of the natives in effort to ‘civilize’ them makes it seem as if the colonizers are benevolent entities that seek only to help the savage. Yet, it is Kurtz who really shows us that colonizers are in fact exploiting the natives going so far as to use the words suppression and extermination in reference to the natives. Towards the end of Heart of Darkness Conrad expresses how …show more content…

The colonist live in a sector of wealth built of “all stone and steel. It 's a sector of lights and paved roads, where the trash cans constantly overflow with strange and wonderful garbage, undreamed-of leftovers.” The sector is characterized as having trash cans overflowing with things the natives could only dream of obtaining the sector is “sated” and “sluggish, this sector is a “sector of foreigners.” Yet, we see that the colonized sector is one of in complete contrast to the colonist’s sector. It is one of small shacks “Squeezed tightly together.” In comparison to the sector of colonizers this sector “crouches and cowers” and is nothing more than a “sector of niggers, a sector of towel

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