Chinua Achebe's criticism with Heart of Darkness lies mainly in the argument that author Conrad sees Africa as what he wants to see, and not what it actually is.

"As I said earlier, Conrad did not originate the image of Africa which we find in his book. It was and is the dominant image of Africa in the Western imagination, and Conrad merely brought the peculiar gifts of his own mind to bear on it".

Achebe goes on to say that this actually makes the issue less hopeful rather than more hopeful because it is perhaps a "reflex", or an "instinctive desire" for the write to downgrade civilizations like Africa. This would mean that the people like Conrad who do this don't even realize it, which makes it all the more difficult to correct. An example of this is portrayed in the discussion about Western psychoanalyst Dr. Meyer who wrote an entire book explaining Conrad, and did not even touch on the subject of racism. The conclusion to draw from that is that the racism displayed by Conrad and others must be considered normal.

It is normal for African's not to have language, or "history"; they are too underdeveloped to have anything more sophisticated than a "dialect". Apocalypse Now mirrors the same stereotypical ideas of racism. Throughout the entirety of the movie, there is not a single direct conversational part played by the Vietnamese; they do not have language and they do not have history because they are savages--like Conrad says they are. The film fails to recognize any humanity in the Vietnamese people other than that of the enemy to these United States. Similarly, Africa is deemed as the enemy to the high and mighty European civilization. Both works seem to center around the same view that acknowledging a civilization different than ours could mean resurrection of our primitive ways, and that is the ultimate scare, especially for Conrad.