Thursday, February 5, 2015

Heart of Darkness vs. Apocalypse now - Racism

Heart of Darkness was a very interesting reading about Africa. One thing I noticed that it was a bit racist particularly with Conrad and his first encounter with a black man as he says “A certain enormous buck nigger encountered in Haiti fixed my conception of blind, furious, unreasoning rage, as manifested in the human animal to the end of my days. Of the nigger I used to dream for years.”. He uses the term “nigger” in a very offensive way and also refers to the natives as “savages” depriving them of what it means to be human beings in that time period as we are civilized with morals. I believe racism was one of the main problems Achebe had towards Conrad and the Heart of Darkness. Relating to Apocalypse Now, there is a similarity between how the natives are treated and how the Vietnamese were looked upon. The Vietnamese were simply looked at as useless human beings with no souls, skills, intelligence, portraying them as "savages" as well.  

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