Heart of Darkness vs. Apocalypse Now

The job of a writer is to express the world that they see and what you see is always covered by lenses. To say that Conrad was perpetuating racism may be fair but can he be blamed? Conrad lived in the age of empire where states were required to seize foreign land in order to thrive and get ahead of other nations. This view of “the other” by conquering people is not new or a European phenomenon. The great empires of China and Rome both looked down on those who they conquered and even those who conquered them, such as the Mongols and the Germanic tribes. This is the common view of the conqueror on those being conquered. In their eyes, if they were equal or better then us then how come our technology is much more advanced then theirs, their race was just a simple cop out for the conquerors. You will see this in every war. In WW2 propaganda you have Germans depicted apes, this is to convince the citizens of the country that the people they are killing are lesser, sub-human. The problem arises though that colonization lasted for generations and when generation after generation is told that these people are the lesser it is hard to brake that thought.

This is not a defense of the racist views at the time but is a defense of blaming one man for perpetuating it because his book is considered part of the western cannon. If anything this addition to the cannon can be looked at now as a well written view of how people saw Africans and how ridiculous it was if you teach it to either those who know or if you teach it simultaneously with the great sub-Saharan kingdoms of the Congo, Timbuktu and the Maasai.