Willful Racism

Achebe's criticism of Heart of Darkness is the ignorant, almost willful dehumanizing of the African people. Some of the supporters of the book have said that it is just a use of imagery and beautifully crafted sentences. It is also a break down of Conrad's mind and his fall into this blatant racism that Achebe criticizes. Conrad was slowly in failing health, so the story can be used as a metaphor for his own troubles. The Africans are not even given names and barely described as full people, instead described by their various parts. Their actions are given adjectives like frenzy and words like silence are used repeatedly to capture the animal side of the jungle. These words are also used to capture the animal side of the europeans and how their perception of the land changed them. 

This is very similar to apocalypse now when the very young, ignorant, impressionable soldiers go to Vietnam and become the tribal culture that they envisioned.  There is a slow break down to the original goals of going to Vietnam, instead it becomes an over glorified vacation. This is similar to heart of darkness because the europeans often forget what they came to do and instead assimilate into their perception of African culture, even giving in to atrocities like cannibalism when many tribes did not partake in such acts.