Unhuman-Like: Congolese Natives in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
Abstract
This article presents a new reading of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. It shows how Congolese natives were misrepresented by Conrad. Conrad craftily dehumanises the Congolese natives through a systematic method that can be detailed as follows: 1- representing Congolese natives as an underdeveloped species of creatures has nothing to qualify it to be human-like, 2- seeing such creatures only partially, that is as “heads”, “faces”, “eyes”, “lips”, “noses”, “necks”, “feet” etc., but not as whole human beings, and 3- asserting that “these creatures” (23), can be anything but human beings. It is through such a trichotomy that Conrad’s (Marlow’s) racism will be exposed.
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