Africa: ''Heart of Darkness'' or A Place Where ''Things Fall Apart''

 

     Like a coin, every story includes two sides which could include a different narration from one another. For hundreds of years, the white narration was the sole account for colonization and imperialism and it was high time for the counter-narrative. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness has been one of the colonizer parts of the story while with Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, the history encounters the colonized side for the first time and it allows the readers to compare and contrast between in terms of African representations.

 

            In An African Voice Achebe explains how Europeans used literature to serve their imperialistic needs as they justify their actions in terms of trade and slavery until the 20th century in which Africans raised their voice and re-claimed their history. He explains his novel as a reaction against the bad literature of the past and he thinks that there should be a balance of stories- where every people has the chance to tell their own stories and contribute to the definitions of themselves. In this respect, his novel could be seen as a stabilizer against the accounts of Heart of Darkness.

           

            In his article “Joseph Conrad and Chinua Achebe: Two Antipodal Portraits of Africa”, Clement Abiazem Okafor explains how the narration differs between the two novels. Firstly, Conrad’s novel clearly shows the narration which includes dehumanization of Africans with describing their language as yelling and babbling while in his novel Achebe shows the richness of the Igbo language with its proverbs and phrases as he uses them in their original writing and adding a glossary to the novel shows how the Igbo language is distinct in its way that even some words and phrases do not have an English equivalent. In this respect, his novel indicates his claim in the before-mentioned interview that language can be used ''as an effective weapon, as a counter-argument to colonization’’. Secondly, Okafor explains that in Heart of Darkness African society is portrayed as having no culture while in Things Fall Apart it is the opposite, Achebe spends half of the novel showing the self-sufficient, ethical culture which includes many festivals that fit an agricultural country, weddings, and fertile oral literature that includes many legends and stories. In comparing the two novels, one could see Conrad’s Euro-centric gaze which concluded the natives of Africans as savages who have to learn about ‘civilization’ and the true religion; however, Achebe shows a community that has a functioning social structure and with religion.

        
   

            In his article ‘’An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness’’, Achebe claims that the novel reflects the image of Africa as ‘the other world’, like an antitheses of Europe thereby instead putting Africa against Europe as a counter throughout his novel he chooses to shows how both sides are just humans that do not see eye to eye. When Christian missionaries want to take control the natives explain that they cannot leave the control to them because Europeans cannot understand their customs. There is no mutual agreement because they cannot understand each other thus the reasonable thing would be to agree that they are different but the Euro-centric view holds superiority thus transgress every border to achieve that power. Moreover, Achebe’s representation of Africa is more realistic than Conrad’s in terms of showing what the West sees as the savagery of the East which is their spirituality as a deeply rooted belief system that has some irrational parts such as leaving newborn twins to death as they are seen the spirit of evil. In the novel of Conrad, the drums and the dancing of the natives are described as wilderness and a dark call for madness while in Achebe’s novel drums are used in festivals to draw the attention of the crowd and create a rhythm that moves the society as a whole. Achebe also claims in his article that Conrad hides his true feelings with a narrator that uses beautiful descriptions to hide the cruelty of colonization thus in his novel he uses an objective point of view that shows every aspect which speaks for itself. For example, Achebe’s protagonist kills a young man just to follow the traditions of his clan but the reader does not lose his empathy for that protagonist thus this is why his suicide, in the end, is tragic for showing that this great man’s life is only equal to a paragraph in the narrative of the West.

 

            In conclusion, the balance of stories could be achieved through dichotomies such as these novels. Literature becomes richer and history becomes more clear with these counter-accounts, and with these arguments in mind, it could be said that Achebe’s image of Africa is one of the most important literary heritage for the next generations for being the first one to show the other side with neutral narrative.