The Justifications of an Old Story

Many old works of fiction that have been taught for years are eventually questioned for their importance in curriculums and value as books in general; Heart of Darkness is a perfect example of this. Joseph Conrad's discussion of African and African people is highly controversial because some believe it is racist while others find it to be a simple discussion of these topics without issue. China Achebe, however, finds Conrad to be extremely racist in this literary work and defends his argument well.
Achebe starts off by stating that Conrad seems to "project the image of Africa as 'the other world'," or the "antithesis of Europe" (Achebe 1) which quickly illustrates for the reader how Conrad writes about Africa. Achebe makes a point to discuss Conrad's writing on the setting descriptions and how there is a great underlying focus on how Africa is of lower quality and importance because it has drifted away from European influence. He also alludes to Conrad's tendency to describe Africa in a way that makes it only "setting and backdrop" and this consequently "eliminates the African as human factor" (Achebe 5). Connecting back to the European influence, Achebe also states that Conrad's writing ends up "reducing Africa to the role of props for the real-up of one pretty European mind" (Achebe 5) rather than writing about Africa in a realistic and culturally acceptable manner. Achebe places a clear importance on the setting descriptions in Heart of Darkness and makes it very clear to his readers that Conrad does a poor job creating a realistic image of Africa for his readers and is racist throughout his writing.
The treatment and characterization of African people in Heart of Darkness is another great issue for Achebe. He feels that everything about how Conrad describes the African people is very absurd and inaccurate. He states that rather than speaking normally as humans do, Conrad replaces their speech with "violent babble of uncouth sounds" (Achebe 4), making the people sounds more like animals than human beings. These animal descriptions do not just stop at speech, either. Conrad uses negative adjectives with animal-like connotations to describe the people of African with nearly every chance he gets. Achebe states that "Conrad's picture of the people of the Congo seems grossly inadequate" (Achebe 4), and I would have to agree.
Achebe makes it very clear that he finds Conrad to have been a "thoroughgoing racist" (Achebe 5), however, he acknowledges that Conrad has created a fine piece of literature. The reality is, as Achebe points out, that Heart of Darkness  is a piece of literature that achieved its purpose; it has made people think for many years. However, the quality of the work from a social perspective is relatively poor. It is a racist piece of literature that is supposed to be about Africa and its inhabitants but in reality, focuses more on the lack of European influence in African and how this negatively impacts the continent as a whole.