After reading “Heart of Darkness” by Conrad, I definitely believe Conrad is a “bloody racist”. Throughout the story, the term “it” was constantly being used and at times he had used the term “nigger” to describe Africans. He without doubt sees Africans as a lower class than himself, he writes “After all, I also was a part of the great cause of these high and just proceedings” (Conrad, “Heart of Darkness”). By using terms like “it” to describe African, Conrad makes it seems like if they weren’t even human. In the writing, Conrad says “Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees leaning against the trunks, clinging to the earth, half coming out, half effased within the dim light, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair” (Conrad, “Heart of Darkness”). In this statement, he had used the term “black shapes” which dehumanizes them. Conrad sees African as criminals, and nothing else, “but these men could by no stretch of imagination be called enemies. They were called criminals, and the outraged law ……” (Conrad, “Heart of Darkness”). Conrad was so racist throughout the story that I saw the word “black” rapidly; at one point he had even called the men “creatures”, “While I stood horror- struck, one of these creatures rose to his hands and knees, and went off on all-fours towards the river to drink” (Conrad, “Heart of Darkness”). It seems to me that from this statement, the Africans were almost being depicted as animals rather than human.
Chinua Achebe says, “It might be contended, of course, that the attitude to the African in Heart of Darkness is not Conrad's but that of his fictional narrator, Marlow…” (Chinua Achebe, “An Image of Africa”), people might have argued that Conrad is not a “bloody racist”, because it was a fictional story, but I still believe so due to the fact that there were so much racism being put into the story and to me it just seems like that's his true feelings.