Conrad & Achebe

I think that Conrad is a "bloody racist" when I read the excerpt. I think that Achebe’s An Image of Africa has many good examples of how Conrad can be view as a racist. "And between while I had to look after the savage who was fire. He was an improved specimen ... He ought to have been clapping his hands and stamping his feet on the bank, instead of which he was hard at work, a thrall of strange witchcraft, full of improving knowledge. This can be an interpretation of racism, which I believe is, but it can also be considered admiration. Examples of the main character in this book also show that he may have sympathy for the Africans. Such as when he describe what he saw, that most were dying. "The man seemed young -- almost a boy -- but you know with them it's hard to tell. I found nothing else to do but to offer him one of my good Swede's ship's biscuits I had in my pocket. The fingers closed slowly on it and held -- there was no other movement and no other glance". From the view of the dying Africans, he was horror-struck, I think he felt bad for them seeing what state they were in. When another character spoke of an African as savages, he does not seem to agree with that character but just moves on. There are some display of racist statement such as, "Can't say I saw any road or any upkeep, unless the body of a middle-aged negro, with a bullet-hole in the forehead, upon which I absolutely stumbled three miles farther on, may be considered as a permanent improvement". But the main character does not say that it would be an improvement. Although many characters in this story did display racism, I believe that Conrad displayed his ideals through the many different characters of the story but did not and the only character who does not seem racist, in my opinion, is the narrator. As 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.." I think that from all the other racism put into the story by the other characters Conrad was a racist in what he thought of Africans, as savages and niggers. His main character may not have agree with this, but the fact that he think that this is how Africans are can show that he is racist.