An Image of Africa

“If there is something in these utterances more than youthful inexperience, more than a lack of factual knowledge, what is it? Quite simply it is the desire—one might indeed say the need—in Western psychology to set Africa up as a foil to Europe, as a place of negations at once remote and vaguely familiar, in comparison with which Europe's own state of spiritual grace will be manifest.”

The Western High School student who praises Things Fall Apart in a letter to Achebe and the old man who is surprised at the existence of African literature and history are part of the same cultural milieu that produced Heart of Darkness. Though these anecdotal encounters serve as the “hook” of “An Image of Africa,” these attitudes are important to Achebe’s overall critique of Western psychology.

“Heart of Darkness is indeed so secure today that a leading Conrad scholar has numbered it ‘among the half-dozen greatest short novels in the English language.’”

While there are plenty of other examples of racist, colonial literature Achebe could have picked from to form a similar critique, it is the elevated status of Heart of Darkness as an essential part of the English canon that makes it perfect for his critical lens. Achebe argues that a piece of literature that is so steeped in racism and dehumanization should not be considered “great.”

“Is Conrad saying then that these two rivers are very different, one good, the other bad? Yes, but that is not the real point. It is not the differentness that worries Conrad but the lurking hint of kinship, of common ancestry.”

The “kinship” between the Thames and the Congo echoes the kinship between Africans and Europeans, which disturbs Marlow in Heart of Darkness. Achebe demonstrates that portraying this shared humanity as uncanny fundamentally dehumanizes the Black characters in Conrad’s novella.