Heart of Darkness:  The Blacks in the book and today
by Bianca and Umberto

In the book…

In this novel Conrad deals with the “dark heart” of mankind. For him the civilization is a mask to hide the real and evil nature of men. This appears in Conrad’s prose that is very descriptive and informative because he wants to give the best opportunity to readers so trhat they will understand this matter after reading the book.

In Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad writes some comments, and uses different expressions to describe coloured people; in particular he uses the words “nigger” and “negro”.
These are their definitions from the Oxford Talking Dictionary:

Negro: An individual (esp. a male) belonging to or descended from any of various peoples indigenous to Africa and characterized by black or dark skin, black tightly curled hair, and a broad flattish nose and full lips; a Black

Nigger: (derived from the latin word “niger”) ... is considered racially offensive as used of people & now frequently avoided in other contexts.

The readers can see that the word nigger is a very hard term to describe black people, but during Conrad’s age (Colonialism age) this is a standard usage, because in this time there was racism in Europe, even if not all the people shared the racist ideas, for example Conrad.

In this period there were many proofs of racism: the blacks were turned into slaves or they were subdued with atrocious manners by the white men that thought: “I’m the civilized man and they are the savages”. What is “civilisation” or “culture” if all the history books or documents report an incredibly long list of atrocities and horrible facts carried out by the “civilized” white men against the indigenous peoples of the colonized countries? Heart of Darkness is one of these proofs.

The author precisely reports the description of the blacks he meets during his trip to denounce the terrible things in the Colonialism time.

What is the real meaning of the word “Civilization”?

From the  Oxford Talking Dictionary:

Civilization: The state or condition of being civilized; civilized society; a highly developed state of society; a particular form, stage, or type of social development.

In Conrad’s time racism covered this value of civilization intended as a developed stage of a community, as it was intended as the imposition of the western civilization values over other peoples. But Conrad went over the racist ignorance to state that the dialogue and not the oppression is the real civilization.
The history teaches us that we aren’t owners of the freedom of the other people.

…and today

When you walk through the city and you hear some people speaking about blacks, their conservation often is about drug dealers, violators or other criminals. That is the picture which people (not only in Austria or in Italy) have in their head when they see a black man.

This topic is also in the book “Heart of Darkness” of Joseph Conrad very important, because there the blacks are slaves. In the first part they lie under a tree, have no food or water and are very, very weak. If nobody does anything they will die! But not one person has the idea to help them because they are only blacks!!! They are nothing worth and they are only things, the white people need
for their work.

I think that this prejudice also exists today. Society knows that the blacks were slaves and it wants that they are slaves today. They are only parasites, which utilize our society with the organization for the “social-help”. But that’s not the truth. Many of them come from a poor nation, maybe from one nation in Africa, and want to begin a new life in the European rich countries. They are only looking for a new chance. I think everybody has the right for a new one, because they have no fault when they come from such a poor land.

OK, I know that there are some exceptions, but there are also so many white criminals!! And… when you are expelled from the society…from what you should live in. Everybody has the right to live where he wants, and it isn’t important if he is black or white, Christian or Jew…

My opinion is that everybody is what he is, independently of his colour of the skin or his religion and they shouldn’t be considered bad only because they are different.. This differences make our world so interesting. People who don’t think so have no heart!!

By Umberto and Bianca