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Edward W. Said's Response to Achebe's Critiques (1993)

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Edward W. Said's Response to Achebe's Critiques (1993)

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This short essay essentially addresses Achebe's assertions that HoD was racist and perpetuates a prejudicial and ethnocentric perception of African identity. He defends Conrad as one of the only writers of his time to thoughtfully address imperialism from the perspective of the oppressor by recognizing his own impact on the oppressed. Very insightful and well written.

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“...I had stepped into the gloomy circle of some Inferno.  The rapids were near, and an uninterrupted, uniform, headlong, rushing noise filled the mournful stillness of the grove, where not a breath stirred, not a leaf moved, with a mysterious sound-as the tearing pace of the launched earth had suddenly become audible” (83) "

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"In a very few hours I arrived in a city that always makes me think of a whited sepulchers. Prejudice no doubt. I had no difficulty in finding the Company’s offices. It was the biggest thing in the town, and everybody I met was full of it. They were going to run an over-sea empire, and make no end of coin by trade"

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White Lies and Whited Sepulchres in Conrad's Heart of Darkness

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What if the Company's real objective were wealth derived from a trade in bones? - the fragile veneer of western civilisation, the great white lie of the White Man's Burden with its implicit, pseudo-altruism, must be accepted if the natives of the dark continent are to be improved, enlightened, and transformed into white people with black skins.

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"This devoted band called itself the Eldorado Exploring Expedition, and I believe they were sworn to secrecy. Their talk, however, was the talk of sordid buccaneers: it was reckless without hardihood, greedy without audacity, and cruel without courage; there was not an atom of foresight or of serious intention in the whole batch of them, and they did not seem aware these things are wanted for the work of the world. To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe"

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"I slipped through one of these cracks, went up a swept and ungarnished staircase, as arid as a desert, and opened the first door I came to. Two women, one fat and the other slim, sat on straw-bottomed chairs, knitting black wool"

The women correspond to the mythological Fates who spin, measure, and cut the thread of life. It is in the offices of the Company that Marlow’s life is being measured out as he begins his journey into the heart of Africa.

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Fate, Greek Moira, plural Moirai, Latin Parca, plural Parcae, in Greek and Roman mythology, any of three goddesses who determined human destinies, and in particular the span of a person's life and his allotment of misery and suffering. Homer speaks of Fate ( moira) in the singular as an impersonal power and sometimes makes its functions interchangeable with those of the Olympian gods. From the time of the poet Hesiod (8th century bc) on, however, the Fates were personified as three very old women who spin the threads of human destiny. Their names were Clotho (Spinner), Lachesis (Allotter), and Atropos (Inflexible). Clotho spun the "thread" of human fate, Lachesis dispensed it, and Atropos cut the thread (thus determining the individual's moment of death). The Romans identified the Parcae, originally personifications of childbirth, with the three Greek Fates. The Roman goddesses were named Nona, Decuma, and Morta.

Amy Tikkanen.

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Fate | Destiny, Predestination, Free Will

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Fate, in Greek and Roman mythology, any of three goddesses who determined human destinies, and in particular the span of a person's life and his allotment of misery and suffering. Homer speaks of Fate (moira) in the singular as an impersonal power and sometimes makes its functions interchangeable

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"“I let him run on, this papier-mache Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe."

Mephistopheles is a reference to the Legend of Faust, a German piece of folklore later adapted and altered by many artists including Goethe.  Faust is bored and depressed with his life as a scholar. After an attempt to take his own life, he calls on the Devil for further knowledge and magic powers with which to indulge all the pleasure and knowledge of the world. In response, the Devil's representative, Mephistopheles, appears. He makes a bargain with Faust: Mephistopheles will serve Faust with his magic powers for a set number of years, but at the end of the term, the Devil will claim Faust's soul, and Faust will be eternally damned.

By calling the colonist a “Papier-mâché Mephistopheles”, Marlow likens him to a soulless demon; hollow and fabricated, perhaps nice looking on the outside but inside dark, evil, and empty of any virtuosity. If this description sounds oddly familiar, that’s because it should--this is another appearance of the Whited Sepulcher motif.

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The Satanic minions who really run this place are peering over my shoulder as I write, so bear with me.

First off. Mephistopheles is not the Devil. He's Mephistopheles or Mephisto. He's a devil or a demon, but he's not the Devil.

Secondly, there is no Mephistopheles before the Faust books. He's not a Biblical creature and didn't come out of ancient Middle Eastern religions that Christianity (or some earlier religion) might have demonized. He wasn't a competing tribe's god and doesn't appear in the Bible, except perhaps, as Judas.

He appears as Faustus is giving in to temptation, using demonic magic to summon him. But it seems Mephistopheles is not summoned; he was just passing by. Faust has no powers over Mephistopheles, but both are gentlemen and each agrees to service under a contract. Mephisto will serve Faust for a time, and then Faust will go to Hell. For Faust, it's a fair price to pay. Hell can't be all that bad, and twenty four years of life is invaluable.

While eternity is forever, life is for at best a hundred years. It seems like an unbalanced trade, except that life in hand is most precious. Of all of eternity, Faust has twenty four years to accomplish all he wants to accomplish. While we can't speak for Faust, it still seems like a stupid trade, but we don't have Faust's ambition, and Faust was arrogant and proud.

Anyway, the minions are asleep by now, so we can continue.

They are, in truth, a little bit proud of Mephisto, because he makes them famous, but at the same time they are dismissive of him, because he is only a product of the Renaissance, and for a purported demon, is very young, whilst real demons are very old.

And of course, it is Mephistopheles whom Faust meets. It is Mephistopheles to whom Faust barters his soul. It is Mephistopheles who gets famous.

What really gets the minions, perhaps, is jealousy that Mephistopheles should have risen so far making a nuisance of himself that people think he's the left hand of Satan (who Christians identify with a Lucifer mentioned in the Bible), and they think he was there at the Fall, when Satan was ejected out of heaven along with his co-conspirators - but he wasn't.

Even his name is suspect: "Mephistopheles" reflects poorly on "Lucifer." They say that Lucifer was Satan's angelic name before the Fall. It means Bringer of Light, or the Morning Star. Mephisto must be pandering for Lucifer's attention when he names himself, for he is, by some interpretations, the Hater of Light.

It is the height of Renaissance arrogance and aspiration that a "prince" of demons would take an interest in Faust's soul and that they should come to an agreement. That suggests Faust is at a level equivalent to Satanic royalty. Is Faust like Satan thinking he's equal to God?[] Is Faust the equivalent of Jesus or Muhammad? Of course not: he's a weak, all-too-human wannabe.

The demon horde will tell you that Mephistopheles's a fraud too, that no demon or devil for that matter would be such a publicity seeker that he would appear like that to a human, "conjured" or not. It's too dangerous. Against evil we all flock to God. In the ages around Faust, terror of the unrestrained Devil living among us, and we defenceless (Protestants more so than Catholics in that regard), already had everyone scared religious, and tens of thousands or more "witches" were slaughtered in a Christian purge of the mostly-innocents - all of whom you would expect a Christian God would apologize for with a free salvation in heaven.

For a real demon, any publicity is bad publicity. Faust was written as a morality play - written by a good Christian with the calculated effect of scaring people away from the Devil and his minions ( shout out to my demons!) and back to God by teaching them the bad results of being tempted by the Devil, or of tempting him. The danger of straying from God is shown. Mephistopheles is the writer's pawn.

The early Fausts show the simple consequences of pride, ambition, God-less arrogance, and dallying with demons. Clearly Mephistopheles was invented by a good Christian to divert people away from the Devil, so Mephisto is really no friend of Satan.

But you may object, and say that Lucifer himself was invented by good Christians to scare people straight, but you don't tell demonic minions that Lucifer is logically a good Christian himself, certainly not after their nap when they're especially cranky. And whoever that puppet Lucifer is, you can't say that about Satan as we've come to know him. He's not a good Christian by present-day good Christian standards. Satan comes from old stock - religions far older than Christianity and even Judaism. Satan isn't from a Christian morality play. The ideas of the old religions that Satan represents (dualism for example) are a real threat to Christianity should they ever get loose again. More people have been destroyed to crush those ideas than simple witches. Christianity won't brook any competition or muddying of the message. Mephisto is just a itinerant soul-monger compared to Satan.

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The Satanic minions who really run this place are peering over my shoulder as I write, so bear with me. First off. Mephistopheles is not the Devil. He's Mephistopheles or Mephisto. He's a devil or a demon, but he's not the Devil. Secondly, there is no Mephistopheles before the Faust books.

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The river symbolizes movement toward a goal. It's the only way the British have of getting to the center of the continent where the most ivory is, so it steers them towards their goal. It also moves Marlow toward his goal of reaching Kurtz.

The river also symbolizes the separateness of the outsiders, the colonizers. Marlow and the other people on the steamboat rarely go ashore. In many cases they simply can't because of the dense vegetation. The river physically and symbolically keeps them separate from the natives, who live on shore. Other than Marlow's crew, when we encounter natives it is almost exclusively onshore

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Fog is a sort of corollary to darkness. Fog not only obscures but distorts: it gives one just enough information to begin making decisions but no way to judge the accuracy of that information, which often ends up being wrong. Marlow’s steamer is caught in the fog, meaning that he has no idea where he’s going and no idea whether peril or open water lies ahead.

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When describing the land itself, Marlow oscillates between depicting the physical environment of the Congo with language relating to decay and desolation, while also incorporating language that evokes a tone of awe or reverence. Marlow's depiction of the setting and the range of his language reflects his indecision and inability to reconcile his presuppositions of Africa with his personal knowledge. The ancestral majesty of the landscape is encapsulated, as Marlow depicts how imperialism and methods of empire have compromised the purity and sacredness of the land.