10/29 post

Achebe’s critique of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness made me a bias when it came to reading the excerpt you provided. Every description he made, of his environment and his encounters automatically evoked thoughts on how Conrad’s explanations are or may be viewed as racist.
Conrad depicts the natives as being despondent, having no life, and utterly dependent upon the white man for existence. Even the scenery which he describes is life less, the old boiler, the railroad car carcass; portray the natives as living in an inhabitable environment, an environment that only a different “breed” of people can live in.
The six black men who were chained together walking with the buckets, kept in line by the white guard portray the white man as the dominant and the black natives as the defeated. The description of the white article around the young black mans neck as being foreign, brings light that Conrad may have seen anything white as pure or normal, and to see it on a black mans body it is no longer normal, almost foreign in relation to the body that carries it. Conrad describes the natives as being diseased infested and near death, their bodies as frail and bony, imagery that does not show the natives in a favorable light, it portrays them as not having the tools necessary for survival, completely dependent upon the colonizers for survival.
Conrad can be seen as not being racist by interpreting this reading as the negative sides of colonialism, portraying how the colonial invasion has affected the natural population. The pointless blasting of the mountain side for the train rail can be seen as a way that colonizers unnecessarily disrupt the natural environment, creating structures that are not compatible with the environment. He also notes on how colonization has forced many natives away from previous habitations. This is seen through Conrad describing the desolate villages along the route on his journey. He says that the area used to be full of villagers, but at the sight of niggers with strange weapons, they fled.
Conrad can be interpreted in many different depending on how you look at his work, it is understandable how Achebe sees Conrad as a bloody racist, and it is also visible how Conrad could have attempted at showing how the colonizers hurt rather than helped.