SOURCE: Mongia, Padmini. “The Rescue: Conrad, Achebe, and the Critics.” Conradiana: A Journal of Conrad Studies 33, no. 2 (summer 2001): 153-63.

In the following essay, Mongia considers the charges of racism against Conrad and Heart of Darkness.

I am interested in touching upon numerous concerns raised by Heart of Darkness, all of which radiate around the fraught issue of race and its construction in the novel. For many Conradians, this issue boils down to the charge of racism leveled against the novel, and Conrad, most prominently by Chinua Achebe. Achebe wrote his essay now over twenty years ago. Since it was published, there have been several responses that have apparently revealed the many problems with his argument to demonstrate solidly its ineffectuality.¹ Many of these responses are developed in terms of an opposition between the African author who speaks out of his “race”—therefore only with hostility—and the critical...