SOURCE: Achebe, Chinua. “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness.” In Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays, 1965-1987, pp. 1-13. London: Heinemann International, 1988.

In the following essay, originally published in the winter issue of the Massachusetts Review in 1977, Achebe asserts that Joseph Conrad was a racist and that his novel Heart of Darkness celebrates the dehumanization of Africans. Achebe also notes that white critics have not commented on this type of racism, which, he asserts, was and is the dominant perception of Africa in the Western imagination.

In the fall of 1974 I was walking one day from the English Department at the University of Massachusetts to a parking lot. It was a fine autumn morning such as encouraged friendliness to passing strangers. Brisk youngsters were hurrying in all directions, many of them obviously freshmen in their first flush of enthusiasm. An older man going the same...