Dudley 1
Dominiq Dudley
Mrs. Skelton
AP Literature & Composition
18 March 2011

Conrad vs. Achebe In Heart of Darkness, Conrad’s misunderstanding of the Ibo Culture is symbolized by his misrepresentation of the language. Though Conrad views the language as babbling and grunting, Achebe points out that they are still humans; though others might not understand it, their language and culture is something that is understood to each other. Achebe’s response to Conrad begins with language to prove that the Ibo people have their own culture. Throughout Heart of Darkness, Conrad shows that he doesn’t understand the Ibo language, and culture; and he doesn’t intend to. When Conrad wrote in the voices of the Africans, he portrayed them as elementary instead of intelligent. “In place of speech they made “a violent babble of sounds;” they “exchanged short grunting phrases,” even among themselves” (An Image of Africa 255.)Instead of trying to understand the Africans and their culture, he showed his own image of them and what they sound like to him. Throughout the book Conrad showed examples of his simple mindedness towards the Africans.
“Before it stopped running with a muffled rattle, a cry, a very loud cry, as of infinite desolation, soared slowly in the opaque air. It ceased. A complaining clamour, modulated in savage discords, filled our ears…” (2.13)
Dudley 2
This showed Conrad’s inability to understand. The men that we around didn’t understand the cries of the natives. The misunderstanding clearly showed the huge disconnection between the Africans and the Europeans. Although Conrad seemed to have a huge disconnect with the African language, one thing he seemed to understand was emotion.
“But what made the idea of attack inconceivable to me was the nature of the noise – the cries we had heard. They had not the fierce character boding immediate hostile