Heart Of Darkness Vs Jumping Monkey Hill Essay
Heart of Darkness vs. Jumping Monkey Hill
Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad is a novel about an English man’s journey to Congo during the Belgian invasion. The novel has been considered by the critics “among the half-dozen greatest short novels in the English language” However, the book has been subject to criticism for its brutal depiction of Africans. Similarly, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Jumping Monkey Hill is set in Africa, portraying a writers’ workshop which takes place in South Africa. In contrast to Conrad’s obvious racist language, Adichie uses a subtle satire to challenge the idea of Westerners being more superior to Africans. Despite the different genre used by both authors, the language in both novels reveals and reflects the Western racist and imperial approaches towards Africans who are considered in inferior to Westerners and are …show more content…
“White South African woman was from Durban...the black men came from Johannesburg. The Tanzanian man...from Dar es Salaam the Ugandan man from Kampala the Zimbabwean from Harare the Kenyan man from Nairobi and the Senegalese woman...From Paris” (2). When introducing the characters in the story Adichie only used names for two white characters. However, the rest of the participants in the story are represented as the country they came from. This is ironic as the author is being indirectly sarcastic towards the Westerners, who don’t perceive Africans as individual human beings but more like a crowd without distinct identity. Moreover, when the main character. Edward’s wife sat next to Ujunwa she “said that surely with that exquisite bone structure, Ujunwa had to come from the royal stock” (3). The word “stock” stands out as it is usually meant for animals not people. In this way, Adichie implicitly approaches Conrad’s perspective, portraying Africans as creatures and
Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad is a novel about an English man’s journey to Congo during the Belgian invasion. The novel has been considered by the critics “among the half-dozen greatest short novels in the English language” However, the book has been subject to criticism for its brutal depiction of Africans. Similarly, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Jumping Monkey Hill is set in Africa, portraying a writers’ workshop which takes place in South Africa. In contrast to Conrad’s obvious racist language, Adichie uses a subtle satire to challenge the idea of Westerners being more superior to Africans. Despite the different genre used by both authors, the language in both novels reveals and reflects the Western racist and imperial approaches towards Africans who are considered in inferior to Westerners and are …show more content…
“White South African woman was from Durban...the black men came from Johannesburg. The Tanzanian man...from Dar es Salaam the Ugandan man from Kampala the Zimbabwean from Harare the Kenyan man from Nairobi and the Senegalese woman...From Paris” (2). When introducing the characters in the story Adichie only used names for two white characters. However, the rest of the participants in the story are represented as the country they came from. This is ironic as the author is being indirectly sarcastic towards the Westerners, who don’t perceive Africans as individual human beings but more like a crowd without distinct identity. Moreover, when the main character. Edward’s wife sat next to Ujunwa she “said that surely with that exquisite bone structure, Ujunwa had to come from the royal stock” (3). The word “stock” stands out as it is usually meant for animals not people. In this way, Adichie implicitly approaches Conrad’s perspective, portraying Africans as creatures and