Heart Of Darkness Rhetorical Analysis
Madison Verschleiser
English
Emergence into an Animal Kingdom
In Heart of Darkness what initially stuck out to me was the extent in which Joseph Conrad describes the un-human like qualities of Africans. At one point in the excerpt Conrad calls africans a “prehistoric man”, and at another point describes the way in which the Africans live as a “madhouse”. It seemed to me as if he was not looking at a people rather Conrad was looking onto Africans as if they were caged animals simply there as a resource for Conrad and his men. The overall condescending nature of the excerpt frankly made the passages difficult for me to read. Mainly it called into question for me how a person can look at another human being as somehow innately inferior to himself. …show more content…
A like that particularly stuck out to me was when Conrad says, “The howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces,”. This statement is contrasted by the way in which Conrad describes his group of men as, “glide(ing) past like phantoms, wondering and secretly appalled, as sane men would be…”.. The description of Conrad’s own men is so exponentially different than that of the Africans. Not only does Conrad make a point to describe his men as “sane” but also describes their actions as that of resembling “phantoms”. Not only does this describe characterize the group of White men as something greater than human the word “phantom” when prescribed to a person tends to mean a person who blends in with their …show more content…
He does but doing the exact opposite of Conrad; writing from an outsider’s point of view and writing out the order, tradition, and logic of the villages. In addition in Heart of Darkness Conrad writes about how the he and his men enlightened the villages, whereas in Things Fall Apart Achebe portrays the negative effects of the White man’s arrival. Not only is there very little mention of the “edifying” of the Africans in Things Fall Apart, but Achebe makes a point to include sections about the violence and cruelty of the White men, and how the presence of the White man was destroying families and years of
English
Emergence into an Animal Kingdom
In Heart of Darkness what initially stuck out to me was the extent in which Joseph Conrad describes the un-human like qualities of Africans. At one point in the excerpt Conrad calls africans a “prehistoric man”, and at another point describes the way in which the Africans live as a “madhouse”. It seemed to me as if he was not looking at a people rather Conrad was looking onto Africans as if they were caged animals simply there as a resource for Conrad and his men. The overall condescending nature of the excerpt frankly made the passages difficult for me to read. Mainly it called into question for me how a person can look at another human being as somehow innately inferior to himself. …show more content…
A like that particularly stuck out to me was when Conrad says, “The howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces,”. This statement is contrasted by the way in which Conrad describes his group of men as, “glide(ing) past like phantoms, wondering and secretly appalled, as sane men would be…”.. The description of Conrad’s own men is so exponentially different than that of the Africans. Not only does Conrad make a point to describe his men as “sane” but also describes their actions as that of resembling “phantoms”. Not only does this describe characterize the group of White men as something greater than human the word “phantom” when prescribed to a person tends to mean a person who blends in with their …show more content…
He does but doing the exact opposite of Conrad; writing from an outsider’s point of view and writing out the order, tradition, and logic of the villages. In addition in Heart of Darkness Conrad writes about how the he and his men enlightened the villages, whereas in Things Fall Apart Achebe portrays the negative effects of the White man’s arrival. Not only is there very little mention of the “edifying” of the Africans in Things Fall Apart, but Achebe makes a point to include sections about the violence and cruelty of the White men, and how the presence of the White man was destroying families and years of