Thus He Whacked The Old Nigger Mercilessly

An Analysis of a Passage from Heart of Darkness The chosen passage in this analysis is “Therefore he whacked the old nigger mercilessly, while a big crowd of his people watched him, thunderstruck...(8)”. This passage is relevant to the motif of savagery when the exploitation of colonies in Africa was widespread. During this period, there was an abuse of the native inhabitants and natural resources, and Joseph Conrad invites the reader to see how this so-called process of expansion and progress became rape. The book sheds light on the savagery that colonialists practiced in the middle of the African jungle where their savage tendencies were provided with a very fertile ground away from the view rest of the world. Land and ivory were stolen from the native inhabitants of Africa with impunity. The Africans were savagely treated worse than the slaves in America, according to Conrad, where the poor natives were allowed to die of starvation whenever they fell ill. The old and young were treated with disrespect and most of the time they were beaten whenever the colonist felt like he wanted to punish alleged mistakes. This is why the old man was
He narrates a situation where a native was being beaten somewhere because of a mistake that was done. This merciless beating, according to the author, was the only way to make sure that no other mistake happened again (29). Due to the nature of punishment, the person was groaning in pain but the punishers were pitiless, and they said that the punishment served him right. When compared to the main chosen passage, the two passages connect to show how, throughout the story, the natives of Congo were savagely treated by their Belgian colonial masters. Conrad uses the word nigger in both passages to show the kind of disrespect the white person had for the natives during the colonial